Year 2012: End of the World

If you’re wondering why the “n” in Mayan is in parenthesis in the title, it’s because it should in fact be Maya, but media more typically uses the popular, but incorrect, “Mayan.” This is a relatively small mix up compared to all of the excitement about a supposed “Mayan Prophecy” for world shaking events of some kind in December of 2012. There’s debate as to which exact day it supposedly occurs on, but the two most common interpretations are the 21^st and 23^rd.

There are some good reasons for the discrepancy of when the Maya(n) calendar supposedly ends that have to do with determining where it starts. While the Mayan calendar is very good at measuring days, the start point, or day one, of the calendar is not universally agreed upon. This is why you have disagreements on where it ends, they purport that it has a specific number of days (1,872,000, as the end is supposedly the “end” of our current period, the 13th b’ak’tun.) so depending on which exact start date they choose, they get a slight different end date. By and large we have managed to get a relatively accurate correspondence with our modern calendar thanks to historical documents during Europe’s conquest of the America’s.

The thing is, the calendar does not actually end with the 13^th ba’k’tun. Specifically, the Temple of Inscriptions in Palneque contains references to a date that would correspond with October of 4772. The Mayans believed there was a cycle that predated the current one they lived in(and we’re living in it too). It is faulty reasoning at best, and crass arrogance and disrespect at worse, to suppose they would not expect there to be another one. In short, while a cycle of the long count Maya calendar is 13 b’ak’tuns, which is ending in Dec of 2012, that does not mean the world ends with the cycle. Quite the contrary, it is a milestone achievement.

The argument that the end of the world will occur when the Mayan calendar’s current cycle does is the equivalent of seeing a 2009-2010 calendar and assuming that the whole world is going to end on Dec 31^st, 2010. Most people would quickly point out the absurdity of that. We make calendars annually. The calendar ending does not mean the world does. The fact that there are far fewer dates recorded by the Maya for the next cycle compared to our own is simply a question of distance. You would be hard pressed to find a publisher making calendars for the year 2100, or even 2020, at this point, but we could easily calculate a future date with our calendar system. If one was to set a long term goal or perhaps an elaborate fantasy in a far flung future, they could do so simply. Nobody can see the future, but we can recognize and predict patterns fairly well as a species. Considering that people have been “foretelling the End of the World” since man discovered fire for some reason or another, and they have all been wrong, there is no justification in believing the hype that claims this impressive feat of time keeping has any kind of life and death significance. No, things that have life and death significance are for more subtle, widespread, and all too common.

Doomsday prophecies are nothing new. Neither is a widespread desire to believe them. But in the end, they’re meaningless. The thing that most people fail to realize about “prophecy” is that it is ultimately open to interpretation. If an individual wants to believe a prophecy is true, whether as reinforcement for their religious world view, because they’re superstitious, or simply because the idea of a Universe in which they might actually be accountable for their actions is truly terrifying, it is a relatively simple matter to interpret specific lines as being relevant or in reference to actual historical events. The fact that the link between the event and the prophecy exists only in their mind is all too easy for them to dismiss.

Nostradamus is famous, or infamous, for a plethora of prophecies he wrote in his life time. He has been credited with predicting World War 2, the Atomic Bomb, and the 9/11 terrorist attacks of 2001, and more, but the truth is none of these things are actually explicitly expressed in his own words. Rather, he uses vague poetic images which people hundreds of years later have decided allude to events that transpired between the time of  Nostradamus and their present time. This is like seeing a television with no signal, cluttered with snow, then suddenly seeing the image of a sailboat after somebody else tells you it is there.  It is all to easy to fit the random elements into a pattern when you have a pattern you want or expect to see.

This same process holds true with “biblical prophecy.” Most “biblical prophecy” as espoused by the “Rapture Ready” is a crude hack job of biblical texts that has as much reason and consistency as William S Burrough’s “cut up” technique of writing. That is to say, they’ll take a few lines from one book, a few lines from another, toss them in a blender, set it to puree, and then pour out the sauce and go “literal interpretation of the ineffable word of God” despite the fact that for it to be the “literal interpretation of the ineffable word of God” it would a) have to be true for the present time, which would b) make it utterly meaningless and insensible for the 2000 some odd year history of Christianity. I have a hard time seeing how something “ineffable” can be right for the last 20 years, and wrong for the 2000 years proceeding it. That seems like a pretty huge and glaring error.

At the end of the day, the value of prophecy to those that believe in it is the concept that things are preordained. That they are not accountable, or for that matter, even capable of affecting the world in which they live or it’s future. It is in short a “bury your head in the sand” card. If everything has already been foretold, why make an effort to change it? This is why prophecy, despite being utterly bogus, is all too dangerous. If people at large do not make an effort to create positive change, to push for progressive reform that safeguards the environment while elevating the living conditions of human beings, then nothing will change. The status quo is not our friend. While what we know may be comfortable, it is anything but safe.

In his book The Orion Prophecy, Patrick Geryl, sometimes called “Mr 2012″ claims to understand secret information about the process of geomagnetic reversal. Essentialy Mr Geryl asserts that bombardment by the sun will lead to an instant change in the polarization of the magnetic field, thus causing apocalyptic havoc on the planet. While it is true that the magnetic field reverses, the tidal waves and earthquakes he insists will coincide with the event are fantastic in nature. The truth is that the Earth’s magnetic field has reversed dozens of times, including several times in humanity’s past.

Not only does he seem to be anticipating earthquakes and tidal waves along with the magnetic reversal, he asserts that entire continents will shift hundreds of kilometers almost instantly. If any of this is sounding like science fiction, or a recent Roland Emmerich Hollywood Blockbuster, I would not be surprised. The hyperbole used in his text is not uncommon, there are any number of gurus willing to claim that they have “secret insight” of “esoteric knowledge” in the name of turning a profit. The problem arises that when what should be entertainment at the least, and theory at the most, is espoused as irrefutable truth is the very real panic and fear that it can instill in people who do not have a background in geology, physics, or history.

That being said, if you do want to take a brief walk through crazy town to see first hand what profiteering hysteria looks like, you can find The Orion Prophecy by Mr Geryl on Amazon.

More than one 2012 theory about the end of the world will make reference to a planetary or galactic alignment. To people unfamiliar with astronomy, these ideas might sound like credible things to worry about. However, these claims are closer to the kind you would expect from astrology, than astronomy. So is there anything behind this horoscope of calamity that merits real concern?

What exactly is supposed to happen when the planets align? Well, that depends on who you ask. Some people say that part of that alignment will be the sudden collision of Planet X with Earth. Others seem to think that such an alignment might result in unusual forces of gravity that could result in either, a) the crust of the planet suddenly shifting all at once, or b) the Sun its self could become unstable and “fall out of place or rupture.”

What will really happen when the “planets align” on Dec 21, 2012? Nothing. Nothing at all. The truth of the matter is that the planets of our solar system will not be in any kind of “alignment” at that time. The alignment of Earth, the Sun, and the “Galactic Center?” Happens twice annually. That means it will have happened not once but at least 12 times between Patrick Geryl’s first warnings about 2012 and the actual date “something” is supposed to happen.

Have no doubt, we live in a dangerous world with real problems, overpopulation, energy and water scarcity, these things are both dangerous and real. This nonsense about the alignment of the planets is ultimately a distraction from real problems, or even worse, a blatant and cynical attempt to profit from the fear and ignorance of others.

The Morehead Planetarium does a pretty good job of debunking this idea, so I will leave you with a pair of their videos.