CIVILIZATION AND SOCIAL ISSUES

Does Hinduism Foresee a Great Global Catastrophe?

Many groups, including not only Christian fundamentalists but New Age thinkers, are predicting great and sudden global calamities like massive earthquakes, the sinking of continents, great new plagues, nuclear war, and so on, generally scheduled to occur during the next few years around the turn of the century. Some Hindus have similar ideas but usually not to the same extent.

Unfortunately even without unprecedented Earth changes normal global fluctuations - including the kinds of earthquakes, floods and climate changes which occur regularly every few centuries - may be strong enough to cause severe problems. Today there are more people all over the world, including in marginal regions like flood plains and deserts, and a more precarious centralized economy making us more vulnerable to such changes.

 Yet beyond these regular fluctuations additional changes brought about by pollution and by our interference with our environment must have their effect. This means that certain shocks may occur globally for the world in the next decade or two, though this will likely be far short of the more dramatic predictions.

Such a period of shock, however, will not bring about the magical destruction of our enemies or usher the fortunate survivors immediately into a new golden or spiritual age. It will not happen overnight but last for a number of years. It will serve to force us to look at what we have been doing as a species, to face our karma, and get to work cleaning up the mess we have created through our own ignorance, greed, intolerance and selfishness.

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