This is just the first article about it that came up in google: http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/06/30/doomsdaycollider.ap/index.html
If you don't want to read it, basically some people fear that this new atom smasher made in Switzerland and France might destroy the world. They believe that by smashing the atoms at this high of a power, tiny black holes will be created and will destroy the planet, Armageddon! Destruction! the END OF EXISTANCE!
While leading physicist Stephen Hawkings (a venerable genius if there ever was one) says that even if this would happen, they would still dissipate, some people who, i suppose, consider themselves more learned on the subject than him, claim that the world will end.
My question is this: So what?
Understand that this is not me being 'emo' or depressing or something along those lines. I'd like to believe i am simply approaching the idea of Armageddon from a purely logical standpoint.
If the world 'ends' and we all really do get sucked into an ever increasing vortex which consumes all matter, why does it matter? My biggest fear of dieing personally is that I will not have left any great legacy, that no one will remember me. If no ones around then why does it matter? The end of the world would in reality mean very little to the world as we know it. Simply put, because there would be no world as we know it. People sometimes accept death towards the end of their lives because they know their time here is spent. There will be no here for us not to be spending time in and so there is little to fear.
I think of it this way
We fear death because life is an earthly thing. Our attachment to this world is founded in the experiences we have while on the planet, the things we own in the planet, and the people we know on the planet. The contingency is the planet. remove the planet from the equation and the other things present no longer exist and can no longer cause attachment.
Perhaps i am reading too much Buddhist literature but if the prerequisite of an assumed existing object is removed, is it not true that the object no longer can be assumed to exist?
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The end of the world may not seem a big deal because your right, we'd all be gone so no one would there be to care.
But obviously, no one wants this to happen. Even though there would be no one around to care thats probably the focal point of peoples fear. Its death. And even if people wont have to care about a legacy having been left for them its the thought of an end to people they love and their existance.
I know you know this but thats just my thought!
Its more of the thought of the end of the world rather than the actual happening that upsets people.
Your idea is logical, and i agree with you to some extent.
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