The End of the World (Again)
A brief history of humans panicking... and being mostly wrong.
Every generation thinks they’re the last sane group of humans before it all goes to hell.
Spoiler: They’ve been wrong for about 5,000 years straight.
Andrew Wilkinson stitched together 17 glorious examples of humanity’s greatest pastime — "The World Is Ending" — and it’s honestly comforting to see how consistently dramatic we’ve always been.
Enjoy this little time-travel tour through human panic. Sharing it below as is:
Talk to most 30-50 year olds these days and they tell you two things:
The next generation is weak (phone addiction, no sex, no work ethic, etc)
Humanity is doomed (climate change, societal upheaval, nuclear war, etc)
Here’s 17 quotes presented without comment:
"The children now love luxury; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise." —Socrates
"Civilization will come to an end sometime in this century, when the fuel runs out." —William Shaw, 1974
"Democracy will be dead by 1950." —John Langdon-Davies, 1936
"When I was young, we were taught to be discreet and respectful of elders. Today's youth are exceedingly wise and impatient of restraint." —Hesiod, 8th century BCE
"Everything that can be invented has been invented." —Charles Duell, US Patent Office, 1899
"By 1985, air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching earth by one half." —Life magazine, 1970
"Exhaustion of natural resources and social decay will bring an end to modern civilization within 100 years." —Club of Rome, 1972
"We have about five more years at the outside to do something." —Kenneth Watt, 1970
"World civilization will collapse by the year 2000 and there is nothing we can do about it." —Arnold Toynbee
"If we don't act now, by the year 2000 mankind will have destroyed the earth." —Senator Gaylord Nelson, 1970
"Youth were never more savagely saucy. The ancient are scorned, the honorable contemned, the magistrate not dreaded." —Thomas Barnes, 1624
"The free access which many young people have to romances and novels has poisoned the mind and corrupted the morals of many a promising youth." —Reverend Hitchcock, 1790
"The civilization of the twentieth century will be destroyed in an apocalypse of fire and blood more terrible than anything yet known." —René Guénon, 1927
"Young people have no reverence for parents or old age. They are impatient of all restraint." —Peter the Hermit, 1274
"The population of the earth will be exterminated within a century by deadly rays from the sun." —Garrett Serviss, 1910
"We live in a decaying age. Young people no longer respect their parents. They frequently inhabit taverns and have no self-control." —Ancient Egyptian tomb inscription
"In the 1970s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now." —Paul Ehrlich
Don’t get me wrong. Things are bad. But they’ve always been bad. And they’re much better than they used to be by almost every measure.Unfortunately, it seems that it’s our job—at least those in my age group and up—to bemoan the next generation and state of the world. The kids are probably alright, and humans will probably still exist in 500 years.
That’s it for this week.
Manoj
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Simply AMAZING. i wait every week for your newsletter. its a real eye opener and original and very much relatable. thank you, thank you very much!