The "Doomsday Generation"

In a generation that has yet to be defined, I believe I have a suggestion. The "Doomsday Generation." In the 1940s there was the "Greatest Generation" and in the 1960s you have the "Flower Power Generation", but the current generation is a lot more gloomier...and they like it.

In a Reuters poll, 15 percent of people worldwide, believe that the world will end in their lifetime. In a separate Newsweek poll, up to 71 percent of Evangelical Protestants believe the world will end in their lifetime. Out of that 71 percent, 28 percent are "looking forward" to the end of time.

Nearly one in four people who identified themselves with a religion, are happy because they believe the world will end while they are alive. Why? Presumably, many of these people have kids and grandkids. Don't they want their relatives to enjoy a full life? It's one thing to believe in a glorious afterlife, but why rush it?

In another Newsweek poll, in the November 1st issue, 47 percent of people who believe in the  Armageddon prophecy from The Bible, believe that the Anti-Christ is already walking this planet and is setting his plans in motion.

Large majorities of believers in the second coming of Christ believe that current events such as natural disasters (83 percent), epidemics like AIDS and Ebola (66 percent) and outbreaks of violence like shootings (62 percent), are a sign that it will happen soon.

This doesn't even count the people out there that believe in a more science-based ending to humanity and/or our planet. This demographic believes that the world will end via climate change, nuclear weapons, asteroid, or disease/famine.

In the past 15 years alone, there have been two major dates that passed, that were believed to be the end of the world. Y2K was supposed to be the end of the world because many people believed computers would reset themselves to 1900, instead of 2000. One in five people actually believed that Y2K would produce at least some tragic accident.

For those that are into the Mayans, they believed that on December 21, 2012, that the planets would align, ripping the planet apart, or that an asteroid would connect with Earth and send us into the fourteenth b'ak'tun . The day passed just as any other would, and some people were actually depressed that nothing major occurred.

Even the head of one of America's largest churches, John Hagee of the Cornerstone Church in San Antonio, which has 20,000 followers, announced that he believed that the world would end in 2005 when Islamic and Russian states invade Israel and be destroyed by God. This would allow the head of the European Union, who he believed to be the Anti-Christ, to create further confrontation over Israel, between China and the West.

It just seems absurd that people of this generation, seem to welcome some sort of end to our world. Has this generation become so jaded, that they don't care about the future of humanity, let alone the future of their own family? Whether it's simple curiosity or some sort of dislike for one's fellow man, there are too many people out there, literally hoping for the worst.

This is why I term this generation, "The Doomsday Generation." Even with all the advancements in culture, science, and human relations, people are more negative than ever. Instead of looking for ways to end the world and even encourage it, people should be finding ways to preserve it and even preserve the human race.