If you feel that "we are living through a time of unprecedented and troubling change," recall that so did folks in 2004 (see clipping), and verily so did folks in every year of recorded history.  As the archives of old newspapers, magazines, and books make perfectly clear, humanity is always at a crossroads, and it is always the "end of the world."  We might actually find comfort in that, and in the Buddhist conception that past-present-future is all of a piece.  Clipping from Suddenly They Heard Footsteps by Dan Yashinsky, 2004.