Tuesday, October 13, 2009

2012: End of the World?

"It's getting dark here, I can see the sky fade into darkness"
"I see that. I've heard bad things on the news this morning, my fear's turning into a reality! Lets get to an open ground before the roof comes down!"
"What if the ground beneath collapses? where'll we run? There is no escape!"
"Well at least we'll have a last look at our monument before its gone forever, I don't know what'll happen next but no one can steal this moment from us"
"God forgive us!"




The above conversation though imaginary for now, could well happen in the future if the speculation surrounding the events predicted to happen in the year 2012 were to be true. The very thought of it affrights many people.
Haven't heard of it? Let me introduce it to you as briefly as I can.

"The 2012 phenomenon is a present day cultural meme proposing that cataclysmic or transformative events will occur in the year 2012. The forecast is based primarily on what is claimed to be the end-date of the Mesoamerican Long Count calendar..." is how the article on the 2012 phenomenon begins in Wikipedia. Putting it across a layman's perception: The world we live in today has been predicted to end in the year 2012. The best part is yet to come. They even have the time and date! 17:41 hrs, December 21st, 2012 to be precise, so they say.
The protagonists in this whole issue being the Mayans, members of a primitive Mesoamerican civilization, last lived about 2000 years ago. The Mayan calendar prophetizes on the apocalypse due in the year 2012. You can get tons of information about this on the web, but regardless of the source or the prediction what matters is the impact it has on our modern day civilization. I refer to the term 'modern' because this is not the first time in human history that a prediction on doomsday has been made. There are numerous accounts of predictions and prophecies throughout history , evidentially speaking, none of them have come true if not for coincidence. Future predictions: Tactics used by the bureaucrats to keep the society under control, worked pretty well in those days where people lived in a world which they did not fully understand. It was just 500 years ago that people realised that the world was not flat! I am, by no means, criticizing our ancestors but sympathizing on them as the so called 'prognosticators' use to pull of thaumaturgies to control the society in which they lived. But today, the situation is different. We have advanced both socially and scientifically. Our reactions have become quite mature, if not fully. Just recently, back in 1999 there was a prediction about the end of the world set to happen on the 1st of January, 2000. Its 2009 already and yet the world lives in full bloom. I bet you would have heard the Y2K problem or the millennium bug which was feared to crash computers around the world. Our reaction to these problems were a bit panicky in the beginning and yet we overcame our dreads in the end.
World renowned physicist Dr. Michio Kaku points out “Yes, this 2012 nonsense is, indeed, nonsense.” He says that if you look at the Mayan calendar, which is where this 2012 business originates, it runs in cycles. It just so happens that December 21, 2012 is the end of one such cycle, but that another cycle begins the very next day.
Stupidity is in the air. One insane mind has to hit the panic button and the rest is natural. People go crazy over things without investigation. To fuel the current distress, next month Hollywood's "2012" opens in cinemas, featuring earthquakes, meteor showers and a tsunami dumping an aircraft carrier on the White House. In fact, I, being a Movie Buff, am very much looking forward to watch the movie as soon as it gets released, but only for the entertainment's sake and nothing else. I watched the trailer of the movie '2012' the other day and also want you to watch it.



I am sure the movie is going to excel at the box-office after all the non-sponsored publicity it has got from the media. This is a mega entertainer which has captured the curiosity of the masses. The movie 2012 is terrible in a way that it has caused a stir across the world, and we’d all be better off if it didn’t exist. What we should also acknowledge is that, no, the year 2012 will not, in and of itself, mean the death of mankind. Maybe we’ll blow ourselves up before then considering the current constant military exigencies, but 2012 isn’t some magical year that you should all be afraid of.
Just step out of your house, open your eyes wide and look at what we've done to our full-of-life lonely planet. The pollution and the misuse of resources have grown to such an extent, we're in for a big unpleasant surprise in the near future. Today, as we steadily pollute the land, sky and waters around us, we damage this planet. The sure 'slow kill' of most pollutants often goes unnoticed, unlike an oil tanker disaster where the destruction of coastal and marine life can be photographed for the World's front pages. When a calamity strikes, it strikes without warning. Are we prepared for it? The answer's a big NO! All we know is how to panic, we are experts in that. This post alone cannot move the minds of people into identifying the real problems and taking the right steps to solve them, but helps me in self-inspiration and to satiate myself.



I am an optimist on this 2012 issue. Much of optimism is expected from the people too. The bottom line is whether you are an optimist and view a partly filled glass of water as half full, or a pessimist seeing only a half empty glass of water, you always want your water to be CLEAN! Only the future that we're going to step into, can tell the real story on 2012.

Pessimist:"Everything that has a beginning has an End"
Optimist: "End is at the beginning of something"

There's an old saying that 'optimists tend to make things happen whilst pessimists tend to allow things to happen'.



Which one of the above two you are going to play a part of, is up for only you to decide.

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