Future Shock: The 9/11 anniversary rolls by like a drowning polar bear

For a century that began with such promise

… This isn’t a rhetorical question, but a query about the planet’s future in a world dominated by an all-powerful species with a collective death wish. It seems to me that human beings, of all religions, races, creeds and economic systems, have a longing for the apocalypse or some sort of end time when the wicked are punished and the good are rewarded.