What Happens Next?

It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine.
That's not completely true. I'm very concerned about the ongoing strife in the middle east, the recovery of the Gulf Coast region, the devastation of the earthquake in India and Pakistan, our continued inability to manage our economy and our ecology, the struggle for all people to be treated like all people want people to be treated, popular culture swallowing all other culture, and public education. There is probably a longer list, but these are the things that show up as potential projects for the folks on the planet to work on for the next few weeks until a new set of catastrophes come along.
Now, back to the end of the world thing: I think that Nostradamus (and the rest of his ilk) may have been completely correct any number of times. The end of the world is, and has been, nigh for some time now. Check out the havoc wreaked on the Earth over the past eight or nine months. Doesn't it conjure up a phrase like "Wrath of God" in your mind? Certain scholars have suggested that Nostradamus predicted three "Anti-Christs" would come to power and lead their people through tyrannical reigns to eventual ruin. The fun part comes when you try to time the list out so that you can pick the tyrant of the moment as number three. Some would say that Napoleon and Hitler were the first two, with the third to be named as the mood strikes. There was a big rush to paint Osama bin Laden as the third, then Saddam Hussein. Nostradamus scholars almost never suggest that one of these bad guys might come from "the New World." How convenient.
Still, I can't help wondering if maybe we humans didn't get just a little too self-sufficient for our own good. The Black Plague didn't get us all. AIDS continues to consume lives at an alarming rate, but not all of us. Earthquakes, fires, wars, still didn't manage to take us all out. Not yet, anyway. That whole threat of nuclear annihilation? We seemed to have dodged that warhead, too. Maybe God just never expected us to be so damn reasonable - and scared.
And resilient. How many times can San Francisco get knocked down before we all just walk away in disgust. What kind of virulent strain of super-flu has to come along before the folks down at the CDC just throw up their hands and say, "We've got no idea. I guess you might as well off yourself before this one gets you." World Wars stand at two, with the "good guys" prevailing in each. Super-intelligent apes have not yet taken over and moved to domesticate humans (more Charlton Heston than Nostradamus). Whatever the disaster, human beings keep bouncing back and adapting to fit the new paradigm. Nice work, God or Darwin or arbitrary randomness - we survive to encounter our next survivable calamity. So I'm hopeful - and coming from me, that means a lot.