What's an Apocalypse or two between friends?

An interesting article in today’s Ottawa Citizen entitled What 2012 really means by an associate professor in the Department of Archaeology at the university of Calgary, Kathryn Reese-Taylor. The lead-in reads: It’s our culture that is obsessed with the end of the world, not the ancient Maya. Professor Reese-Taylor points out that there are only four books extant from the Mayan empire (the rest being burned by the Conquistadors) and none of them says anything about the end of time. The implied reference to 21 December, 2012 is found inscribed on a column that describes the ceremony to be performed honouring the ending of the 13^th “baktun” (a baktum being roughly 400 years).  That’s it. No catastrophe foretold.  The predicted catastrophe and rise of a new world order is an invention of writers specializing in end of the world scenarios. Sound familiar?

You can find any number of books predicting an Apocalypse in book stores. They are a very popular item. Generally they are written by people who have been granted a special insight into the workings of history from a mythological point-of-view. In other words: they are wannabe cult leaders. Some of them do very well, especially on revenue from book sales, though people are encouraged to send monetary donations to whatever corporate structure has been set up especially for that purpose.

End of the world scenarios are as old as civilization. Maybe older, but we don’t have written records. The Biblical flood story is just one example of the kind of stories told in the ancient Middle East (catastrophic flood stories are popular in most cultures including those of Canada’s west coast First Nations.) A cataclysmic flood is a neat way of explaining how fossils of what appear to be sea creatures wound up on mountain tops. Also, the most popular settlement sites humans pick are usually river valleys. Plentiful water, good soil, attractive to animals, and…prone to flooding. Oops.

We are no smarter than the earliest humans (in fact, they may have been smarter than we are), and we look at events through the prism of our own experiences. As they probably saw floods as punishments caused by a ticked-off god, we are no better at seeing reality. We impose our fears, expectations, insecurities on whatever we find. The Book Revelation (The Apocalypse), written by John of Patmos, is a good one. (Sorry, but God did not write that one.) You can interpret passages in it any way you like. A third of the earth’s water poisoned? Oh yeah, he must have been talking about global pollution. Fiery devastation from the sky must refer to nuclear weapons. World wide pestilence and disease is obviously a prediction of HIV/AIDs.  

Nostradamus is an even better prophet than John of Patmos, as his predictions point to specific events; such as the rise of Hitler, the death of Princess Dianna, the collapse of the World Trade Centre. You name it, he predicted it. His accuracy is augmented by the fact that his original French poetry can be misinterpreted and mistranslated so that it appears to refer to events that have just occurred. Nothing like re-writing a prediction after an event has occurred.

Every major religion and most minor ones have messages about the end of time, when everything will be destroyed (especially the people we don’t like) and a new world order (composed of people we do like) will be established. A comforting fantasy to while away the time. I told you you’d be sorry, has such a nice assertive justifying ring to it.