Armageddon is just another meme. The end of the world sells gold-clad coins, nutritional panaceas, web site traffic, and probably shampoo and body spray. But in our consumer bubbles, we may no longer have the capacity for distinguishing between fake and real dangers. It is the premise of this book that very real threats to a decent way of life even for the entitled first world, and the survival of everyone else, including a vast amount of animals and plants, exist, and are being minimized and trivialized by a system that has been exploiting us for centuries. Those socioeconomic and political depredations, whatever new sexy forms they take, are helping to destroy us just as much as are the environmental disasters they seek to exploit and cover up. But this is one area where personal involvement can make a difference, if only psychologically. In old-style terms, maybe you can even save your soul, in a world that tells you you have no soul, all the better to wipe out that which might give us our souls: the natural world, the only source for whatever gods may be.