Nothing like taking advantage of an opportunity. This week I scorn the epic failure of the supposed end of the world prediction in the Mayan calendar. I am writing this on Dec. 20, a day before the end is predicted, so the advantage is that if we do meet our demise, no one will be around to tell me I was wrong. (Although it is now Dec. 21 in New Zealand, where nothing out of the ordinary is being reported.)
I’ve thinking lately about how there seems to be much less angst about the Mayan prediction than there was 13 years ago in the lead up to 2000. Remember when the world’s computer systems were all destined to go berserk when their calendars changed to a date they weren’t programmed to accept? (Computer programmers, apparently being unaware of the looming millennium change, didn’t think to allow for the first digit in year codes to roll over from a 1 to a 2.)
Billions of dollars were spent in preparation, reprogramming systems, but when the big moment came, systems that didn’t make any changes didn’t go up in smoke and in a day or two all was pretty much forgotten.
I suppose man (I use the gender literally — woman don’t seem to get caught up in all this nonsense) has been predicting the end of the world, or at least the world as we know it, for as long as he has felt dissatisfied with what he sees around him. Heck, most religions operate on the premise that a very clear and distinct end to human tenure on Earth will come to an abrupt end.
Some, like the Jehovah’s Witnesses, have even gone so far as trying to approximate the date. Last week a joke was making the rounds that the Mayans chose 2012 because it was the only year that Watchtower hadn’t already taken. In high school, as a smart aleck teenager, I tried to get a Jehovah Witness friend to promise to abandon his religion if the year he said was prophesied as the End came and went without an apocalypse.
I’m not as cynical about most religious beliefs any more, having come to realize that I have no better insight on the world’s infinite mysteries than anyone else. If Judgment Day does come in my lifetime, I have come to terms with not being among the chosen few. And I freely admit that if the sky starts to fall in on us, I’ll probably be among the many who attempt to make a fast conversion. There won’t be anything to lose at that point so there will be no harm in trying.
Personally, I just try to live life in a way that does as little harm as possible and helps others who aren’t as fortunate. I have no aspirations to change the world and am committed in my struggle to overcome the tendency of many whom, in the final third of their lives, decide that the world is going to hell in a handbasket (no, I don’t know exactly what that means, but I have always liked the phrase), that younger generations are incompetent and completely unprepared to carry the torch we pass down.
I remind myself regularly that every generation has felt that way and it’s a fear not to be taken seriously. New generations are coming into a changing world, one that won’t be the same as it was for us, but that is both good and bad, just as it has always been. Humans are the most egocentric of all animals, or perhaps we are the only life form with that characteristic. We are born to think, against all evidence, that the entire universe centres around us. It’s a peculiar conceit that doesn’t lend itself particularly well to making a better world, but it certainly makes it an endlessly fascinating one.
Lorne Eckersley is the publisher of the Creston Valley Advance.