Two theories on the Ending of the World

In the final month of the Church’s liturgical calendar, the Mass and Divine Office readings get increasingly apocalyptic. Furthermore, in Advent, we also prepare not just for the First Coming of Jesus as a little helpless baby in a manger born to two destitute parents, but also for the Second Coming when He will return as a mighty King and Judge Who will bring Time to its denouement. 

This reminded me of an end-of-the-world scenario I thought of a while back which did not have anything to do with Jesus or Advent. The first paragraph above was solely intended as a hook to get you to read this article. It would be rude for you to scroll or tap away. But this scenario is also a theory about all of the stuff going on in the world today. In the end, I will try and tie in Jesus’ Comings so you don’t feel completely cheated.  

I had watched an episode of Star Trek: Voyager which inspired this if you look at things sideways. The episode is entitled "The Voyager Conspiracy." (S6E9) It features Seven of Nine (played by Jeri Ryan) who is a former Borg drone rescued by the crew of the titular spaceship. The Borg (for those who don’t know) are cybernetic creatures connected to a hive mind where they share and hear everyone’s thoughts. They also go around assimilating other people into this hive mind whether they want to or not. Think of it as Facebook/Instagram/Thread’s logical end. Now, as a Borg, she needs a place where she can ‘regenerate.’ Her strength, nutrition, and other such needs, including the uploading and downloading of data, require regular maintenance as a consequence of her former cybernetic existence. This place is called a ‘regeneration alcove.’ 

(SPOILER ALERT!) In this episode, Seven modifies her regeneration alcove with additional Borg technology so she can process massive amounts of information (crew reports, sensor data, etc.) Nice idea, it can make things more efficient in the long run for the crew. Her ability to process and interpret the data results in Seven uncovering several plots, secret missions, and so forth from over the show’s previous 5 years.

She confronts others regarding her findings which causes problems. In the end, she does discover a conspiracy against her, which she tries to terminate by escaping, and if need be, killing herself.

The problem is, it’s all bunk. There were no conspiracies. It turns out that although the Borg technology in her alcove was working perfectly, she was incapable of processing and interpreting the data properly. Her Borg pride (they have a superiority complex like you would not believe) would never admit to that. She subconsciously tried to make sense of the whole mess by seeing patterns, connections, circumstantial evidence, and so forth and drawing erroneous conclusions from that. In short, the information she received was too complicated for her and she tried to make sense of it, and the only way she could do that was to reframe it all into compact, concise theories that explain it all. These are typically known as conspiracy theories. (Bear with me, please!)

I know that one common explanation for conspiracy theories is that people who find modern civilization complicated try to create a means by which to make sense of it. It’s a coping mechanism. They need to make sense of things and reducing complicated systems to a simpler, sensible reality helps. (Continue hanging in there, the good bits are coming up!)

Which is wrong. People don’t need to make sense of things. Or at least not everything. People can just leave things be and worry about their own lives and what they need to deal with. But conspiracy theories help them to cope with ‘everything’ because they can ‘connect the dots’ of circumstantial patterns, etc., and this makes life understandable.

(And yes, I am aware that some conspiracy theories have proven to be true, but it doesn’t logically follow that all are true. Where these theories collapse is when they depend on insular thinking to survive. Once you reject external objective, empirical data that refutes the theory and claim it’s part of a ‘cover-up’ you cross a line into irrational thought. Anything that requires only its own, internal logic to survive, is false. But I’m digressing a little, but the good bits are coming up.) 

I think the Internet is at fault. Humanity has oodles of terabytes of data out there in the form of websites that have stuff on all sorts of things. News is no longer on TV for just a half hour in the evening. Even back-in-the-day with 24-hour cable news channels, you could still cope. But now... with all this stuff out there, it’s a supermassive information overload. Also, there is no vetting process controlling what information is brought online; sheesh, even I have a blog in addition to this Catholic365 space. See how screwy the system is to allow me online like this? Humanity has become overwhelmed with information, some good, some ridiculously dumb. And there’s a lot of it. Our educational systems haven’t been up to the task of inculcating critical thinking skills to assist us in sorting out the crud from the cream.

Result: conspiracy theories have become mainstream. Certain conspiracy-laden news sites have almost become as credible as mainstream news sites. Satire news sites are often mistaken for real news. (This is a testimony as to how weird things are becoming. Anyway, here come the really good bits.)

Garbage in - Garbage out. The quality of the interpretation of data is only as good as the data coming into the system that is doing the interpreting as well as the ability of that system to interpret it. Lots of data coming in (good or bad) + too much of it + poor interpretation + poor coping = disaster. There you have it. Look outside and see what is going on in our culture. Essentially, we are self-destructing and performing a self-lobotomy. How much of what is going on is Internet-driven? We cannot handle the information overload and we’re going nuts, just like Seven of Nine in that Star Trek: Voyager episode. And this threatens social cohesion and a total societal collapse.

That is my first theory; now, on to number two.

I think the Internet’s real creators are responsible. I think the Internet was introduced decades, if not a century or so, before we were ready for it. I think it was part of a vast strategy to wipe out humanity from the Earth by aliens without them having to fire a shot. We would destroy ourselves in a non-nuclear manner. 

Ever wonder why the Internet and the “World Wide Web” came after the Cold War ended and after we backed significantly away from irradiating the planet in a nuclear war? That would have rendered the planet uninhabitable and the aliens couldn’t have that! So they secretly plant the idea of the Internet in the side most likely to make the best use of it, the capitalistic West. This would enable them to better coordinate military development, and technologies and eventually defeat the Communist Bloc before things came to a nuclear showdown. The Apollo Lunar Landing program was a part of this strategy. The economic benefits of space technology were evident to them from their history, since it propelled them into space and enables them to invade us. This would propel the West to advance much faster than the East, which would collapse in the economic rivalry and nuclear war would be avoided. 

Ever wonder why we only went up there to collect a few rocks and whack a few golf balls and then just come home? The aliens wouldn’t want us to develop a space-faring culture, so they sabotaged it! Their only reason for the Apollo Program was that from it we would develop microcomputers, transistor radios, Teflon, and other things with which to beat the Soviets into economic submission.

And so we have the alien’s grand plan: advanced computer and space technology which will overwhelm our primitive, greedy society. With the resulting massive economic uplift from all that and the derivative technologies, and the subsequent termination of the bipolar nuclear rivalry, Earth would be spared a nuclear war so that when they land, the planet could be livable for them. 

But still, how do they get rid of the humans living there? Well, also drawing from their history, they knew that if a culture develops a better means to distribute information and knowledge, along with improved methods for their people to assimilate and interpret that knowledge, a golden age of freedom, peace, love, and understanding will result. But they couldn’t have that! So after one side defeated the other side in a peaceful Cold War/Economic rivalry, they would get someone to open the Internet up to the world at large while at the same time sabotaging any substantive educational reform so that human society would self-destruct. Incapable of dealing with the information overload, people will turn on each other, technological society will collapse, civilization will revert to barbarism, people who depend on “modern conveniences” will be unable to develop useful living skills and die off, and the rest would just kill each other in blame games, sport or just rage and vengeance. There may be a few people left living in rural, primitive areas on all continents, but they will prove to be no opposition when the aliens arrive. When they finally come and colonize the Earth, whatever human survivors are left will be pushed aside and die off, much like the Cro-Magnon pushed aside and out-competed the Neanderthals in Europe to extinction.

This plan is a slow, decades-long process because it’ll take decades for them to travel here. They’re patient. But they’ll be arriving within a decade or two - if that! You’ll see!

(Um, you were gonna say something about Jesus? And Advent? Oh, yeah…) 

UFOs have been in the news a lot recently. So much so that many people think that we are being ‘groomed’ to accept the reality of alien existence. I don’t think so. It’s all a conspiracy to distract us from the futility of modern existence. A false hope that perhaps these aliens will ‘make things better’ with their advanced wisdom and technology. And when no aliens turn up, we’ll be disappointed and resignedly accept our fate dictated to us by the elites. Add to that the rising trends toward militant atheism and its consequential theophobia (the irrational fear of God and religion) and you have a concerted attempt to end organized religion because once ‘aliens’ are debunked and disproven, they’ll work on God. 

God is omniscient and omnipotent. He either created aliens or He didn’t. If aliens were ever going to be a part of human history, especially in a manner that impacts our salvific history, I think there’d be something in Scripture about it. Or, at least, in approved prophecies and apparitions. (Unless aliens do exist and possess knowledge of Trinitarian Divine Revelation and accept it as True, this would be independent confirmation of Judeo-Christian revelation. Therefore, no real impact on our salvation history and so no point for God to bring it up.) But there isn’t anything; at not as far as I can see. 

So, when the rest of the world begins to panic about aliens and UFOs, and when they don’t appear, the elites start to deconstruct religious belief, fear not. Just go about your business and prepare the Way of the Lord. He will come, although some consider it ‘delayed.’ He is not bound by Time and He will come when all things are fulfilled; and when this is, no one knows the day, the time, or the hour.