Want
to find out what the whole 2012 Mayan prophecy thing is about, but can’t
be arsed to check out any of those thick books in the Esoteric / New Age
section of your local bookshop?
Well, then 2012: An Awakening and 2012: Mayan
Prophecy and the Shift of the Ages (both Reality Films) are as good as
any other place to start. But we dare anyone to watch these two
“documentaries” without nodding off . . .
Well, we couldn’t. The only reason we think anyone else will actually stay awake would be because they already wear
tin foil caps to prevent the aliens from screwing with their minds.
As far as End of the Worlds go, 2012 is quite lame. What
happens on December 21, 2012? No one knows for sure, expect that the
ancient Mayans’ calendar then runs out, which will either lead you
to believe
one of two things: (a) the Mayans should have planned ahead better and (b)
something BIG is going to happen . . .
Most New Age types settle for (b), but they can’t agree
on WHAT that something big is going to be. According to the various
talking heads (all male, middle-aged and older) found on these two
documentaries, 2012 can mean anything from the Earth being fried by solar
flares and the arrival of time machines from the future (no, really) to a
change in our consciousness.
What exactly does that mean? “A change in our
consciousness”? Again, no-one seems to be in agreement. Maybe we will all
feel different about Oprah. Maybe America will finally adopt the metric
system. Maybe we’ll all stop using Jiffy bags en masse. Who really knows?
And the host of “experts” on these DVDs do not know either.
This is all frustratingly vague. At least previous End of
the Worlds That Never Happened were high on specifics: with the Second
Coming (circa 1000 A.D.) Jesus Christ will come to judge us all; all the
computers will crash during Y2K and we will all become extras in
Mad Max;
nukes will fry us all during WWII (circa Cold War); and so on.
|
"If the ancient Mayans were so clever, then why didn’t they have
air-conditioning?" |
It is as if the New Age types going on about 2012 know
deep down that this is another false alarm – one of many throughout the
ages - and don’t want to be caught out on December 22, 2012. “We didn’t
say what would happen. Just that something would happen and something did
happen! I ran over the family dog yesterday and now my whole family hates
my guts!”
Ten minutes into 2012: An Awakening one realizes
that one is being told that global warming isn’t being caused by pollution
by someone who believes that alien reptiles have taken over the Earth’s
powerful political elite (David Icke). (We’d love to believe that
politicians are alien reptiles because
it’d explain so much, but somehow we don’t think that that is the case.)
Watching these two documentaries one also realizes that
whole 2012 thing is actually anti-science no matter how much
pseudoscientific babble the various talking heads spout. Their beliefs
stem from an old hippy mistrust in science and technology. “If the ancient
Mayans were so clever to predict the End Of Time,” I found myself
wondering however, “then why didn’t they invent air-conditioning?”
That may sound very un-PC and chauvinistic, but we
believe that it is not such a frivolous question. Expecting one to believe
that some ancient civilisation somehow knew things we don’t, especially
things such as predicting the future (which is probably impossible in the
first place), betrays a lack of faith in our own civilization and
accomplishments. We might as well be expected to believe that a race can
somehow have space travel without ever having invented the wheel!
Modern Western civilization may have come up with
air-conditioning, antibiotics and instant potato mash (I mean, just add
boiling water – how fucking awesome is that?), but 2012 New Age types
really, REALLY want it all to end in a flaming fireball (like in
the recent Knowing) rather than go to
work on Monday morning again it seems.
So what is going to happen on December 21, 2012? I
honestly don’t know.
“The future is uncertain,” as Jim Morrison sang. But the
point is that the various New Age guru types on these two one-sided
documentaries don’t know either. I’ll however be willing to bet good money
that time travelers won’t be arriving en masse from the future on that
day even though we’d like that very much.
