All kidding aside, is anyone else as surprised as I am by the sheer number of doomsdayers who are actually preparing for the end of the world this Friday? It's depressing in the modern age with all of the access to instant information that so many still govern themselves as if they are brainless drones being preached to by some self-proclaimed backwoods prophet.
I'm certainly no expert on Mesoamerican culture, but it would seem that the Mayans adopted a 5125-year-long calendar that terminated in 2012. So while they never explicitly predicted the end of the world, the fact that their calendar cycle ends this year allowed the feeble minded to extrapolate and fill in the blanks. Who knows, maybe the Mayans simply discovered peyote or coca paste and lost all interest in chronology.
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| Undoubtedly written in chalk so it can be conveniently edited? |
You'd be forgiven if you thought that this was nothing more than a harmless, humorous diversion, but runs on generators, batteries, and bottled water last week would seem to indicate otherwise. Sometimes I wonder if there's really and truly any hope for mankind when polls indicate that 1 in 7 people firmly believe that the world will end in their lifetimes.
Of course, the real danger on December 21st won't be from any cataclysm, but from some psycho who's convinced it's coming and is bent on taking out a few people (or a few buildings) for some just reason dreamt up during some drug fuelled haze.
The world won't end on Friday. Those who thought that it would will then go on record to say that the Mayans' math was off (rounding error?) and propose a new date for the apocalypse. And if you find yourself in that camp, might I suggest that I think your world may have already come to an end?
If you don't want to start your Christmas shopping, you'll need a better excuse.
