We began the new millennium with the fear that our computers would fail leaving us helpless. It didn’t happen, instead; we watched fireworks, ushered in a new era and carried on with our lives. For those of us who consider the end of the Mayan calender prophetic, December 21, 2012 marks a similar event as Y2K—we will either carry on with out lives as normal (albeit with a larger stock of canned beans), die in a true apocalypse, or witness pivotal events in the history of human evolution.
Human fascination with apocalypse runs back to the beginning of time and pervades the fears of numerous spiritual and religious groups. When the first apostles spread the word of Christ people believed that the end, as later foretold in the book of revelations, would come in their lifetime. Later religious groups claimed the same (I believe the most popular recent apocalyptic date took place on May 21, 2011). These are not isolated beliefs as nearly all human cultures have had apocalyptic prophesies.
Even though the world has not yet ended, the end of nations and empires may often manifest as an apocalypse to those at the center. For example, we can assume that the residents of Pompey (if they had time to analyze) saw their end as the apocalypse. All though, prophets always describe the end of the world–a event where the sinners are condemned and the faithful saved– we should entertain the idea that what presents as an apocalypse in the prophet’s vision is really a catastrophic change effecting a select people.
The repetition of the apocalypse expands upon the human fear of death, as we either fear and end in which our lasting achievements (art, children, ect.) fade like our lives or relish the moment we unite fully with our soul’s spiritual destiny. It seems that humans continually create myths and foretell days in which the world will end. The most recent and pervasive apocalyptic myth surrounds the end of the Mayan long cycle calender on December 21, 2012. The Mayans, however, lost their civilization centuries ago in what the masses must have considered the end of days. Did they foretell the end of entire world centuries after the world they understood perished? Is the ending of their calender just a convenient marking for modern man’s prophetic need? Do we look forward to the end times and the change implicit in society’s collapse?
A true apocalypse will kill all life on earth or, from a Christian perspective, leave the sinful to suffer while the righteous join Christ. A true and final end, however, contradicts the natural world. We know that seasons cycle every year. Our calenders, the systems of marking humans created, are also cyclical with one year following another. Humanity lives the cliché that an end is merely a beginning which, makes an apocalypse unnatural and beyond all empirical evidence. Perhaps, our fascination with the apocalypse results from the fear that our cycles will end.
The ending of the Mayan calender, however, should not be considered merely as a catalyst for human fears; rather, it contradicts everything our modern world expects—it does not cycle. The calender was written in a linear fashion always moving forward. The concept of final termination that we attribute to the end of the written document may not reflect the manner in which the Mayans saw the calender, instead; the calender is open ended. On December 21, 2012 a phase of the calender ends, but if the civilization that wrote the document still existed a new phase might have begun.
I do not mean to dismiss the event as a mere historical blip, or cast it in the light of a New Year. The Mayan phases are long, and not cyclical. The end that occurs on 2012 may usher in a great new beginning or perhaps a drastic world change, for; ends and their implicit beginnings represent change–changes that we fear, in the form of an apocalypse, and relish in the hope for a great new world.
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