Eschatology

Eschatology is the study of last things: the direction of civilization, and the events that count as the end. Eschatology also has this question: is the end set, or do we choose it? The eschatology of the past says that an outside power gives the end: judgment, collapse, or salvation. That end comes from outside the world, at a time that no one controls. The coherent view inverts this. No one receives the end. We build the end. The condition of civilization at the time when one body fails depends on free individuals. It depends on their trades, their lessons, and their repairs before that time. In voluntary cooperation, scarcity decreases, knowledge grows, and the systems that keep a person alive become better each year. Death stops as the set end of a life. Death becomes a failure mode of repair: a problem with a technical address, not a sentence that a power gives. Good News is the eschatology of free persons. The end that civilization builds is indefinite life for all who help to build it. The question changes from "what happens after we die?" to "how long before we no longer have to?" The flux can hold minds from times before ours. We must examine that possibility. We must not wait for it as a judgment. The Way of Happiness requires no enforcer.