In the Saturday May 31, 2008 edition of The Guardian, Ian McEwan has an interesting study of historic and modern apocalyptic movements [The Day Of Judgment]. Despite consistent failure by stodgy theologians and crazy cult leaders alike to accurately predict the end of civilization, new prophets and new warnings of our collective demise appear with an almost tedious regularity. McEwan’s piece examines the rise of modern fundamentalist doomsaying, and places it in context as only the latest stanza in a centuries-old epic poem of cultural solipsism and utterly useless prophecy.

We sometimes think of doomsday cults as a modern phenomenon, but they’re really just notes in the margins of an age-old script. A time of political or social turmoil, a charismatic leader, a vision of impending awfulness, and a bunch of disaffected followers so caught up in the ruckus that they do things the rest of us think of as unfathomably crazy. The biggest difference these days is that they’ve replaced slaughtering Jews with holing up in compounds, oiling their vast collections of firearms, and having sex with underage girls.

All of that was really an excuse to point out McEwan’s conclusion, which sensibly notes that salvation, for the faithful and the faithless alike, is going to come (if at all) from the same source. Specifically, from us.

The believers should know in their hearts by now that, even if they are right and there actually is a benign and watchful personal God, he is, as all the daily tragedies, all the dead children attest, a reluctant intervener. The rest of us, in the absence of any evidence to the contrary, know that it is highly improbable that there is anyone up there at all. Either way, in this case it hardly matters who is wrong - there will be no one to save us but ourselves.

Lift your head, unfold your hands and get of your knees. All of that stuff is about as useful as male nipples. Despite an untold multitude of fervent prayers, the levies collapsed in New Orleans, the Rwandan Hutus murdered almost a million Tutsis, and Fox cancelled Firefly. Changing things requires passion, commitment and (above all) hard work. Flinging urgent missives into the sky will not make one jot of difference.

Unless you’re trying to bring about your personal vision of the apocalypse. In that case, keep on praying.

Friend (and fellow slogger through law school) Glomar has canceled her hypothetical subscription to the New Yorker over their recent cover. They’re currently trying to hash out the difference between satire and ham-handed racism at her Livejournal.