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Apocalypse shouldn’t be feared

It’s 2010. Actually, it’s the latter half of 2010. That means that we are about two years away — give or take a few months — from the end of the world, as predicted by the Mayan Long Count calendar.

Or are we?

Every generation has had its crazy prophets shouting that the end of the world is near and that we must repent, or something to that effect, at least. This time is absolutely no different. According to executive of the Florida-based Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies Sandra Noble, the end of the world theory about 2012 is a chance for people to cash in on other people’s fears. Obviously — they made an entire movie about it.

People have always feared the end of the world. Before people started seriously thinking about 2012, the Jehovah’s Witnesses claimed that 1914 would mark the end of the world. Pretty much every major religious group has some idea about the end of the world, if not a specific date. It is a human fascination, borderlining on obsession or addiction. From Revelations to Nostradamus, we’ve got a fixation on the apocalypse — and rightly so. It will be the ending of life, the ending of humanity.

But we don’t have to worry about 2012. If the world does end then, it will be highly coincidental. The Mayan Calendar does not simply end on Dec. 21, 2012; it resets. Our calendar resets every Jan. 1, but no one freaks out about that. The Mayans possibly believed that the creation of the world happened at the beginning of their calendar, and the next time we reach that date will be Dec. 21, 2012. This does not mean that the world will end though. It could simply mean the start of a new era, as some would like to believe.

Personally, the world changing at all on this date is not likely, at least not on the scale the various crackpots and proponents of the 2012 theory would have us think. It’s ridiculous to believe the Mayans could accurately predict the end of the world when they couldn’t even save their own empire from collapsing.

Rather, it simply marks the beginning of a new cycle of the calendar, like Jan. 1 marks the beginning of a new cycle on our calendar.

We have a couple ways we can go from here. The first way is to accept completely that the Mayans could predict the end of the world or the start of a new life-altering era. The second way is to deny this and say that they simply calculated out their calendar and used it as they saw fit, and that it would reset every 5,125 years, the next time being Dec. 21, 2012. And the third is that the Mayans simply got tired and figured that setting a calendar many centuries ahead of them was enough; sadly, the empire fell before they could continue to work on it.

As comical as that last option is, the most logical — and likely — option is that the Mayans simply intended for the calendar to reset. And when we reach Dec. 21, 2012, I’m going to raise a toast for another 5,125 years of humanity inhabiting planet Earth.

Ian Everett is a creative writing freshman and may be reached at [email protected].

11 Comments

  • Jehovah's Witnesses Watchtower society false prophets declare end of world in 1874, 1878, 1881, 1910, 1914, 1918, 1925, 1975, and 1984….

    I totally remember Jehovah's Witnesses 1975 I was 18 going on 19 They did say the end was coming because for at least two years I thought when 1975 came Jehovah was going to kill me. It was horrible thinking that God wanted to kill me.

    But I so remember that we were being taught that 1975 was the end, some of the friends quit going to the doctors one family did not go to the dentist and all their kids teeth were rotting. One brother bought new ties and called them is Armageddon tires. Some did quit paying their bills. I remember it all. I thought for sure I would be dead. When 1975 came and went I did not know whether I should be happy or sad as living in my family was so horrible I kind of was hoping that Jehovah would do something.

  • Your comment concerning Jehovah's Witnesses is not accurate. 1914 was not predicted to be the end of the world but rather the end of the Gentile times, something people get mixed up about. It is also when Satan was kicked out of Heaven which is why the Bible tells us "whoa to the people of the earth as the original serpent has been cast down to the vicinity of the earth with great anger as he knows his time is short" 1914 marked the beginning of the last days, not the end of the world. Jehovah's Witnesses have never predicted this as they know that when Jesus was on earth, he told his disciples that even he didn't know when that would be, by saying that "only the Father knows" the time.
    Your comment is hearsay, and is taken from gossip and misinformation.

    • Kevin wrote concerning Jehovah’s Witnesses: “…1914 was not predicted to be the end of the world but rather the end of the Gentile times”

      1884 was originally set by Charles Russell as the end of the Gentile times. 1914 was actually predicted as the start of Armageddon. When Armageddon did not happen in 1914, the date was set one year forward to 1915. Nothing happened again and so after Charles Russell died in 1916, 1914 was set as the start of the gentile times and 1884 dropped altogether. Then the next Watchtower president JF Rutherford predicted the end in 1925 and after that 1941. The end was predicted once more by the Watchtower organization in 1975. Since then the ‘end’ has been imminent for the last 35 years.

  • Circa 1996 the Watchtower society was compelled to make a strained public announcement that: 'we will NO LONGER SET DATES for THE END OF THE WORLD'.

    GOOGLE: Watchtower Jehovah 1914 1925 1975

  • 2012 is a 12 year cyclic peak sunspot plasma eject year which the worst in modern time was during the telegraph era the systems then got fried.
    If this happens again the satellites and many electronics are gone.WORST every power line transformer will be busted and will take two years to replace no jobs no electricity no power at gas station pumps no food refrigeration at supermarkets in North America.This would be apocalyptic indeed and the sunspot cycles happen every 12 years.One little burp from the sun totally fried the crude hardened old fashioned telegraph system a mere 140 years ago.
    So if I predict *this end of the world* every twelve years some time eventually I will get it right on time.
    Like with Y2K year 2000 this apocalyptic 2012 date will come and go what is good about it is it will saturate the public on doomsayers and I think will erode the cults like Jehova Witness credibility is already starting to.
    http://www.jehovahs-witness.net/watchtower/bible/

  • Yeah the Mayans intended for that date to be like a ‘New Years’ for us, the end of an era and the beginning of 5,125 more years on the cycle… nothing more…

    But yeah I always say either the guy ran out of stones to write or he got tired and decided to kill the world… but who could blame him wriring on stone is not easy lol

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