Friday Sabbath: Fear for Tomorrow

(from www.sfcollege.edu)

I find that the release of films like 2012 is arrogantly irresponsible. I'm not saying that we ought to expect but so much from the same director of Independence Day and The Day After Tomorrow (one reviewer said that if you just add 2012 to those last two films, you get this director's "I Hate Earth" Trilogy). Part of what concerns me is the use of the Mayan Calender to inspire fear among people whose first exposure to the Mayan concept of time may sadly be this movie. I have not seen the film, nor do I intend to (there are no facts, though historical theory is the film's launching pad... it's just extravagant, 250 million dollars worth of violence). But, judging from the trailer and the reviews, many people will see it. They will either laugh themselves out of the theater or they will have this pin-prick worry in the back of their minds as to whether or not they have three years left on planet Earth.

Say what you want about anyone who would believe this... I'm sure enough young and simply ignorant people will be disturbed by the implication... and Columbia Pictures is just yucking it up. If you go to the official website and look under the heading "The Experience," you find a clean, official-looking site called IHC (Institute for Human Continuity). The site information is completely fictitious, but they have designed it to look like an educational tool to help illuminate the secrets of the inevitable doomsday. They also kindly offer to put your name in a lottery of people that will be rescued from the calamity. While most of us know better than to believe a website labeled "part of the movie experience," I'm sure the site is decieving enough to worry some people. Plenty of movies are based on "real" material and not everyone is but so discerning.

And as for any giant planets running into us, as the movie and fake IHC website warn us about, go look at this article on www.astronomy.com (Nibiru Myth). If any planet were going to slip off its orbit and run into us, astronomers all around the world would be tracking it as you read this. But, since this is a topic not everyone is a total nerd about, few people are going to walk into a film with that knowledge. I'm willing to believe that most people are more willing to think that the government hides information about our demise than they are willing to do some astronomical research. So, even if they don't believe that 2012 will be their last year on the planet, might they worry about an eventual collision with a meteor or dead planet?

Most of the reviews are not favorable, so, hopefully most people won't take this fim seriously. It's not the first time we've "cried 'Wolf!'" Remember the year 2000? A lot of people, even people I knew, were freaked out about some major disaster occuring at midnight on the first day of 2000. At the very least, some idiots said all of our computers would stop working... but it's us who needed to get used to using a 20 instead of 19 at the beginning of the year date, not the computers. It's all numbers to the computers.

What is it with us and the end of the world? If you look at the Mayan calendar, they did record several fascinating celestial measurements. Something special is going to happen on December 21, 2012. The way I understand it, the bodies in our solar system will align together in a way they have not in some time. It will be interesting to watch... but the Mayans did not specifically predict a doomsday to accompany this event.

Unlike us, the Mayans did not view time linearly. That's all our doing with our Western thoughts of the apocalypse and a distinct beginning and end to time. The ancient Mayans saw time more cyclically. Some of their predictions extended beyond 2012, though 2012 is the end of the calendar that we know of. It is probable that 2012 merely marks the end of one cycle of time and the start of a new cycle.

I think most of us are a little nervous about the end of the world. It's not like we haven't heard numerous examples of how people believe it will happen. And, even if you don't go for the ideas of the major religions around the world, scientists have been warning us about our lifestyles and global warming and what have you for some time. The future is always dark and daunting... like the last ghost to visit Ebeneezer Scrooge. The Ghost of Chirstmas Yet to Come was depicted as a large, looming cloaked figure who never spoke and had no face that you could see.

This season's edition of Parabola discusses several concepts about the future from divination to the Mayan Calendar to the Taoist acceptance of the darkness of tomorrow. I have not finished it completely yet, but this is a very seductive issue. I am certainly one of those people who wishes she could know a little more about what will be. I know I'm not alone. There are probably plenty of people in our current economic climate who want to know when things are going to change, if they will change, and how they will change.

I have no crystal ball. I don't suppose I would want one. I would like to know some things about the future, but I certainly don't want a doomsday added to my already existing list of worries. Why live in dread? I wonder sometimes what good would come of knowing so much. I mean, sure, I would have liked to have known about bad traffic conditions before venturing out at a reasonable time to get somewhere 40 minutes away but not arriving for another two hours... the radio only helps so much depending on when you are where you are (Has anyone else who lives around here noticed that you can't get a report about 64 in the Williamsburg area to save your life?). But, knowing about the end of the world, or the death of loved ones... I think I'll pass. The worry would eat me alive and then I would be dead inside long before the cataclysmic event descends upon us.

So, movies like 2012, as the guy on www.astronomy.com says, "just scares children." It brings no information to the table. It's just two and a half hours of wide-eyed catastrophe and deafening noise. There's nothing in it that says we should just take care of the planet and each other before we cause our own doosmday that the universe had not scheduled. Spreading fear about an unlikely future is selfish sensationalism in the face of a society ignoring the work we need to do to stay here. The film capitolizes on the calendar of an ancient, mysterious society we can no longer interview for confirmation. How convenient.

And, if you get at all nervous about tomorrow, I end this entry with a Taoist parable I learned back in my VCU days in Asian Religion class:

...an old Chinese farmer lost his best stallion one day and his neighbor came around to express his regrets, but the farmer just said, "Who knows what is good and what is bad." The next day the stallion returned bringing with him 3 wild mares. The neighbor rushed back to celebrate with the farmer, but the old farmer simply said, "Who knows what is good and what is bad." The following day, the farmer's son fell from one of the wild mares while trying to break her in and broke his arm and injured his leg. The neighbor came by to check on the son and give his condolences, but the old farmer just said, "Who knows what is good and what is bad." The next day the army came to the farm to conscript the farmer's son for the war, but found him invalid and left him with his father. The neighbor thought to himself, "Who knows what is good and what is bad?"

(from http://vision-nary.com/weblogs/index.php/2005/07/20/taoist_parable)

And, one last thing to help you chuckle:

(from www.theness.com)