Beware of 2012

Still life 03

“The 2012 phenomenon comprises a range of eschatological beliefs that cataclysmic or transformative events will occur on December 21, 2012, which is said to be the end-date of a 5,125-year-long cycle in the Mayan Long Count calendar. Various astronomical alignments and numerological formulae related to this date have been proposed.”  (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_phenomenon)

We’re beginning to see the heating up of fervour—and fear—regarding a new time for an apocalyptic catastrophe for planet earth and its people. We always have to have one, don’t we? Y2K—although not astrologically based—kept the world on tenterhooks for a few years. Christian literalism has always been tempted by the lure of numerology to find predictive meaning in the unexplained co-incidents that are inevitable and can be interpreted a thousand different ways. Similarly, astronomical convergences lend themselves to prophetic interpretations: the exact moment when the moon covers the sun is interpreted as being a more significant moment than others, as are solstices and equinoxes.

To see how we’re being prepared to be afraid from now until December 21, 2012 (winter solstice meets 12/12), click on http://www.greatdreams.com/2012.htm. Here you’ll find the Mayan Calendar theories that form the basis for this new apocalyptic disaster schedule. Here you’ll read how Sweden, Norway, Russia and the George Bush family are preparing to survive the holocaust. Here you’ll see amateur science bend reality to fit fantasy. Why anyone but a fool would want to survive for a month longer than others after the earth has been decimated is not addressed, however.

In my childhood, end-times interpretation was used to frighten me into making what my elders considered to be the right choices . . . "get born again so you don’t get caught out when the rapture happens, which could well be tomorrow." These recent predictions of “the end” don’t seem to have a discernable purpose however, unless it is to get me to spend a lot of money to secure myself and my family by building a bunker and stocking it with a year’s supply of food. We shouldn’t easily dismiss the possibility that end-times predictions astrologically based are economically driven.

The future cannot be predicted, just as the past cannot be erased. Futures can be shaped however, at least in the microcosmic sense, by people who have their wits about them and are focused on the realities around them. End time predictions blunt the application of our potential by telling us, basically, that we live under the cloud of predistination, fatalism and inevitability.

In short, I predict catastrophes aplenty in 2012. But they won’t have anything to do with the cycles of the Mayan calendar, the convergence of the planes of galaxies or the coincidences of dates and numbers. 2012’s catastrophes will be caused—like 2011’s—by the colossal waste of human potential; the splurging of scarce resources in end games that are illusions.