An End To End Times

 Ah, the apocalypse is finally upon us.  Been a long time in coming.  Frankly, I'm bored to tears with all the hype about December 21, and I'm ready for the whole thing to fizzle out and go away, becoming yet another cultural footnote in the long history of end-of-the-world scenarios.

Why the obsession with Earth's demise?  If we collectively put in a fraction of the effort cleaning up our nest as we do into awaiting its end, we'd have a pretty nice place to live.  In the past 150 years, it's become almost cliche to predict the final moments of our dear planet.  The number of preachers who have and continue to predict end dates based on obscure math formulae in the Book of Daniel, or the appearance of a red calf or miraculous barley, or the restart of the Mayan calendar, or various and sundry signs and wonders that have occured throughout history and will continue.

Ultimately, whether it is the meshiach, the 12th imam or the second coming, billions of people are hellbent both on doing nothing to prevent the perceived events and everything they can to help them along.  The complete incongruity of this line of thought is a perfect example of Orwell's 'doublethink,' where a person can hold completely contradictory beliefs without seeing the foundational illogic of it.  Talk about cognitive dissonance.

What it all boils down to is this: many religions are morally questionable and internally inconsistent.  There is a Creator who gives life and wants love, and even commands that we not kill, while at the same time ordering the wholesale slaughter of people on deeply questionable grounds.

These religions have no qualms about undervaluing the lives of non-believers while proclaiming to worship a live-affirming belief system.  Can there be any more screwed up thing than that?

Simply put, the moral codes of these religions are so inconsistent that they must appeal to a final judgement to vindicate their immorality.  In other words, the ends justify the means.  This core contradiction in the major religions of the world can only be explained one way...they are control mechanisms established by elites to both divide humanity and thus weaken the masses, and to make us compliant with their agendas.

It is axiomatic that there is strength in numbers.  As individuals, we might be tempted to fight a single intruder in our house at 3am, but seven of them could be out of the question.  However, if we can get the seven intruders fighting amongst themselves, we have a good chance of success by making them expend their energy and concentration on each other.

We can see that strategy at work in the world today.  Certain self-appointed elites keep 7 billion people in line by simply agitating pre-installed antagonistic groups.  What's more absurd is that these fighting groups have hardly an iota's worth of difference between them.  Most current religions are monotheistic, share a similar code of conduct, and in several cases, have the same roots.  But because this group folds its hands to pray and that one opens them, we feel compelled to slaughter each other, and in so doing, ignore the real issues facing us.

In addition to this strangeness, a lot of these religions are based on personal revelations that cannot be proved and require adherents to take a 'leap of faith' if they want to follow along.  For the most part, people who hear voices are considered to be mentally compromised, but in the case of religion, those voices are the foundation of entire cultures.  We can never know what, if anything, they really heard, and in some cases we can't be sure the person hearing the voices even existed in the first place.

Suppose a charismatic leader stepped forward with a bunch of followers and some old manuscripts claiming that Nova Scotia was their ancestral home given to them by a bearded old man in the sky who only appeared and spoke to the leader.  Would you support their claim to the island?  Yet that is precisely what billions of Jews and Christians have done with a place called Israel (though thankfully the tide appears to be turning on that little fiasco).

Christians have been completely snowed into supporting this claim because they have been told that the existence of this country is a prerequisite for the second coming and final justification.  Not only does this neutralize any complaint about the murderous behavior of that 'nation', Christians actually support and encourage it in order to get their final justification.

The plot is pure genius, if it weren't so evil.

What it boils down to is that a significant number of people have been conned into actively supporting actions and events they earnestly believe will lead to the destruction of the Earth and the ultimate justification of their beliefs.  Does anyone else find this just a little disturbing?

On top of that, the belief in the violent end of civilization is based solely on the visions of some guy named John hanging out on an island a couple of thousand years ago.  There is absolutely no other proof or justification for these visions, other than John's claim (and the churches' support) that these visions were a personal message from god.

This brings us around to a calendar and December 21st.  A Meso-American culture called the Mayans (destroyed by Christians, by the way) devised a rather advanced and interesting circular calendar.  It is composed of 13 baktuns together spanning several thousand years.  Based solely on the supposition/theory that the 13th baktun ends on December 21st, an entire industry has sprung up promoting the idea that the world will come to a crashing halt this month.

Almost from the moment that Y2K passed uneventfully, the 2012 cult caught fire.  Despite the fact the creators of the calendar made no claim of end times in all their writings, billions of dollars have changed hands promoting this idea.  And no one seems to know where this idea originated.  It seems to have exploded whole cloth into the popular culture, complete with 'experts' and 'mystics' to back it up.

It's almost as if our civilization has had a self-destruct button built into it as a means to restart things if we humans get too out of hand.  One can perceive a hidden agenda to collapse our civilization if we get too close to achieving our full potential.  It's so effective that a great many humans believe whole-heartedly in some form of end-time scenario.  At the same time, this self-destruct feature includes ways to keep us divided and quibbling amongst ourselves so that we never achieve our potential.

It's so insidious, so diabolical and so effective that it can only be by design.  It's hard to conceive of any other way to explain it.

The worst part of all this is that it is so ingrained in our collective psyche that it is nearly impossible to extract.  If thousand-year-old prophesies of end times aren't enough, we manufacture new scenarios out of old calendars and cave paintings.  One way or another, we seem hell-bent on some form of destructive convulsion and we derive a strange pleasure from the idea.  It's the ultimate in collective masochism, which in itself implies some sadist feeding our peculiar bent.

It would be nice to think that on December 22nd, we could put all this stupidity behind us and move on, but that's unlikely.  More likely is that a new form of psychosis will rise up and take its place.  Whether it be meteors or aliens or holy men riding in on clouds, we don't seem to be able to look to the future with any sort of positive viewpoint.

Perhaps on December 22nd, we could start of movement to end all end times speculation and start focusing on cleaning up our nest.  Maybe we could see the follies of our ways, acknowledge the absurdity of desiring our destruction, and work towards extracting these unproductive memes from our cultures.

I'm not holding my breath.

Countdown To Armageddon

The Mayan Calendar

Well, here we are, counting down to whatever it is we are counting down to.

To hear some folks talk, by this time next year, the Earth will be a cinder, all Mankind will be extinct, civilization will vanish, and it will all be because of some carved stone wheels in Mexico.

Rubbish.

It is the nature of all entrenched power elites to make people afraid of some external force, from which they will protect us...at a price.  Fear is a great motivator, and when used as a weapon, can cause great numbers of people to do really stupid things, like trust someone else to watch out for their interests.  It never occurs to us individually that anyone we put in a position to guard our safety is going to watch out for their own safety first.

The great Roman poet and historian Ovid famously said, "Quis custodiet ipsos custodies?"  Who will watch the watchers?  Once you establish an individual or group to protect your interests, then you must place another over them to watch them, and yet more over them to watch the former.  It's an endless cycle of layers of watchers checking on other watchers, and in the end, the only one who is truly motivated to keep me safe is me.

If I have a pile of gold and I hire someone to watch it for me, eventually they will figure out that job security comes from keeping me afraid of losing my gold.  But at some point, I will become paranoid and hire someone else to keep an eye on the first one.  And on it goes ad infinitum.  The watchers will inevitably place their own self-interests above mine.

If we expand this to a global scale, then we have certain minorities who have been placed in positions of trust to watch out for our interests.  To protect their interests, they have instituted various programs to keep us afraid, and thus continue paying them to watch our interests.  When they are caught red-handed lying and dissembling, we blythely pay more to install another layer of minorities to watch the first group, who in turn ally themselves with the first layer in order to enrich themselves at our expense.  We call this process 'government'.

In the age of the 'security' state, we the sheeple herded around by the noses by a small group of people who use our fears as weapons against us.  By its nature, fear is irrational because it rarely rises to the level of our expectations.  Yet the mere anticipation of something bad happening causes us to become pliant and docile at the hands of anyone who will promise to protect us.

The state apparatus has a vested interest in keeping us afraid.  It doesn't matter what the fear is, so long as a sufficient majority of the masses are afraid of it.  It also helps if the fear is something that is much larger and inevitable that we are powerless to change.  We will still throw money and power at anyone who steps up and says they have a plan to protect us.

Global cooling, global warming, Y2K, 2012, Apocalypse...name your irrational fear, and you will find some group standing up to take money to protect us from it.

Pandora's Box

Climate change?  Well, we have this anonymous group of 'scientists,' without names or faces, who are working diligently with their laptops and recording stations to do what we all can do by standing outside.

Apocalypse?  We have this massive bureaucracy called a church that claims to intercede on behalf of all Mankind with an angry and wrathful God to prevent His wiping out Humanity.  This particular gig is very effective, since it's lasted about 500 years or so.  Never mind that wrath and vengence are two of the seven deadly sins, and it makes no logical sense what-so-ever that this God would act on them.

2012?  This one is particularly rich, since no one seems to take the time to read about seven or eight paragraphs in a scholarly paper on Mayan calendars.  It's particularly effective, since people can project just about any fear they have on to it, and it has grown to encompass climate change, apocalypse, space invasions, and pretty much all the other fears and expectations of our collective subconscious.

In simplest terms, the Maya envisioned all of time as a series of interwoven cycles running endlessly into the future.  Each progressing cycle was exponentially longer than the first, with the final cycle lasting a bit over 5,000 years.  This final cycle had 13 iterations before it would itself recycle.  The whole thing was based on various celestial events, particularly the movements of Venus, Moon and Sun.

The cycles also coincided with Maya myths and legends regarding various Ages, not unlike the Yugas in Hindu tradition.  In fact, a brief effort on the part of the curious reader will reveal that the recycling of the Mayan calendar, as well as the Hindu tradition, and even the Bible itself, call for the beginning of a new Golden Age, when Mankind will become enlightened once again, and will throw off the fear and loathing that has kept Him in darkness and ignorance.

According to some scholarship, that new Golden Age begins about this time next year.

So what are we afraid of?  Could it be that all this fear-mongering is actually a reflection of the watchers' internal struggle to keep us all compliant and fearful in the face of a new Awakening?  Are they trying to engineer a new Dark Age in which they are the Masters of All They Survey, while we are the writhing masses cowering at their feet?

If all your wealth and power were the result of everyone around you being deathly afraid of their own shadows, and you knew that they were waking up and taking back their birthright, what would you do?  Considering you will lose everything and most likely all those people will lash out in anger at you for what you've done, my guess is that you would do everything in your power to keep them ignorant, fearful and dependent.

In fact, every tradition, without exception, that forecasts a violent and nasty cataclysm states that this event is the birth pangs of a new Golden Age of Humanity.  We will finally conquer our fears and self-loathing, and usher in an Age when Mankind will appear god-like, when peace and harmony will reign, when we no longer live in ignorance.  All of them, be they Christian, Buddhist, Muslim, Mayan, Hindu, Greco-Roman, Cherokee, Hopi...doesn't matter, they all predict that the destruction of the Old Ways will lead to new glories for our species.

The Golden Age

So, when you look at it the right way, what we are seeing is deep, agonizing fear on the part of the watchers who are losing their power and status.  The only weapon they have is to transfer that fear onto the vast majority of humanity to keep us dependent on them.  Every one of the traditions hold that this will happen, that the entrenched powers will utter destroy themselves in their effort to maintain their positions.  In the end, the Enlightenment always wins.

2012 will likely be an eventful year.  There will be some remarkable events in the heavens and on Earth.  But the only people who have something to fear are the one who benefit most from fear.  Because, when fear is conquered, they no longer have power nor status.  They will no longer be able to manipulate the masses, since all their tools and tricks will have been rendered useless.

Every winter brings death, but spring is not far behind.  What was hidden by the snow will be revealed by the thaw.

The Apocalypse Diaries

Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse by Albrecht Durer

Yes, folks.  Out of the billions of people who have read the Bible over the past few millennia, one man has finally figured out the Code, the Secret behind the cryptic writings.  He alone has tapped the Great Unknown to reveal...

The End of the World as We Know It (TEOTWAWKI).

That's right, Harold Camping, of Family Radio fame, has determined that on May 21, 2011, at sunset, God will come and destroy the nice little planet He made because some bad apples screwed it up for everyone.  Oh, about that last prediction Harold made back in 1994?  He got the math wrong...just ignore that.

Let's forget that the word 'Apocalypse' has nothing to do with the world ending.  After all, the word comes from apo and kalyptein, which together mean 'lift the veil.'  In other words, to reveal something hidden.

Let's also forget that Harold figures the Great Flood happened seven thousand years ago (it was 3.2 million, actually, give or take an egg timer).  We are acting on faith here, and everyone knows that to have Faith means to deny what you plainly know in favor of someone else's pipe-dream.

Harold figures, based on some linguistic legerdemain, that Jesus died in early April A.D. 33, and since one of the prophets said that, in God's Eyes, a thousand years is but one day, then the crucifixion occured on God's Friday, and May 21st, at sundown, is the end of Sunday, so God is going to wipe out the Earth and throw everyone in Hell.

Harold Camping

Frankly, I've heard this EXACT same argument about, oh, let's see...a MILLION times.  Folks have been discovering secret codes and uncovering hidden math problems in the Bible since roughly A.D. 800.  It all involves this mysterious line, "To the Lord, a thousand years is but a day."  One line out of several hundred thousand, which ignores all the lines to the contrary, such as God promising Noah He won't go and wipe out the Earth again.

All these folks seem to forget a lot of other details, as well.  Like the fact there are dozens of apocalyptic books, not just the famous one by John the Divine (a.k.a., Revelations).  Then there's a whole mess of Jewish, Buddhist and Islamic apocrypha.  And then there's the extinct works of Egypt and Babylon.

Oh, and if we read Saul of Tharsis, popularly known as Paul, he was convinced the Second Coming would be in the lifetimes of his contemporary readers.  Peter thought that, too.  Couple of heavyweights there.

Really, if you read Revelations without all the crap that's been stapled to it over the centuries, it's a rather detailed description of the destruction of Jerusalem and the scattering of the Jews in A.D.70-77, by the Romans, who were getting rather tired of all the messiahs and revolts and such.

All this end of the world stuff, and the systems called Millennialism and Dispensationalism, were developed just a little over 100 years ago by a flim-flam man in Kansas, USA, by the name of Scofield.  Since that time, it has infected the entire world and now a billion or so christians are castrated.

Why?  Because they've all been told that Jesus is coming soon to straighten things out.  So why should they worry, or try to fix anything, or oppose the bastards taking over the world?  After all, Jesus will be here soon, so just sit back and relax and it'll all get sorted out on Judgement Day.

What a scam.  If you wanted to neutralize a billion people and prevent them from opposing anything you did, then convincing them that the End is Nigh is just about as good as it gets.  It's been highly effective.  Now christians will put up with any amount of crap, especially in Europe and the States, because Superman in on the way!  He's just rounding Jupiter and will be here at any moment!  So let the heathens take over and steal the wealth and life of millions of people!  They're all going to Hell in a few days!

On May 22nd, can we all forget about all this doom and gloom crap and start putting some bastards in jail?  There's a group of folks robbing the world blind while putting us all into abject slavery to them, and we are just sitting back swilling beer and watching the game, because hey!  Jesus is coming soon, or 2012, or Y2K, or ET, or any of a dozen other excuses to let someone else clean up our mess.  We allowed it to happen.  We were too busy playing video games and watching TeeVee and being entranced by our gee-gaws.  Now we have a real mess here and no one is coming to clean it up.  The world is not ending.  Jesus isn't going to separate the wheat from the chaffe.  ET ain't going to phone home.  2012 will be just another year (other then the economic catastrophe, which is the point here).

Mayan Calendar

Either we're busy living or we're busy dying, but waiting around for the Cosmic Maid to show up is just plain lazy and stupid.  The bullshit has been so deeply pounded into our brains that we can't see the Light for all the Darkness in the way.

If you need some inspiration from Jesus, then read the parable of the master who goes on a trip and leaves money with his servants.  Take a look at which one makes the master happy.  It ain't the lazy, frightened ones, I can tell you that.

If you're waiting on Jesus to clean up after you, then you've got about another 400 years until the next messianic age, when the Age of Auquarius finally dawns.  In the meantime, what are your great-grandkids going to say about you?  Will they even remember they had great-grandparents?  Will they curse our names?

Or will we start cleaning up this mess and quit pushing it off on some deus ex machina?