2012: Where Will You Be?

(above: one of probably a line of upcoming movies on this theme)

Remember 2000? Even though I held a wonderfully fun Millennium party, my cabinets were filled to the brim with supplies including powdered milk and canned goods. I wasn’t particularly fearful about the turn of the century so much as I lacked confidence in our computer preparedness. I hardly expected a shade to be drawn and a curtain to be pulled on the human race. I simply realized how vulnerable we are to being plugged in to, well, everything.

Talk has been centered around the year 2012, especially the solstice of December 21, 2012. Ancient Mayans predicted this date as the end of the world, as it was the cut off point for their well-laid out calendar. On December 21, 2012, our planet and the Sun will be exactly aligned with the center of our Milky Way galaxy. The question people are asking is if it will cause magnetic disturbances, creating eruptions and earthquakes, and such. Scientists are not sure, yet they think this could cause magnetic turbulence. It’s amazing to me that in this day and time we’re afraid of an alignment as much as ancient man was about eclipses. It also seems illogical to put any weight on a prediction made by a culture of people who went extinct.

Apparently, Tibetan monks seem to think in 2012, we will have reached a spiritual deficit in which events will lead us more to the spiritual and away from science, and we can thank aliens for that. Illogical, once again, in that aliens wouldn't teach us that spirituality beats technology--however did they reach us?

The buzz circulating on the Internet about the end-of-world in 2012 includes such scenarios as the Second Coming, disease, comet impact, alien invasion, massive war, natural disasters, and just about any combination of the above.

What is our fascination with end-of-world scenarios? Sometimes, it appears that man simply wants to know what becomes of this world and to be able to witness its end seems a rather gifted position. Upon our passing, there will be nothing to miss occurring to future generations. Others might find it a relief to pass along with their loved ones and not alone, moving onto whatever awaits us together. Gloom-and-doomers are excited at the prospect that everything they’d believed about humanity not lasting is being proven. Hopeful righteous citizens look forward to the escort to heaven as the chosen few who did…well, whatever was the “right" combination of deeds and beliefs to gain entrance. Hopefully, the rest of us enjoy the speculation and the rising anticipation surrounding a date in which everyone on the Earth should be spending their Yule day together…just in case.

If 2012 brings us anything, it certainly unites our desire to continue this crazy unpredictable (key word—unpredictable) ride called “life.”