It's Already Tomorrow in Australia.

I was driving to the dentist the other day when I passed a local hardware store. The store has a sign that they usually use to announce sales and whatnot but, on that day, they had up the following saying:

"The world can't end today, it's already tomorrow in Australia."

I laughed.
But I'm not convinced.
..........

Okay, I don't actually think the world is going to end today. (I'm less certain about tomorrow).

And, honestly, I don't believe that The World (as in the Earth) is likely to end at all. Is it going to be altered by humans? Yes. Are parts of it already pretty mucked up? Yes. But I think our planet is going to be revolving around the Sun for quite a while yet. We are changing it but, barring massive, all-out nuclear war, I don't think we'll end it.

I believe that by "The World" what we - or the guy on the street corner waving a sign that says "The End is Near!" - are talking about is our own individual worlds - our culture, society, lifestyle, family and friends, our governments and the institutions that sustain us.

Can the world truly end? In that sense, I think it can.

And I think that I'm not alone in that belief. I imagine it is a meme floating around in our collective unconscious - the Chicken Little meme - it facilitates the belief that the sky could be falling. Its presence is the reason some people stockpiled food before Y2K (among other things) - it makes the threat of disaster credible.

In the fable, Chicken Little was wrong - the first sign of the end was really just an acorn popping him on the head - but this didn't impact his ability to find some followers. Maybe it was crazy of Goosey Loosey and Drakey Lakey to put their faith in so little evidence, but I don't think it's nuts for us to think that the rug of stability could be pulled out from under our lives.

That meme is there for a reason. It isn't an accident that the theme of utter destruction and devastation pops up throughout myth, legend, history, and fairy tale. Those stories are a record of human experience.

Sometimes the sky really does fall in on us. Sometimes the world (writ on a personal or societal level) ends.

War, earthquakes, floods, hurricanes, droughts. Invasions that displace thousands. Sieges. The fall of Rome. The fall of the Incan Empire. The Dust Bowl. Blankets infected with smallpox. Hurricane Katrina. Tsunamis and typhoons. It happens. It happens all the time. The sky falls. Over and over again, across human history and geography, the sky rains down unceasingly from above.

The United States is (or has been - some count it over) a global superpower for a number of decades. But we aren't the first political entity to have wielded such power - there was a time when all roads led to Rome; there was a time when the sun never set on the English Empire.

We won't be the last.

Hopefully the transition won't feel like the sky is falling.

The thing that I find most fascinating about all of this, though, is that there is a human characteristic that is just as strong - just as prevalent - as the Chicken Little meme. And it is, in some ways, its exact opposite.

It is a trust in sameness - the idea that tomorrow will, most likely, be pretty much like today. That the world won't end because the sun will rise tomorrow almost where it rose today. Of course it will rise. It's already up in Australia.

One of the places that this seems so clear to me is the realm of sustainability. Way back, when the "25 Things About Me" meme was floating around Facebook, I made a list of my own. Number 14: "I believe that everything that is not sustainable will eventually collapse."

I know that this is true. And yet, I keep behaving in ways that do not change our direction. I act as though our culture and society can continue at this pace of consumption without consequence. Even though I know it isn't true.

There isn't a logical reason for this behavior, beyond the truth that change is hard. Especially when it would take all of us changing direction in concert to avoid the iceberg. I don't think we can avoid it (because I'm Chicken Little) but I keep going on as though it won't. I drive my car and buy food at the store that was raised on a different continent. Most of us do.

In my mind, I see a tight rope strung between two poles: "the sky is falling!" and "the sun will come out tomorrow!" Both of which are fairy tales.

I imagine us - as individuals and, collectively, as cultures - on a unicycle balanced on the tight rope. Sometimes we veer closer to the meme of disaster, sometimes to the faith in sameness. Wobbling a little as we move back and forth.

Which is true? Where are we headed? Can we find stability?

It is already tomorrow in Australia. I guess they are that much closer to the day we find out.