2012: The Doomsday Predictions

Have you heard the talk about 2012? No not the next presidential election in 2012. People keep saying “Oh, the world’s coming to an end in 2012!” How do you know? Then I hear it on the other end “You’re crazy if you believe that, the world isn’t coming to an end in 2012.” Well, I reiterate, how the hell do you know? I prefer facts weighed against each other to make a rational conclusion over people just making random claims. It’s possible that with the earth's environmental changes that many natural disasters will ensue breaking apart the fragile fabric of human civilization once and for all. It’s also possible that we might kill ourselves in a nuclear winter. Moreover, it’s possible that an immense catastrophe is going to happen that includes a frightening portion of the billions of human residents, but not all of us. The human population was almost wiped out by a friendly volcano way before recorded history (obviously a few of us survived). It’s unfathomable really. There’s so much threatening us, who really knows what’s going to happen that year? So in other words, nothing out of the ordinary may happen, or people might panic, inadvertently creating a disaster. The fact is that the Mayan Calendar ends that year… but who cares, right? A bunch of indigenous people predicted what? Who cares they’re dead.

So what’s the big deal? The Mayan Calendar accurately predicted many things like a lunar eclipse thousands of years into the future. Why is “a lunar eclipse” so much easier to believe than predicting a historical event like the first contact between the Mayans and Spanish conquistadors (which the calendar accurately predicted)? People are just as much a part of time and space and our universe as the moon is. The moon is viewed as just an orbiting sphere in the sky and couldn’t possibly have as much significance as human beings. Why is that? Why do we believe that we are so different? It is because we are capable of understanding so much more than a typical organism? Our vanity and belief that we are somehow existing beyond the rules of the universe is insulting to whatever created us. We tend to forget as we lead our mundane and relatively short lives that we are conscious matter moving through space and time at the same rate as other “natural” objects. I put the word “natural” into quotations because most of us see ourselves as beyond nature, smarter than nature and able to overcome anything nature throws at us if given enough time to prepare.

Perhaps these prophets are just geniuses that understand how people progress through time. Visionaries like Merlin the famous wizard from medieval European times stated that “Virgins will step on Virgin soil” centuries before settlers came to Virginia. The Sybil, from Greek times, claimed that a child would be born who would alter the course of history bringing a new light to the world and in her description basically predicted the coming of Christ. So patterns of behavior might be easy to predict if they are general enough. For example, there are plenty of rulers and charismatic leaders who rise to power and change history. With a description vague like that one might as well be talking about Hitler. However, when the Sybil wrote of the rising of Constantine, by name, many years before it happens how do you explain that? Lucky guess?

I don’t like the thought that everything that I’m doing has been predetermined. If that’s so then why even exist? No, I believe in free will and that free will is apparent in our ability to make choices. Depending on what we choose to do affects how things eventually come to be. For example, if Hitler had been a better artist and was accepted into the fine arts institute like he had wanted perhaps so many “inferior” European wouldn’t have been murdered by his hand. However, if it did not happen by Hitler’s hand, then by another. Perhaps Stalin or Mussolini would have overstretched his power, or another German ruler would have tested his authority over his people causing an equivalent holocaust. We’ll never know, but I believe things will result in a particular outcome regardless of whom or how it comes to be.

As Einstein once said, God does not play dice with the universe. In other words, our creator even if that creator is an inanimate object like matter and space, does not just haphazardly through people on the earth and let them run wild. What is meant to be will be. It is easy to believe that a calendar can predict the eclipse of the moon, but people are skeptical to believe that a calendar, prophet, or even a computer can predict what will happen in human history on a particular date. Perhaps prophets have so much accuracy because they understand patterns in human behavior. Looking at this from a psychological perspective, there are many behaviors that psychologists hope to understand. Apart of researching concepts empirically is being able to predict outcomes and therefore you have to be perceptive of patterns that lead towards certain responses. There’s so much error in psychological science which is part of the reason it is not respected on the same caliber as a science like chemistry or physics. Speaking of science, there are meteorologists and physicists that have also claimed that changes in the poles and magnetic field may cause mass natural disasters if it happens suddenly. People like to brush off the words of prophets, but maybe not scientific fact that polar shifts have happened before.

In the last paragraph I mention “computer” along with the Mayan Calendar and prophets like Sybil. Why did I do that? Well, there actually is a computer system that’s been created for the very purposes of future predictions. So much cooler than a Doppler radar system, there’s the Web Bot. This artificially intelligent Bot was originally created to make future predictions for the stock market. This is how it works: it sends little “spiders” out into the World Wide Web and collects little bits of information and builds them up into complex ideas about what will happen. It searches for the “collective unconscious” of the world something from a Carl Young theory (a colleague of Sigmund Freud). It makes sense when you think about. For example, it correctly predicted in June 2001 that an event would occur that would forever change the security of America in the next few months. September 11, 2001 was the infamous day the computer discerned accurately. You could still say, oh whatever, it’s just coincidence. What if isn’t? If the computer legitimately found information about terrorist plans, the lack of finding Osama Bin Laden after the 1993 attack, the fact that the intelligence in the Bush Administration had many holes and several other bits of information then it’s possible that the computer can accurately predict catastrophe. Should we believe it when it tells us an international crisis will ensue in 2012? If it could tell us a way to avoid it, would we even listen? We all know the answer is no.

At this time we could point fingers about why the condition of the universe is in turmoil. When the most unpopular American president of all time leaves office at the end of 2008, people may point their fingers at him. The world was spiraling downward before he took office, and would have grown increasingly bad for those eight years with or without him. For every thousand or so bumbling things that he did and said, he made one good thing like the forming of Freedom Corps. He wasn’t a bad guy, just a bad leader. With this new leadership coming it, there are just too many high expectations and too many horrible things going on in the world for them all to be fixed by one man in charge of one country. The president who serves from the beginning of 2009 until 2012 is expected to improve the economy, insure health, life and justice for all American citizens, find a cure for cancer, end child labor and slavery abroad, cast the world into a four year period of peace starting with the Iraqi war, catapult America into the future by establishing a “Go Green” infrastructure, and still have time to tuck his daughter in at night. Our expectations are too high and there’s just too much at stake. It’s in my opinion that because of our high expectations and need, the next president might come out just as unfavorable as the last. I just mentioned this because I think it’s an interesting coincidence that the next American presidential term ends that fateful year - 2012. What else could possibly go wrong? Remember, people have argued that it wasn’t the “New Deal” that brought us out of the Great Depression, but World War II. And we very well might be headed towards the third.

Taking a step back and looking at what the world has become and what it could be I just don’t think it can get much worst. Hopefully the world will reach the zenith of shittiness in 2012 and we'll have no where to go but up in 2013. In other words, we should look forward to a new beginning? The bible says “But of that day or hour, no one knows” (Mark 13:32). That is, no one knows when the end will come if at all. Humans are adaptive maybe we’ll find a way to keep life as we know it going perpetually. All I know is that many sources that have been surprisingly accurate like the Mayan calendar, I Ching from Chinese history, and even the great Web Bot ends December 21, 2012. I say let it come, let it be. All I really know is that more and more frightening things are occurring like the rising of ocean water from melting polar ice caps, world poverty and hunger, and malicious tyrants, wars and disregard for the value of human life. If some international catastrophe occurs that year and on that date, let it come. I will be chillin’ with the family a few days before Christmas on that fateful winter solstice perhaps watching it snow. I couldn’t imagine anyone else that I would rather spend that time with regardless of what happens.