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pjthompsonI came across this very interesting article on the whole "2012 is the end of the world" craze. Real Mayan descendants are saying that it's a gross misinterpretation of what their ancestors' calendars meant. Mostly by Western guru-wannabes and Hollywood. And, one might add, the History Channel which seems to thrive on this kind of programming. It brings in killer ratings, after all.
Western minds seem to crave apocalypse and end of the world scenarios. We buy into them with much more alacrity, it seems to me, than people in other parts of the world. Maybe it's that whole Judeo-Christian thing. I don't know. Once one doomsday is successfully laid to rest (Y2K, anyone?) some yahoo somewhere cooks up another one in order to make money or make a guru reputation—or just because some people like being scared, or scaring other people.
It's wicky wacky, it is.
One of the most illuminating books I ever read was The Pursuit of the Millennium: Revolutionary Millenarians and Mystical Anarchists of the Middle Ages by Norman Cohn. Although a work about the history of the various end-of-the-world crazes that swept through Europe in the Middle Ages, the book traced these crazes down to our own times. The roots of many a current lunatic theory (including Nazism) can be traced back to these times.
I read the book in the nineties and because of that, every apocalyptic scenario I've heard since has seemed deeply suspect to me. Once your eyes are opened to the abiding love of cataclysmic destruction embedded in the Western psyche, it's hard to take any of these predictions seriously.
Oh yes, the world as we know it will definitely end, and some of it is completely out of our individual control. If we humans manage not to blow it up, some rogue asteroid will take it out, or the sun—many millions of years from now—will sputter out like a torch bereft of oxygen.
Or, more simply, more probably—at least in the short term—history and progress might sweep away what we've known and make it obsolete as we march forward to our new phase of existence. Or regress into some new Dark Age. But that choice is entirely up to us. And ceasing to believe in silly prophesies is one way of keeping the Dark Age away.
Western minds seem to crave apocalypse and end of the world scenarios. We buy into them with much more alacrity, it seems to me, than people in other parts of the world. Maybe it's that whole Judeo-Christian thing. I don't know. Once one doomsday is successfully laid to rest (Y2K, anyone?) some yahoo somewhere cooks up another one in order to make money or make a guru reputation—or just because some people like being scared, or scaring other people.
It's wicky wacky, it is.
One of the most illuminating books I ever read was The Pursuit of the Millennium: Revolutionary Millenarians and Mystical Anarchists of the Middle Ages by Norman Cohn. Although a work about the history of the various end-of-the-world crazes that swept through Europe in the Middle Ages, the book traced these crazes down to our own times. The roots of many a current lunatic theory (including Nazism) can be traced back to these times.
I read the book in the nineties and because of that, every apocalyptic scenario I've heard since has seemed deeply suspect to me. Once your eyes are opened to the abiding love of cataclysmic destruction embedded in the Western psyche, it's hard to take any of these predictions seriously.
Oh yes, the world as we know it will definitely end, and some of it is completely out of our individual control. If we humans manage not to blow it up, some rogue asteroid will take it out, or the sun—many millions of years from now—will sputter out like a torch bereft of oxygen.
Or, more simply, more probably—at least in the short term—history and progress might sweep away what we've known and make it obsolete as we march forward to our new phase of existence. Or regress into some new Dark Age. But that choice is entirely up to us. And ceasing to believe in silly prophesies is one way of keeping the Dark Age away.
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Date: 2009-10-16 07:57 pm (UTC)I guess we can't expect there not to be a fascination with the end of the world when the major western religion pretty much fetishizes it with the return of Christ.
Darren Dauulton, the former Phillies catcher, is hard-core into the 2012 thing.
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Date: 2009-10-16 10:04 pm (UTC)Darren Dauulton, the former Phillies catcher, is hard-core into the 2012 thing.
Well, that explains why they're such a HATEFUL team. :-)