(this article was written for an essay-writing class, which may explain the overall style)

Anticipations concerning the near future, especially concerning the new millennium, are, although somewhat vague, to some extent filled with notions indicating the end of the world, doomsday, or just a turn for the worse.

Those anticipations are mostly based, or base themselves, create their own legitimization, on various prophecies, i.e. on a mixture of scriptures; all somehow related to the general topic of doomsday, although not necessarily linked to each other. Those writings include amongst others the Biblical Book of Revelations and the verses of Nostradamus. But to say the least; those books are either allegoric religious parables or vague poetic outbursts; neither of them giving accurate, convincing evidence.

Judgement day is the concept most often referred to; seen as the ultimate end of the world, the day when the judge will destroy all earthly matters and decide which part of the population will go to heaven and which to hell. Apart from that concept being a gross oversimplification, it is not really based upon the writings it claims to be based upon: It is trying to interpret a parable without taking the allegoric character of that text into account; further, various people have been trying to fixate it to a date while such an option is denied by scripture: The time can’t be known.

The options of the present now seem evident: either to worry about something unpredictable and not even supported by scripture or to think about its real meaning; looking into the future as providing us with options instead of restricting them.

To fight the future, to fight something seen as inevitable - what to fight then? The fight would be aimed against the abyss not of some apocryphal date but of the human soul - to fight the evil originating from mankind itself, against the cruelest animal within.

December 3rd, 1998