Doom, They Say

"It'll all be over in, oh, 11 weeks.  I'm curious as to what will happen next.  but maybe I can stop answering questions about the end of the world after December 21."
NASA space scientist David Morrison

 21/12/12.  Believe it, believe it not.  Many do.  People appear to have a fascination for the prospect of doom and damnation, Armageddon, the end of times, the finish of it all, our world imploding.  On the other hand, for those who are pure enough and devout enough to their reality of the return of the Messiah, the twenty-first day of the twelfth month of the twelfth year of the second millennium will bring salvation.

"The one thing in common with all of these scare stories about December 2012 is that they have absolutely zero basis in fact.  There was no Mayan prediction of anything going wrong, there's no planet Nibiru, there's no planet alignment, there's no change in the earth's axis, there's no change in anything about the earth.  It's just a complete fantasy", said Dr. Morrison.

Absolutely wrong.  If people believe, what they believe expresses the reality of what will occur.  If it doesn't happen when it's been said it will, then there was a slight misinterpretation in the clues, so assiduously searched and hastily interpreted, and a little adjustment in time must be made, and then it will all come to fruition - or damnation, take your pick. 

Surveys conducted in the U.S. reveal that 30% to 40% of Americans believe implicitly in the depictions in the Bible's Book of Revelations.  God will unleash his wrath on evil-doers.  And according to a global survey recently undertaken by Ipsos Reid, one in ten people worldwide believe the world will end in December, 2012.  And that includes fully 9% of Canadians. 

Are we wholesale suggestible, or just thrilled with the prospect of endings?

"We feel incapable of being able to arrive at solutions to our own problems, whether it be on the issue of global warming, disasters of great magnitude like tsunamis and earthquakes, which the media report with ever increasing frequency.  Of course, I don't have to talk about the wars and terrorism, not to mention the recession.

"It's been an awful decade, not just in the United States but all around the world, Canada included.  In hard times, we reach out, and that's why there were more UFO sightings back in the late 1960s during the Vietnam era", explained Anthony Aveni, professor of archaeoastronomy at Colgate University, author of The End of Time: The Maya Mystery of 2012.

Believers of the Apocalypse and its imminence are various and belong to many cultures and geographies.  Including the Islamic Republic of Iran where the Ayatollahs await the coming of their Shia Messiah, the Hidden Imam, to bring the world to an end, a swift and cataclysmic wiping out of the world's unworthies, and an elevation to Paradise of the faithful - Shia Muslim only need apply.

"If you're in a society where you're feeling oppressed, where you feel persecuted, where you feel you're the odd person out, it certain is appealing to think that things could change radically, very quickly, and you could become [among] the chosen ones.  It's the idea that the social order could be radically reversed or that things could be so altered and transformed that you're going to come out on top", said Christopher Helland, professor of the sociology of religion, Dalhousie University in Halifax.

"Traditional grounds for people to trust that the world is a safe and secure place, that it's a place that has meaning, are being undermined by these processes of de-traditionalization, globalization, and heightened individualism.  And so people are increasingly feeling at loss as to how to gain a secure foothold, a sense of meaning in the world, a way of interpreting things", Professor Helland says.

"We're all pattern seeking creatures, making sense of the world.  This creates a narrative that [can give us] some degree of understanding and peace and it binds our anxiety.  In some respects not being in control gives you some degree of peace and solace.  It's all up to God, it's all up to fate", clarified Santa Clara University professor Thomas Plante.

So, then, why worry?  Why fear what we cannot have any impact on?  All those insecure individuals so prepared to believe that their existence is merely a temporary exercise in temporal endurance, awaiting the Apocalypse that will free their spirits into another dimension where they will live forevermore in happy security await their inevitable: 21/12/12.

While the rest of us just get on with life, sans delusions.