Do you think its due to lack of worry? Boredom? There is enough to worry ('problems'), daily survival was not easy in past either.

I think it is used as abstraction layer to develop (albeit false) certainty, and to make the 'unfathomable' somewhat 'understandable'. Ie. we don't know what the future holds for us versus the world will end in 2012. The latter creates certainty, and allows one to build a live upon with certainty. This is also why, when challenged, a person of a cult (= religion) will vigorously defend their religion instead of listening to arguments. If only one aspect of their religion may be wrong, the entire basis of their religion (e.g. 'God's word is truth') becomes shaky hence a fundamental aspect of their life upon which that person built is also suddenly challenged, and the emotional shock that'd bring is by all means evaded.

The other reason is control of the masses, and destroying competitive cults one way or another. Also useful to hide the roots of your own religion if yours is based upon theirs. One can do that by calling them names such as 'witch', 'satanist', 'pagan', 'heathen' even though some of these words have originally an other meaning they now bear a different, negative connotation. Same for something as Swastika. Meanwhile, start the indoctrination at parental and school level. Brainwash early and you have them for life, and a parent would not want an other-religion for their child, so give them your own instead.

My crystal ball tells me lots of people with authority in their specific hierarchy will say 'I told you 2012 was BS' after we're in the year 2013.

Now integration of that with Rapier would be awesome does not include the death of 32-bit computing though.