The world — she is in shambles. Australia is underwater. Lebanon’s government is no more and Tunisia’s might be headed in the same direction. Haiti is still largely in ruins, even one year after the earthquake that killed more than a quarter of a million people. Pakistan’s floods have been largely glossed over.

Here in America, Hurricane Katrina’s destruction is still visible. Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was shot in the head during an event that ultimately ended with more than a dozen people wounded and six dead. Glock pistol sales have, actually, seen an increase, as more poeple are arming themselves.

Such is the state of the world.

2012 is one year away. North Korea is said to be on the brink of, well, continuing a war that didn’t officially stop. Could the Mayan calendar have predicted this? Unlikely. But still. After being basically inundated with news of the dastardly and true prophesies, it’s become difficult to really assess the shape of humanity.

All this is happening as we Americans battle to see justice served to an Australian under “house arrest” in Britain for reportedly raping or harassing women in Sweden.

That’s not to say Julian Assange isn’t a point of contention. Despite freedom of speech and the press being the two things that allow journalists to be daring and valiant, the story becomes convoluted and murky when secrets become a bargaining chip in a case that could very well have, if it hasn’t already, irreversible international repercussions.

But enough about us, let’s be mindful of other things happening around here. And by here, I mean the earth.

Sudan’s splitting up the country. And voters “might” be being “intimidated” with “bullets” fired from “guns” as it were, despite President Omar al-Bashir’s insistence that he “would be fine” with the country splintering and breaking in half — via referendum. That comes from a country whose civil war left millions of people dead.

Mexican drug cartels are committing mass murders, leaving headless bodies near highways and killing mayors and other provincial governors with guns from U.S. border states. The Rio Grande is running red.

I find it hard to believe that I haven’t seen someone with a “The End is Neigh” sandwich sign draped over them yet.

Aside from that, the problem now isn’t so much of keeping people alive in a medical sense, it’s about having enough space on the planet for all the people who survive, according to the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, a British group. They claim overpopulation proposes a greater threat than climate change, which, in itself is a quandary. That’s climate change, not global warming — I’m not getting my hands dirty in that.

Speaking of the environment, how about that old oil spill in the Gulf? And the countless birds that plummeted from the sky in Arkansas? And the dead fish? And the April eruption of Eyjafjallajokull in Iceland that brought a blanket of ash and darkness to parts of Europe? What happens next? If you haven’t told your firstborn you love them today, it’s highly recommended.

It’s disconcerting to see all of that on paper. The news that defined the last year or two more so than the last decade is a harbinger of something. But what?

The answer is, really, nothing. Humanity is on course to be human.

At any given point, something’s happening. Something bad. But when it all comes to a head, when it’s all measured in a certain span of time, it just looks bad. Hopeless. Apocalyptic.

If we look at it like that, the world’s been ending for as long as we’ve been able to have the thought to begin with.

So, enough with the doom saying, the soothsaying and looking to Nostradamus to see what’s next. Even if he could predict the next misfortune, tragedy or disaster, what good would it do us? And if it’s averted, it’s just another one to enter into the annals of unfulfilled predictions.

So let’s stop crying, let’s stop wailing and blaming and maybe start looking for solutions to all our problems. With the collective intelligence of our race, it’s had to think that there’s anything impossible to solve.

Let’s recognize there’s a way to desalt ocean water to give to thirsty kids. Let’s understand that religions might never be reconciled with one another, but that extremists are called that for a reason. Let’s stop thinking cleavage caused the Haiti earthquake and start thinking about saving us.

Because without a humanity, what would there be left to declare war on?