Somewhere, something
incredible is waiting to be known. -Carl
Sagan
I
was sitting on top of the Pyramid of the Moon when nothing happened. It was 11:11 a.m. on December 21,
2012.
Below
me, down on the ground, were two large circles of people. One circle was directly in front of the
pyramid, another was back and to the left of them. Both had short, brown-skinned people with long black hair
leading them in Spanish. Many of
them wore white clothes and red head bands. The leader in front of me wore a full Indian headdress. He had a partner dressed in a long
yellow robe that resembled something a Buddhist monk might wear. There was tribal music throughout, the
repetitious beating of a hollow drum.
The leader danced from time to time.
His
group was talking about how we are all one. One consciousness, one heart, and that even the mountains
and rocks have hearts. The other
group bunched closely together and talked about energy coming from the center
of the galaxy. If they utilized
this energy properly, they could communicate with aliens, or time travel, or
whatever.
One
gentleman wearing mostly white had just finished cheering about something with
his group on top of the pyramid.
"A
big celebration today?" I asked him as best I could in Spanish.
"It's
the winter solstice," he answered, not very interested in talking to me.
"It's
not the end of the world then?"
He
didn’t answer. He instead turned
away abruptly and started climbing down the steep stairs towards the ground.
Today
was the day of the "Mayan Apocalypse," as the world had come to know
it, the result of the Mayan long count calendar of 5,125 Gregorian years coming
to an end. I didn't expect any sort of large scale destruction, but then
neither did these people. The
Mayan calendar was never meant to mark the end of humans on earth. They believed in a more metaphorical
end of world. This would be
the moment that we entered into a new age and started thinking about things
differently. That our
consciousnesses would be elevated.
Really,
nobody else seemed to believe the world would be destroyed, except for a few
radical groups. I know this
because I was asking just about everybody I met over the past year if they
believed in it or not. I never
once got a "yes."
However,
many were afraid of it. Which is
why people in Russia stocked up on (vodka-included) "Meet the End of the World" kits and
people in the Sichuan province in China stocked up on candles. People in the UK
bought 25-year food survival packs and sales in survival shelters in the US
went way up. Tourists flocked to
the small Turkish town of Sirince,
and Burgarach
in southern France, which "some believe" have apocalyptic
significance. And why I was
sitting on top of the Temple of the Moon.
Not because I was afraid, but because so many people were.
The
Temple of the Moon is in Teotihuacan, an archaeological site close to Mexico
City where giant pyramids built thousands of years ago still stand. The two biggest pyramids are the
Pyramid of the Moon and Pyramid of the Sun. They are preserved remarkably well, and I was able to walk
right up the steep stone steps with cable handrails and view the large compound
of ancient ruins and the pollution of Mexico City in the distance.
The
Mayans didn't build this place, nor did they live here. They lived in southern Mexico and
central America. Here was home to
another ancient Mesomerican people, the Teotihuacanos. But really what's the difference? The Teotihuacanos were contemporaries
of the Mayans, and the Mayan calendar was actually the product of the whole
Mesoamerican region, of which there were many people. Also, it was much easier to travel there.
There
were more people than usual there that day, according to a grumpy security
guard at the Pyramid of the Moon.
There were people from Germany, England and the US there. Some of the Americans drew a concentric
circle in the gravel, followed it the center, bunched together, and as a group
started singing "All You Need is Love" by the Beatles. Others walked to the top of the Pyramid
of the Sun, laid down on the edge and held up crystals in either hand.
If
this is what the climax of the calendar promised, then it was sorely
disappointing. This isn't what 2012
or Apocalypto hinted at, the two movies that started the Mayan 2012
phenomenon. A bunch of new age
enthusiasts chanting indigenous words back and forth and singing old hippie
songs was not as exciting as mountains collapsing or hearts getting ripped out
of living bodies. Hollywood had just
exploited our collective fascination with the apocalypse.
And
of course it worked. A potential
apocalypse is very interesting to us.
Take this Mayan apocalypse for instance. Even though almost nobody believed it, everybody was talking
about it. The "Mayan end of
the world" became the reason anything strange ever happened, or the excuse
to tolerate Barack Obama winning the election, or whatever. Documentaries popped up on TV and on
Netflix. Mayan calendar books
started selling big on Amazon. More
tourists started going to Guatemala.
We
will always be interested in apocalypse predictions because deep down, we all
expect the world to end one day, but don’t know how it will happen. No matter how illogical something
sounds, there's still a little part within us that thinks, "well, maybe."
But we would never believe in such a thing. At least not publicly.
And at least not of relating to an ancient calendar that is arbitrarily
reaching it's end. Only weird people do that.
So
I set out to get as close to the source as I could, to see these weird people
and if what they predicted would come true. I was on the lookout for a lot of things. First, there was the beam of energy coming from
the center of the galaxy that was supposed to elevate our consciousnesses for a
short period. Then, there were
people who thought the planet Nibiru would collide with and demolish earth. That there would be three days of darkness and other kinds of technological failures. That Jesus might come back. That aliens
might arrive.
Which
is why I came here to Teotihuacan.
Not because I believe, but because I am interested. And not just interested in the end of
the world, but interested in why other people are interested.
***
I
first became aware of the impending apocalypse with the 2009 movie 2012, and the 2006 movie Apocalypto.
2012 was about the mass destruction of humans and everything we built,
and Apocalypto was an adventure story set within the Mayan kingdom. They were both very successful in grossing over $760 million and $120 million
worldwide respectfully. Soon after, the jokes started. Whenever something strange happened,
Facebook and Internet forums and news and sportscasters and journalists all
chocked it up to the impending Mayan apocalypse.
This
wasn't the first time apocalypse talk collectively fascinated the culture. Y2K was only a decade earlier. There was the nuclear stand-off in the
Cold War, there was WWII, the Great Depression and WWI all within recent
historical memory. Concurrently,
other apocalypse-related phenomena became popular: zombie movies and video
games, global warming warnings increased and multiple publications named Kid
A by Radiohead the best album of the 2000's.
Why
the collective fascination on the subject? After getting through many articles, essays, videos, books
and movies, I've noticed three main themes that create apocalypse fascination.
1.
Getting an answer to the end of the story
"It
is human nature to wonder about the end of times and to project this date into
one’s own life span,” said Dr. Steven Buser, psychiatrist and co-founder of the Asheville Jung
Center. “There have literally been
hundreds of specific dates that groups of people have been convinced signified
our imminent destruction. Just look at the books and films that have been
produced about the apocalypse.”
These
movies and books and ancient calendars give an answer to this question. It at least momentarily satisfies our
curiosity, even if we know that it's just a story. The more and more stories we hear about it, the better a
picture we have in our head about it.
Which is why there will be big destruction orgy fests like 2012,
works trying to find meaning like The Road and entertaining cartoonish
stories like zombies. We can
experience the violent destruction of the world, think about what humanity and
our world means to us, and laugh and have fun with it.
2.
Life would be so much better without all these people
As
the History Channel's Life After People showed us, Earth is going to be
just fine without us. Nature and
animals will "reclaim" and "take revenge" over all of our
cities, monuments and structures.
Maybe if humans are stifling life, then that life should be
abolished. Maybe we should all die
off. Or maybe only the bad
people. Or maybe everybody except
for me.
In an interview on a blog, a psychologist named only "Dr. G."
said Apocalypse scenarios are sometimes attractive to depressed people who
don't feel they fit in the current world.
This is also true for those who don't like the current world, and feel
like they could be happier in a different world. They could survive an apocalypse can become the heroes, and
can recreate the world how they want.
If life isn't so great in the current world, maybe a complete breakdown
and rebuilding of the world is desirable.
3.
Exercise in what to do in the extent of disaster
Zombie Squad is an actual
organization that works to "educate ourselves and our community about the
importance of disaster preparation.
If you are prepared for zombies, you're prepared for anything,"
they say on their web site. Zombie
Squad are people using actual zombie preparedness techniques to creatively
think about how to prepare for an actual disaster.
This
mindset has also spawned a book by Max Brooks called Zombie Survival Guide. It is written as a scientific how-to-guide
to survive a zombie apocalypse. It
gives tips on using different kinds of weapons, from handheld (hammers, axes),
to flaming arrows, to the effectiveness of different kinds of guns, to even
biological warfare. It also gives
tips on protecting the house and what items to store up on. But that's the beginning.
"I
believe that just because people know that a threat is out there, doesn't mean
they're going to do anything to protect themselves….I think that’s human
nature, to ignore a crisis…Society as a whole, they got better things to do
than protect their lives, their families, their nation," Brooks said in an
online interview. In imagining the worst thing that could
ever happen, catastrophe, we can more easily visualize what to do in a more
realistic, smaller calamity.
***
When
people believe in any of these very intently, it changes their whole life, and
they become weird. But what causes
these beliefs? Why do people
decide to become "weird?"
To find the answer to this, I investigated three different groups who
believe in such things: Mayanists,
Jehovah's Witnesses and preppers.
Mayans
Diego
de Landa wasn't the one burning the Mayans alive, cutting off their noses,
their hands, their arms, their legs or their breasts. He wasn't the one
drowning them, killing their children or enslaving them.
He
was the one purporting the idea behind it. The idea was that he and the Catholic Spanish were doing
God's work with the Mayans by any means possible. He justified this by
"the example from the history of the passage of the Hebrews to the land of
promise, committing great cruelties by the command of God." This is according to his own book on
the subject, Yucatan Before and After the Conquest.
De
Landa was a Franciscan monk, writer, and a missionary. He came to the Yucatan in 1549 to
explain to idol-worshiping heretics the story of how God's son was voluntarily
sacrificed so that humans wouldn't have to go to hell. This made perfect sense to the Mayans,
who did their own brand of human sacrifice. As archaeologist David Stuart explained[1],
for the Mayans, human beings were the most sacred thing on Earth. A human sacrifice would then be the
most important sacrifice.
So
rumors spread that the Mayans had started crucifying their own sons (apparently
children), just like the Catholic God did to His son.
This
pretty much clinched it for de Landa. It became the perfect excuse to take
especially harsh corrective measures against the idle-worshipping devil
believers. To stop the devil, de
Landa had to destroy the devil's ideas.
Ninety-nine percent of the Mayan's writings were incinerated.
He
did this because the Mayans believed in the wrong things. But what did they believe? Thanks to de Landa and his beliefs, we
don’t really know. However, it’s
not completely his fault.
This
is because the Mayans had been suddenly disappearing, and not just because of the
genocide. Many of the cities had
already been abandoned for unknown reasons. Through the three periods of the
Mayans, the pre-classic, the classic and the post-classic, each ended with the
large scale abandonment of cities.
This is indeed a mystery from a dominate civilization that lasted for
1,500 years. Theories suggest
droughts, food shortages, natural disasters and internal political problems as
the causes. Whatever they were, this
combined with the destroyed writings meant that much of what was known about
the Mayans was lost. This doesn’t
leave much for archaeologists to study, or for us to learn. To learn about the Mayans,
archaeologists can read de Land's aforementioned handbook for priests and study
what still remains of them.
The
first thing to look at are the ruins.
The Mayans constructed some of the largest pyramids ever built, and also
among the most pyramids, numbering in the hundreds. The pyramids came from the need for the different cities to
differentiate themselves. The
Mayans were never completely unified people, and competing cities and kings
were very often at war with each other.
To make their cities stand out, the chiefs and kings built large
pyramids to show off their power.
Using only primitive tools that lacked metal, thousands of men built
larger and larger pyramids for their king.
Archaeologists
next needed to figure out their hieroglyphic writing system that covered many
of the ruins, the only fully developed written language of the region. They now understand about 80% of it[2]. From this they can deduce things about
their beliefs.
Part
of their beliefs included that dead ancestors would rise into the sky. Watching the sky, then, was to watch
ancient and sacred deceased heroes2. Thus the Mayans fascination with the sky, and making
astonishing feats in astronomy, such as mapping the path of the planet Venus. They could also predict lunar cycles
and eclipses. To do all of this
required a good understanding of mathematics. They used the number zero well before anyone in Europe did.
From
this came their now infamous calendar, which they used to calculate celestial
events well into the future. They
set up their calendar in similar ways to our calendar, in that it started with
small units that added up to larger and larger units. And all of it was based on the activity of space. The smallest unit was called a
kin. Twenty kin become one
uinal. Nineteen uinal are one tun,
20 tun are one kactun, 20 kactun are 1 bactun, and 13 bactuns equal one epoch. An epoch is roughly 5,125 years, and
this is what culminated on December 21.
In
summary, the Mayans accomplished a lot in their long reign, yet there is still
a lot we don’t know about them.
This doesn’t explain why people care about the calendar so much. To see
what all the fuss was about, I visited a land of Mayan descendants in Chichicastenango,
Guatemala.
The
locals were gearing up for celebrating the end of the cycle and the tourists
were increasing to see what will happen if the world ends. Surprisingly, they seemed casual about
the whole thing. Watching the
surviving Mayans go about life in a casual, normal way seemed to imply that the
calendar wasn't going to change anything.
It seemed like just a heavily symbolic holiday. And if they weren’t so excited about
it, then why was everybody else?
***
"Here's
the hand print, the left hand of a person who put it right there. In the stone and mud right there. You know when you put your fingers in
the hand print, it makes 2,200 years evaporate," archaeologist Richard
Hansen said[3].
He
had discovered a shaft beneath a pyramid that had not been entered for who
knows how long. Inside on the
dried brick was an indented hand print. A live human Mayan had made it. It was a form of human
connection. Hansen was clearly
emotionally affected.
I
got a similar feeling at an ancient church in Chichicastenango. Imagining the world as it once was
brought upon feelings that inspired deep reflection, the excitement of mystery,
and just over all awe and wonder.
It
occurred to me that this was why people put such an importance on the end of
the calendar. These feelings of
mystery, excitement and reverence perhaps hint at something important. After all, this is what the new age
Mayanists seem to refer to: not
tactical things, but spiritual things.
And perhaps if there's so much missing information about the Mayans,
then maybe these feelings could fill in the gaps.
This
appears to match the beliefs of new age Mayanists. I use the term “Mayanists” here to describe people who find
spiritual guidance from Mayan relics. One is Barbara Hand Clow, a writer who published
a book in 2007 called The Mayan Time Code. This book attempts to solve
the mystery of the calendar, which she says involves time acceleration. As the
kins and uinals and tuns and etc. repeat, time accelerates, with the cycle
completing on December 21. These
time accelerations are actually measuring biological evolution, she says, which
is partly why things like technology and science have been exponentially
advancing.
However,
she seems to make these conclusions based on feeling and not fact. Here are some excerpts to show as
examples:
- “I will not spend much time on the pros and cons of scholarly disputes about Maya origins, since our interest is primarily in their Calendar. From my perspective as an indigenous person, I often differ with the opinions of archaeologists and anthropologists[4].”
- “If you think about it, the simultaneous global emergence of civilization in 3113 BC feels organic, as if humanity received an evolutionary signal 5,125 years ago[5].”
- “Once when I was rattling with my Turtle Nation rattle in the Temple of the Foliated Cross at Palenque, two arrogant archaeologists tried to interrupt me. They almost fell off the edge of the temple when invisible temple guardians pushed them![6]”
From
this we see that she disagrees with scientists because of her lineage, she
makes conclusions based on feelings (“feels organic”) and claims to have been
aware of the presence of “invisible temple guardians.”
Another
example of this comes from a claimed descendant of the Mayans named Ac
Tah. He explains his reasoning In
a YouTube video titled "Mayan explanation of what
will happen on 21st December 2012." At a small room in front of people in
Santa Monica, he explained that the Earth would be aligned with the center of
the universe. A "cosmic
ray" would come from the
center of the galaxy to hit the earth in the region stretching from the
southern US to Guatemala. This ray
will elevate our consciousnesses, and we will "realize all the errors of
your ways and everything that's going on in your life."
A lot of Mayanists will talk
about consciousness. Consciousness
is what we think about, and what things we consider are important. About what we feel about things. Chasing
feelings.
Did
it happen? Apparently so. On Christmas Day, he posted this on his
Facebook page:
WE DID IT!!!! WE WENT
IN, TOOK THAT ENERGY , AND TRANSMITTED IT TO THE 13 PYRAMIDS IN MEXICO AND
TAOS, N.M AND SANTA CRUZ, CA.
UNITY AT IT'S BEST...
NOW CONTINUE TO HOLD
THIS WONDERFUL ENERGY IN OUR EARTH, DO THE MAGNETIC MOVMENTS, BE IN YOUR MOST
HAPPIEST SELF.
MUCH LOVE TO ALL!
PLEASE POST YOUR
PICTURES OF ALL THE BEAUTIFUL EVENTS IN THE WORLD! WE THANK YOU FOR BEING
YOU!!!
Further,
these people tend to be at odds with modern society. Hand Clow did not trust modern science or politics. Ac Tah thinks that our world needs to be
improved upon, which can only come from this consciousness elevation. Perhaps if one doesn’t like current
society, then they can find answers in ancient societies that had been
destroyed.
Angie,
an English student of mine, told me that she believes a new era will start, and
that all the bad people will go away.
Similarly, this is what Diego de Landa wanted: the devil and his ideas must be stopped, the world must
accept Christian thought and anyone who disagrees will die.
As
for the rest of us, NASA offers some reassurances to cosmic alliances and
December 21. Unlike some people
predicted, the planets were not aligned.
There would be one alignment, of the Earth, the Sun and the center of the Milky
Way Galaxy. This, though, happens every December 21. NASA didn’t report
any unusual activity at all that day.
Yet
the Mayanists are not going to listen to NASA. The feelings are real.
The more they dwell on the feelings, the truer they are. Anyone who disagrees is
inconsequential. We are ignorant
about the Mayans enough so that unbelievable things can not always be proven
unbelievable.
The
end of the current world has begun whether we believe in it or not.
…of
that day and hour knoweth no man.
I
was living in Mexico for maybe a week when I first met a Jehovah's
Witness. He easily spotted me in a
sea of non-English speaking Mexicans and gave me a pamphlet about meetings in
English. This surprised me. Meetings in English? In León? Where probably 99% of the population speaks Spanish? But he was just the first. As time went on, foreign English
speakers would spot me, stop for a short conversation and then invite me to a
meeting. It started to become
predictable--if a foreign stranger spoke to me in León, they were Jehovah's
Witnesses.
They
are everywhere it seems, because they have an urgency about them. The urgency, according to their web site, is that the world will be ending
soon.
The
Jehovah's Witnesses have their origins with a man named Charles Taze
Russell. Influenced by William
Miller, who had incorrectly prophesied the end of the world in 1844, Russell
came to think that traditional Christian teachings were wrong, and started to
fervently study the Bible. From
this Russell got the idea that holidays shouldn't be celebrated and that only
144,000 people would go to heaven.
He especially became interested in calculating when the end of times would occur, deciding that Christ would return
in 1874. When nobody saw Christ at
that time, they decided that they had been incorrect about the manner in which
He would make his return, in that he had come back invisibly which was why nobody
could see Him. In forty years,
they prophesied, Gods Kingdom would be established on earth. Needless to say, the followers were
excited.
As
we all know, this didn't happen in 1914.
To this, the Witnesses both then and now admit. One would expect people to leave the
church after this, and some did.
But the majority stayed on.
As the December 5 Watch Tower of that year said, "Even if
the time of our change should not come within ten years, what more should we
ask? Are we not a blessed, happy people? Is not our God faithful? If anyone
knows anything better, let him take it. If any of you ever find anything
better, we hope you will tell us. We know of nothing better nor half as good as
what we have found in the Word of God."
They
then moved the dates to 1915. Then
1918. After Russell died, Joseph
Franklin Rutherford took over and set a date for 1925. The latest prediction was in 1975. Despite this, they are among the fastest
growing churches in the US today.
This
isn't exactly unusual, though. "A Brief History of the Apocalypse"
lists hundreds of failed apocalypse predictions. The earliest doomsday caution comes from 2800 BC, in which
an Assyrian clay tablet claimed we were in the "latter days." The latest has just passed by, but
never fear, the site lists 11 more that are still to come.
Christians
are especially prevalent with this. Harold Camping predicted the rapture in 2011, Chuck Smith
predicted the rapture in 1981, Edgar C. Whisenant wrote an entire book about
the rapture occurring in 1988, all the way up to 2060 where Isaac Newton
predicted the end of times using the Book of Daniel as reference. This is common because the Bible
mentions signs to look for to know that the end is near. Some of them are that "nation will
rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom" (Matt.24, 6-7),
"there will be food shortage" (Matt.24,7-8), and "there will be
great earthquakes," (Matt.24,29) among many others.
These
signs are somewhat vague and could be used to argue that they are true today,
which causes people to set dates and for new movements to begin. But what happens when they don't come
true? If the prophecy comes true
and proves the beliefs, then do untrue prophecies disprove the beliefs? To the non-believers, the answer is
yes. Unfulfilled prophecies
completely discredit the prophet.
But the strange thing is, most times, believers will continue to believe
anyway.
To
get some clarification on this, I went and talked to a Jehovah's Witness. He was easy to find for two
reasons: 1.) They are more than
happy to talk to anybody and 2.) I work with at least 8 of them. I explained to them how I'm interested
in end of times ideas and stumbled upon their religion in my research. He delved right into Bible verses,
showing why and what they believed was true. His name was Scott.
Scott
explained to me that everything in human history comes down to a grand
experiment between human beings and God.
God is slowly proving to us that we are not very good at ruling
ourselves and that we need God to do it for us. And our time is running out, as seen from the Bible, which,
as he explained to me, is a very prophetic book. It has made very specific prophecies that have come
true. The three big ones are
these: 1.) The fall of Babylon and how no one
would ever live there again (Isaiah 45) 2.) The fall of Tyre (Ezekiel 26) and
3.) the destruction of Jerusalem (Daniel 9 and several other passages). These came true, and so whatever else
the Bible predicts for the end of times must then also come true.
He
showed me the signs that must happen for the world to end. How there will be war, pestilence, food
shortages and earthquakes. He
concedes that yes, these things have been happening since forever. However, according to him, they have
not been happening in this high of a concentration any time before in
history. Also, people are too
caught up in their daily lives, "as in the days of Noah," he told me,
which is another sign of the times. This is all saying that Armageddon will come soon, where the
wicked will be destroyed and the meek will soon inherit the earth. And God (Jehovah) is warning us about
this through his witnesses, the Jehovah's Witnesses.
About
the 1914 prediction, Scott didn't deny it happened. As he told me, it's a published fact. He also didn't deny the 1975
prediction, but claimed not to have heard of 1915, 1918 and 1925. To account for Russell's lack in
judgment, Scott again brought out Bible verses. He pointed out how even Jesus' disciples, people who
"should know the scriptures better than anybody," looked "to the
fulfillment of prophecy ahead of God's timetable," as the January 1, 2013
issue of Watchtower pointed out., as per Luke 19:11.
He
explained through metaphor, as he did quite a bit, how if a lookout for a city
saw some smoke in the distance that people would want him/her to inform us
rather than just assume it was nothing.
And how sometimes there are some "overzealous" believers who
want the Kingdom of God so badly to come that they predict it without thinking
about it.
He
also pointed me to a passage in one of their books for conversions, What
Does the Bible Really Teach?, that discusses 1914 as an important
year anyway. Through careful
mathematical calculations using calendars and Biblical number theory (three and
a half times is equal to 1,260 days and a day for a year) they can deduce that
1914 was marking the kick off of all the concentrated war, famine, earthquakes
and pestilences. To them, the
false prophesy did not prove their religion wrong.
***
Leon
Festinger was a psychologist who one day read in the newspaper that a woman was
in contact with aliens. The aliens
told her of the impending end of the world. The date was (coincidentally) December 21. She attracted followers, including
Festinger who infiltrated the group to see what would happen when the prophecy
didn't come true.
When
the world didn't come to an end, the followers became distraught. Why didn't the world end? They were so sure! But it was then that the leader
received a new message from the aliens:
that the world had been spared due the "force of good and
light," coming from the group members. And the followers believed it. Instead of abandoning the lady in light of evidence that
most likely proved her false, they redoubled their efforts and became even more
fervent about spreading the word.
From this, Festinger developed his theory of cognitive
dissonance. When a strong and
deep-held belief comes into conflict with conflicting evidence, this causes
discomfort. The brain tries
to reduce this discomfort in one of three ways: they can change their beliefs, acquire new information to
strengthen their original belief, or to dismiss the conflicting information
altogether. Which is why people
will continue to believe things even if they learn they are not true. As Festinger said in his book: "A man with a conviction is a hard
man to change. Tell him you disagree and he turns away. Show him facts or
figures and he questions your sources. Appeal to logic and he fails to see your
point."
Festinger
noted that the following characteristics are necessary to believe something in
the face of conflicting evidence:
1.
The belief must be held with deep conviction and be relevant to the believer's
actions or behavior.
2.
The belief must have produced actions that are difficult to undo.
3.
The belief must be sufficiently specific and concerned with the real world such
that it can be clearly disconfirmed.
4.
The disconfirmatory evidence must be recognized by the believer.
5.
The believer must have social support from other believers.
To
compensate for the 1914 lapse, the Jehovah's Witnesses acquired new information
to strengthen their original beliefs. They said that a person on the watchtower should report
anything they see, that even Jesus disciples made this mistake, that 1914 was a
significant year anyway, etc. The
five characteristics fit them very well, and it also explains why it is they
have grown greatly in numbers since these times.
It
doesn't matter if beliefs are "right" or "wrong." People are going to believe them
anyway.
Insurance
policies
"I
would say we have an excess of 50,000 pounds of food," said Paul Range, a
63 year-old veteran living on the outskirts of San Antonio.
This
is where he lives on the "Range compound," a.k.a. his house, which is
built out of nine 40 foot steel shipping containers that can carry 58,000
pounds each. For power are wind
and solar generators. For gas, he
harvests the methane from his pig's, goat's, chicken's and human waste. He has stores of rifles, pistols and
what appear to be automatic weapons.
Range
is worried about a polar shift affecting the earth. He doesn't have much faith in the economy, government or
food supply, and thinks that they wouldn't be maintained very well in the event
of such a catastrophe. This is why
he lives the way he does. In this
way, he can take care of himself.
Self-sufficient and off the grid. Range is a prepper.
If
this sounds familiar, it's because he's been on TV, on National Geographic's
"Doomsday Preppers[7]." This show profiles preppers, people who
work to be able to be self-sufficient for an extended period of time in the
event of an emergency. They aren't
people who believe in some sort of vague prophecy, but people who feel that
they can not depend on society for survival. They can only depend on themselves in the event of a large
scale catastrophe.
A
pole shift, what Range is concerned about, is when the magnetized poles at
either end of our planet suddenly switch places. The poles, for complicated reasons, shift every few hundred
thousand years or so, making north south and south north. If this happened, electricity would be
majorly disrupted for some time, and continents would move along the Earth's
mantle. There would be earthquakes
and tsunamis.
Since
this hasn't happened for a while, people like Range think that it is very
likely to happen at any moment.
Scientists, though, disagree with a rapid pole shift, and claim that a more gradual pole shift is already taking place.
This,
though, is just one of the potential catastrophes that preppers are concerned
about. Robert Brockway wrote a
book about it called Everything is Going to Kill Everybody - The Terrifyingly
Real Ways the World Wants you Dead.
It lists many ways horrible catastrophe could befall us, such as meteor
crashes, supervolcanos, megatsunamis and hypercanes.
The
scary thing is that these aren't impossible. A meteor just missed Earth this past year, and, according to Brockway, there are at least
5,000 asteroids dangerously close to Earth. A supervolcano, which can disperse a mass of magma
equivalent to the size of small country, is currently making movements in
Yosemite National Park.
Megatsunamis could take out entire cities, and hypercanes can take out
the entire world. And are
possible.
However
possible they are, though, they are also very unlikely. This is why other
preppers are often more concerned about something even more untrustworthy: people. They fear overpopulation could exceed the carrying capacity. That the world economy is too tenuous
to trust, or that oil might run out soon.
Despite
these fears, to spend the majority of one's free time prepping as Range seems
excessive. These people seem a bit
crazy to think a post-apocalyptic world could erupt overnight. But as Dave Chappelle said, "The
worst thing to call someone is crazy.
It's dismissive. I don't
understand this person, so they're crazy." So to understand preppers and prepping more, I created an
online poll and posted it to a prepper's forum on reddit.com.
I
got 17 responses, and from them I suddenly got a very different view of
preppers than what NatGeo told me.
***
"I'm
always annoyed by the constant focus on the apocalypse and end times. Sure,
there are quite a few preppers who focus on that, but it really doesn't deserve
all the attention it gets. This constant focus on the most unlikely scenarios turns
a lot of people off prepping and leaves them vulnerable to the more mundane
disasters," a user named potifar said.
They
continued, "Prepping, for me at least, is much more about the everyday
'disasters.' Financial disasters, like losing my job or getting an unexpected
bill, are much more likely to occur and are easily dealt with by having some
food and money in store. Temporary power outages can be made much more
comfortable with a little preparation. Keeping a fresh backup of my computers
and phone prevents annoying data loss."
Another
user, by the name of bardwick, agreed. "(Doomsday Preppers) is a
punch line with preppers. I can't
stress enough how idiotic (that show) is.
Even the participants watch the final cut and ask why they were portrayed
as a nut job."
Most
of them came from all around the US, but responses also came from Europe,
Canada and Australia. They had a
wide variety of jobs, from patent litigator, industrial worker, student,
architect and web developer. For
specific prepping, the most food stored away was enough for one year. Most said they also have gardens, and a
few mentioned certain skills, such as military training, firewood skills, and
first aid training.
Some
people admitted that they spent a lot of their time prepping and that this
hinders them from doing other things.
However, many mentioned that this is what they enjoy doing and are happy
with it. Others mentioned that
doing anything obsessively is usually bad, and that if prepping is interfering
with one's life, then they're probably doing it wrong.
Most
said that they would not want an apocalypse, that there is nothing appealing
about that time. Others said some
things could be good, as some seem to see a need for current society to change. For example, one responder said that
debt would be cancelled and a new monetary system would be installed, and
another person was in favor of the end of the consumer cycle. Another felt they would be vindicated,
saying they would "feel that my actions matter."
A
few people come across as being mistrustful and unfavorable of the current way
of life because they see a lot of features of current societal life as
damaging. Others seemed to think
that maybe our society is OK, but we live in a fantasy world that everything is
going to be all right forever.
"The
vast majority of Americans are unprepared. I also believe that most people in
third-world countries are more prepared than the average American. I don't
think those people in those countries talk about being prepared which is why
the apparent discrepancy appears. We live a very pampered lifestyle in the US
and most people today think that what their grandparents generation did was
radical. My grandparents had enough food in their basement to feed many people
for years. They didn't call it prepping and didn't think it unusual. It was
just a part of what they did. The question to me is why do we think that we're
the normal ones? We have been living in a period of relative peace and
prosperity long enough to forget that times aren't always good," user
edheler said.
They
make compelling points, that maybe we shouldn't expect things to always be
OK. Maybe we see things like
failed end of the world predictions and overly-obsessive people on Doomsday
Preppers and think that any belief on catastrophes is "crazy" and
not worth the time.
Some
of the catastrophic scenarios listed above seem unrealistic, but then there are
actual catastrophes that have happened.
The Great Recession is still lingering. The Great Depression wasn't even 100 years ago. Greece and much of Europe are in
difficult economic straits.
Hurricanes Rita and Katrina.
Tsunamis in Japan.
Earthquakes in South America.
"Doomsday
Preppers" often has the subjects respond to accusations of being called crazy. Evidently, this is a question on most
people's minds. We think they're
crazy, because we want them to be crazy.
We want them to be the Mayanists.
We want them to be the failed Jesus-return prophecy. What they're saying implies a complete
change of lifestyle and world.
That is hard to comprehend.
This
will always be a common response to any proposed disaster scenario. The majority of climate change
scientists say climate change is real, yet at a U.N. Climate Summit on November 12, the US
"resisted calls for deeper emissions cuts." Investigative reporter
Michael Ruppert is sure that we have reached Peak Oil, meaning that we are
close to running out. Giant banks
are very often caught doing illegal things with large amounts of money. Yet no big large-scale changes are coming
from these warnings.
One
reason is there is always information out there to contradict what the
doomsayers claim. Both sides of an
issue can sound logical, and if someone isn't an expert on the issue, it can be
hard to know what to believe. Just
like people will seemingly believe anything, people can find ways to not
believe in anything. Which means a
lot of people just aren't going to care.
YOLO
All
three of these groups believe a big change is going to happen. A change that will effect the whole
world. A change that will cause us
to live differently. Their beliefs
are related to apocalypse stories.
Apocalypse stories will always be a major element of a belief system,
because apocalypse is a way that makes belief real. And we are interested in apocalypse because we either don't
like the current world, want to know what the end of the story will be, because
we expect the world to one day end and want to be prepared, or all three. Finally, we believe in such things out
of spiritual fulfillment, psychological necessity, and a general sense of
responsibility. However, most of
us are not going to care.
"What would you do if you knew the world was ending?" This was another question I asked
countless people over the past year.
The answers varied. How
soon would it end? In a day? In a month? Certainly those would mean different decisions. One day, and they're spending it with
people they love. One month, and
they have some time to do that crazy bucket list stuff they supposedly have
always been wanting to do but didn't have the motivation until their own mortality
became evident.
It
also depends on if only they knew or if everybody knew. If the world ended in a month and
everybody knew, they wouldn't be able to do that bucket list stuff, because the
people who fly skydiving planes wouldn't be working. If they were the only ones who knew, would they try to warn
people? Who would believe them?
What
some people said is that they live everyday like their it's their last. But is that true? If you knew it was your last day, would
you really go to work, away from your loved wife and children? Would you go to the grocery to buy and
cook dinner instead of eating at the most expensive and delicious
restaurant? I suppose what these
people really mean is to not waste any days. To treat everyday like it's important, because one day there
won't be any left. No regrets.
Most
of us live as though life isn't
ending after midnight. We
save money, try to eat healthy and drive carefully. As such, it's sometimes fun to fantasize about the world
ending, because then we wouldn't have to be careful about anything
anymore. Even though we know that
an apocalypse would suck. Hence
songs by Ke$ha who says she "Wants to die young," or songs by Usher that encourage us to "dance (dance) like it's the last (last) night
of your life (life)."
After
watching the Mayanists do their ceremonies for a couple hours, we climbed down
the Pyramid of the Moon and left Teotihuacan. We took a 40 minute bus ride into Mexico City. I was with two other teacher friends
who were interested in being tourists.
We
made it back to the bus station, where hundreds of people were getting to where
they needed to be for work and Christmas.
We took the metro to an art museum, and we saw hundreds of thousands of
people going about their day.
Working, eating, shopping, playing. It was just another day in one of the largest cities in the
world. No evident change had
occurred.
The only thing that we can know from all of this is that no world changing event had happened. It was even more obvious the next day: on December 22, everything was still here. The world hadn't ended. There wasn't a mass die off. No planet collided with earth. There weren't any supervolcano eruptions, megatsunamis, mass coronal injections, polar shifts, earthquakes or hurricanes. The world economy didn't collapse and mass oil shortages weren't announced. No aliens showed up, and consciousnesses weren't suddenly exploded. Jesus didn't come back and God didn't rain down final judgments.
Of
course some people still believe in the stuff. While it's difficult to argue against a planet not colliding
with earth, the aliens could always have postponed the destruction. It's really hard to argue against an
invisible cosmic beam coming down and temporarily raising consciousnesses,
though, so maybe that happened. In any case, there is one other thing we do
know: this has been the biggest end of world fascination since Y2K, and it's
not going to be the last.
We
can react to the end of the world in three ways: in believing that there's meaning behind it and embracing
it, by preparing to survive through it, or by ignoring it. The end of the world is fascinating to
us, which sometimes causes a few of us to believe in people or stories that
claim to have the answer because we feel something and they have their own sort
of logic. We want to believe so
bad, that we will continue to embrace such beliefs even if events prove us
wrong. This makes doomsayers look
crazy. This can be dangerous
because it makes us think that the world will never end nor be greatly altered.
It can cause us to either not believe anything could happen, or feel there is
nothing we can do about it except to welcome it, because the end of all things
is freeing and gives us an excuse to do whatever we want.
We're
waiting for giant revelations. For
everything to make sense. The big
mistake lies in that we think it will just show up one day. It won't.
May
I offer a replacement: to believe
that the world is never going to end.
That we will be here forever, and that we have control over how nice it
is. Let us stop with the cynicism
and pessimism. Let's stop
insisting that humanity's current consciousness is awful. That God is always going to take care
of us. That we can't trust each other.
People
will believe in things not because they make sense, but because of a feeling it
gives them. The more they learn
about this feeling, the more it makes sense, and soon the belief becomes real,
even if there is conflicting evidence.
For some of us, the conflicting evidence becomes confusing. It can be easier to just not believe in
anything.
In Mother Night, Kurt Vonnegut wrote: "We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be." I would like to think that this can also apply to belief:
We
are what we believe, so we must be very careful as to what we believe.
This is belief. Nobody understands it, but we all have
to do it.
[1]Dawn of the Maya, National Geographic,
2004.
[2] Lost King of the Maya. PBS, 2001
[3]
Dawn of the Maya, National Geographic, 2004.
[4]
Clow, Barbara Hand (2010-04-10). The Mayan
Code: Time Acceleration and Awakening the World Mind (Kindle Locations
494-496). Inner Traditions Bear & Company. Kindle Edition.
[5] Clow, Barbara Hand (2010-04-10). The Mayan Code: Time Acceleration
and Awakening the World Mind (Kindle Locations 547-548). Inner Traditions Bear
& Company. Kindle Edition.
[6]
Clow, Barbara Hand (2010-04-10). The Mayan
Code: Time Acceleration and Awakening the World Mind (Kindle Locations
597-598). Inner Traditions Bear & Company. Kindle Edition.
[7] Episode
101, "Bullets, Lots of Bullets.”
Originally aired February 7, 2012.
