Oh Mayan

"With the death of Dick Clark this world will never again
see another Rockin' New Year!"

This Friday is December 21, 2012, and for anyone who still celebrates the Mayan New Year, or if you just have an Internet connection, you know that on December 21st the Mayan calendar will click over, ending the current b'ak'tun, which is approximately 394 years, and end the Great Cycle of 13 b'ak'tuns. Now people on the world wide web, Ronald Emmerich, and the people at the History Channel (sigh) have been holding up December 21, 2012 as a day of doom and disaster. It has become a date of much anticipation and fear, when the world is suppose to end, at least according to some people (but not necessarily the Maya).

There has been a lot of hype over this idea and a lot of pseudo-scientists claiming that everything from black holes, to solar activity, to a complete and rapid reversal of the Earth's magnetic sphere will be the culprit of our downfall. According to some beliefs, the Sun will align with the galactic equator of the galaxy and somehow the interaction between the black hole in the center of the Milky Way and our sun will mark the beginning of a cataclysmic event. To back this up, believers often put forth the prophetic powers of the Mayan calendar, claiming that the calendar is as much about prophecy as it is about keeping time. Examples given are the fact that the Maya supposedly predicted not only the arrival of the Spanish in 1519, but the collapse of their own society.

Uh... That's a pretty crappy prediction, because if there was someone in Mayan society who knew that the arrival of Cortes and his men heralded the end of the Maya themselves, why didn't they do something about it? Why wasn't Cortes and his men met with thousands of armed warriors? Instead the Spanish were invited willingly into the palace of Montezuma... and everything kind of went downhill for the Maya after that.

You see the entire "doomsday thing" is all based on a lot of faulty assumptions. First, is that the Long Count Calendar was made by the Maya, when in fact it was probably created by their predecessors, the Olmec. (Like that guy on Legends of the Hidden Temple... Kirk Fogg, I think his name was.) Second, that the turning over of the Mayan Calendar, which marks the end of the 13th b'ak'tun, also marks the end of our current age and the cycle of the world will start again. (sigh) Though the Mayans believed in cyclical time, it was only in the 260 day tzolk'in calendar that such a belief was truly prevalent. The Long Count Calendar is actually not cyclical at all. In fact, the b'ak'tun is not the highest the calendar can go. 20 K'atuns (roughly 20 years) makes a b'ak'tun (394 years), but 20 b'ak'tuns makes a piktun (7,885 years), 20 piktuns makes a kalabtun (157,704 years), 20 kalabtuns makes a k'inchiltun (3,154,071 years), and finally 20 k'inchiltuns makes an alautun (63,081,429 years.) The Maya did not even believe that their calendar was going to end on December 21, 2012.

On December 21, 2012 when you are running for your life
from that 50-foot tidal wave, make sure your are running
in comfort and style. It's what the Maya would have wanted.

This whole 12/21/12 doomsday is a modern interpretation. In the late 1990's Michael D. Coe, anthropologist, author, and real-life Indiana Jones wrote, "There is a suggestion ... that Armageddon would overtake the degenerate peoples of the world and all creation on the final day of the 13th [b'ak'tun]. Thus ... our present universe [would] be annihilated [in December of 2012] when the Great Cycle of the Long Count reaches completion." He only said it was a suggestion. It was one obscure and interesting thought written in a book on archeology that probably only .05% of the population has ever read, yet from that simple statement craziness has ensued. It is true that the Maya see us as living in the Fourth Age of humanity, and that the previous Third Age only lasted 13 b'ak'tuns, (according to their beliefs.) However, that does not mean they believed that this age would end after only one Great Cycle. That would have been like expecting Major League Baseball to collapse after someone beat Babe Ruth's home run record. The Maya fully acknowledge that the previous three cycles were failures and the current one is not. E. Wyllys Andrews V, director of the Tulane University Middle American Research Institute has stated, "The ancient Maya predicted the world would continue – that 7,000 years from now, things would be exactly like this. We keep looking for endings. The Maya were looking for a guarantee that nothing would change. It's an entirely different mindset." So really, even to the Maya, (you know if they had survived the conquistadors and small pox,) December 21, 2012 really would have been nothing more than an excuse to throw the biggest party of all parties. They would have partied like it was 12.9.9.9.9. The world isn't ending, all it means is that we are going to beat the previous record set by the Third Age... Suck it Third Agers... My guess is that it was an age populated by jerk-faced people.

As for the rest of it, Earth is not going become irrevocably irradiated by crossing the galactic equator. (sigh) In fact, we cross the galactic equator twice a year... every year. So on December 21, 2012 (like every Winter and Summer Solstice) the Sun will appear to rise in the center of the Milky Way, (That big cluster of stars on the sky that I can't actually see, because I live near New York City,) but in terms of precision the sun, earth, and galactic center are still not perfectly aligned. In fact, the alignment was more precise on the Winter Solstice of 1998 than it will be in 2012. Also true, is the fact that solar flares and activity will peak in 2012, because the Sun's magnetic field is going through a rapid pole reversal... but that happens every 7 to 10 years or so. It's only coincidence that the peak of solar activity is happening this year. Combine all this with global warming, and the crazy heart-breaking disasters that have taken place over the past few years (like the most recent and tragic loss of life,) and people start to get a little nervous, but it's more than that too.

This was their Christmas card... "Are you my mummy?"

A lot of the problems come from the human need to connect the dots. My own beliefs in God and an intelligent universal design aside, human beings like things that we can make sense out of, including our own existence. In a weird sort of way, believing that we are looking at a predicted end of the world is one of the ways how we try to justify the significance of our own existence. We want to believe that there are forces out there greater than ourselves, even if that means believing in our own demise. We want to see patterns in our world that tell us we are not alone or that in some crazy way everything has a purpose. It is how we make sense of the universe around us, because even more than our own destruction, we are even more frightened by the idea that we may just be insignificant creatures floating on a blue orb in the lonely blackness of space. Yet, even if that is true, why does it mean that we have to subscribe ourselves to the an existences of insignificance?

Human beings are, (now more than ever,) the masters of our universe. We have screwed a lot of things up, but we have the potential to not only correct those problems, but improve the world for the better. I truly believe that every challenge we face can be overcome and that every difficulty can be solved. We just need to start believing that we can do it. After all, if the Maya truly did believe that 2012 would mark the beginning of some new age for mankind, then there is no reason why we can't make it a positive change. Many New Agers believe that this is what will in fact happen on 12/21/12, like suddenly we will all shoot out of out beds and be like "I get it!" Then the world will become eco-friendly, technologically savvy, all the guns will be melted down, all the wars will stop, and herds of puppies will roam the streets offering free hugs to everyone they meet. Personally, I don't for a second believe that this will happen, (mostly because everyone knows hugs are never free... there is always a catch. I mean even puppies have to eat,) but there is no reason why we can't make this kind of world a reality if we try.

If we are to take anything from all this 2012 craziness, maybe it should be a reminder of what's worthwhile. So how about on December 2st, instead of huddling in a bunker or praying for somekind of spirtual reawakening, you get in the morning, hug your kids and your loved ones, appreciate what it truly important in your life, and go out and do something to make your world a better place. If we were all to do that then, maybe in the next "Great Cycle" we coulda ctually see a rise in green technology, the end of global warming, moon colonies and Mars bases, and who knows what else, but I can tell you one thing... It's not going to be magical or automatic. We need to work for it. We can put an end to the strife, the hunger, and the disease of our planet, but the process won't happen in one night like some crazy worldwide Christmas Carol. So, instead of feeling foolish on December 22nd go out and be the change you want to see in this world, because sometimes the best prophecies are the self-fulfilled ones.