Nice to know ...

... I'm not the only one to have noticed this: The End of the World As They Know It.

I am not a baby boomer myself, and I am certainly not inclined to the apocalyptic. Perhaps that explains why I find this interesting:

I don’t think our mood is only a consequence of 9/11 (and the grim Middle East), or climate-change science, or Christians’ displaced fear of science and social change. It’s also a function of the baby-boomers’ becoming elderly. For half a century, they have dominated the culture, and now, as they enter the glide path to death, I think their generational solipsism unconsciously extrapolates approaching personal doom: When I go, everything goes with me, my end will be the end.

Van Wyck Brooks, in his autobiography, describes his psychotic breakdown in precisely these terms: When he died, the world would die as well. This, of course, is the ego run amok.

D.H. Lawrence's last book, written while he was dying, was called Apocalypse. Here is the conclusion: Start with the sun