We'd best mark apocalyptic predictions for 2012 in pencil
Doomsday prophecies a centuries-old obsession
By Scott McKeen, Edmonton Journal December 31, 2009 10:31 AM
Scott McKeen
Photograph by: Supplied, Edmonton Journal
The world did not end as the clock ticked ominously past midnight and into the wee hours of January 1, 2000.
Computers and their networks did not crash. Satellites did not fall from the sky. Power grids did not wink out. We were not thrust into a dark, cold and medieval existence.
Humanity carried on as usual after Y2K, happily reproducing, polluting and pillaging land and sea.
But human beings, it seems, can't shake a deep feeling of impending doom, even in happy times.
We survived Y2K. Now we've got the next curtain call for civilization -- December 21, 2012. That's right, citizens, there are less than 1,100 shopping days until the end of days.
Only people living in a bunker since late 1999 are unaware of 2012. The rest of us are chatting it up like there's no tomorrow.
The ancient Mayans, we now know, were adept at making calendars. The really big Mayan calendar ends ominously on the winter solstice, 2012.
But don't blame this all on the Mayans. Other 2012 prophecies were gleaned from the I-Ching, Nostradamus, scripture and ancient Sumerians texts. Other doomsayers found evidence in astrology and junk science.
The year 2012, according to some, will mark the dawning of the Age of Aquarius. Or the Earth will line up with the centre of the Milky Way, enter the galaxy's Dark Rift, or be consumed by a radiation storm.
The results will be nasty. Solar flares will char the planet. The earth's rotation will suddenly reverse, tossing continents into each other.
Or Planet Nibiru will crash into the Earth, causing our immediate extinction.
But before you pull out your RRSPs, let's put this in a bit of perspective. Doomsday prophecies predate prostitution and remain almost as popular.
After the Mayans and Sumerians came early Christians, who thought Jesus was about to return and do some much-needed housecleaning. In a similar spirit, Islam talks of the return of the 12th Imam.
The Christian notion of rapture inspired too many lapsed doomsday prophecies to count. Jehovah's Witnesses are only one of a number of sects who now know to mark the last day on Earth in pencil.
The famous skeptic James Randi put together a list of 44 different end-of-days predictions. And his list doesn't include small doomsday sects and cults around the globe.
This historic and international preoccupation with doomsday, to my mind, raises more curiosity than alarm.
What is it with humans and their apocalyptic obsession?
One theory is that it's hardwired into us. That our survival instinct expresses itself in a craving for land and like-minded neighbours who won't steal our food or women.
The apocalypse, then, fulfils a deep-seated wish for God or nature to clear the world of riff-raff so we, the chosen, can live in peace and prosperity.
Or is it more a case of generational egocentrism? That we see ourselves as living in unique times. And that we can't imagine a better world ahead. At least not one without us.
I suppose Armageddon fears even help to reduce our biggest worry, of death. If we all die together, well, that doesn't seem quite so bad.
University of Alberta theologian and philosopher David Goa says apocalypticism rears its head during troubled times.
"I'm inclined to think it's related to a profound sense of impotence."
The sense of powerlessness is caused, says Goa, by a feeling that history is rolling over you and it's too big and too complex to engage with or solve.
In Goa's childhood, doomsday fears then focused on communism, the Cold War and nuclear annihilation.
Today its climate change, collapse of global markets, pandemics and exponential advances in computer, military, biological and nano technologies.
In other words, we've got enough tangible threats to get engaged with before worrying about junk science and false prophecies.
I'm betting that humankind will continue its struggle toward a better world after December 21, 2012.
Mind you, when the clock strikes midnight on December 31, 2012, all bets are off.
The next year might be a bit unlucky.
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