The End Is Near

Well, there has been a lot of hype about the new disaster movie '2012' in recent weeks. Previews show a spectacular CGI special effects movie with some real people acting in the middle there somewhere. The whole premise of the movie centres around the idea that the Mayan calendar ends on December 21, 2012. That this is the predetermined end of the world. There have, of course been end of the world predictions for thousands of years. People thought that the turn of the first millennium was going to bring the end of the world. There have been predictions that the world would end in fire, or ice or that the rapture was going to occur. This doom and gloom continued into present day with the whole Y2K scare back in 2000, when all the computer systems in the world were supposed to shut down and end life as we know it. So these predictions about the end of the world are nothing new, it's just that the special effects are getting better.

I have to admit that there is a slight fascination with the disaster movie. Some people like to place themselves in the position of the hero of the movie. Kind of a 'better living through living vicariously through an action movie' thought process. Others are apparently just fascinated with the death and destruction involved. Maybe people like to be depressed, who knows. Just in the relatively few years that I've been alive, the world has ended (in the movies, not really) by asteroid collision, flooding, earthquake, alien invasion, giant monster attacks, disease, zombies, zombie virus, computer virus, regular war, nuclear war, global climate change and in the case of some of these movies, boredom as well. Every time a new calamity or public outcry about something happens, a new disaster movie involving that particular scenario arrives at the box office. I fully expect to see movies about N1H1, avian flu, the common cold and the scourge of male pattern baldness in the near future.

Every time I teach a history class, I have to go through the whole "Why do we have to study history?", "You study history because it's important," debate. You know, it's the whole "Unless you know your history you are doomed to repeat it" routine. It's important to know the how and why things happened in the past. The other thing that history teaches us is perspective. When a movie like '2012' comes out and the whole idea of the movie is that an ancient civilization predicted the exact day and year that the end of the world would occur, I have to think about what history teaches us happened to the Mayans. Here was a civilization that was very advanced, ruled their little corner of the world for hundreds and hundreds of years and (if you can overlook the whole sacrifice and barbarity thing) were probably the most advanced people in the western hemisphere. Things were going well for the Mayans until the arrival of the Spaniards and a little bug that caused small pox. Within a very few years they were gone.

My own theory on the whole 'Mayans predict the end of the world' debate is that the guy whose job it was to carve the calendar got up one morning and went to work. He carved for the day until he got to the date of December 21 2012 (the natural end of a calendar cycle in the Mayan tradition) and thought 'Here's a good spot to stop for today,' and went home for supper. The next morning he got up and wasn't feeling well so he stayed home to protect his co-workers from his cold and then he died. The calendar never got finished because his co-workers had the same problem and they all died too.

I have to smile at the whole end of the world thing because if it is going to end there's not much I can do to stop it. All I can do is wait and see what will happen. Hopefully the special effects will be good.