Sunday, December 9, 2012

People will believe anything...

Sometime this month the Mayan long count calender reaches the end of its long count. Some people believe this presages the end of the world as we know it and have stocked up on various canned and dried goods to outright purchase of survival centres. It's not particularly bothering me, people are entitled to believe what they want so long as they don't try to force their views on me (Yes government I'm looking at you here) nor expect me to pay for their foibles.
Telegraph.
Fears that the end of the world is nigh have spread across the world with only days until the end of the Mayan calendar, with doomsday-mongers predicting a cataclysmic end to the history of Earth.
Ahead of December 21, which marks the conclusion of the 5,125-year "Long Count" Mayan calendar, panic buying of candles and essentials has been reported in China and Russia, along with an explosion in sales of survival shelters in America. In France believers were preparing to converge on a mountain where they believe aliens will rescue them.
The precise manner of Armageddon remains vague, ranging from a catastrophic celestial collision between Earth and the mythical planet Nibiru, also known as Planet X, a disastrous crash with a comet, or the annihilation of civilisation by a giant solar storm.
Thing is there's always someone predicting the end of the world, the Jehovah's Witnesses had a handle on millennialism for decades before going very quiet about their history and the various spurious claims made by the leadership which somehow or other never came to pass and were wiped from the official record. Almost every religion has its end of the world 'myth' it's frequently used to keep its followers in line and not questioning why the priests need all those people to sacrifice or other odd bits of dogma which worked ok in the 7th century but clearly have no place today.
The internet itself has added to the panic as well as a couple of Hollywood films, it's very easy to reinforce your fears simply by googling, still that's freedom of choice for you, it allows you the freedom to be an idiot...
Thing is, what most of these people don't seem to get is the odd thing about calenders...
When you reach the end of one, you start another after December 31st comes January 1st. We should be celebrating a happy new long cycle calender...
Mayans themselves reject any notion that the world will end. Pedro Celestino Yac Noj, a Mayan sage, burned seeds and fruits to mark the end of the old calender at a ceremony in Cuba. He said: "The 21st is for giving thanks and gratitude and the 22nd welcomes the new cycle, a new dawn."
Says it all really.

8 annotations:

Farenheit211 said...

I'm going to file this among the bits of evidence that quite a few humans are far too easily led by plausible but ultimately unlikely theories.

This cry that the world is ending is being carried out by people who do not discriminate between what is reality and what is not. Maybe there is a correspondence in those of the population who believe the worlds going end on 21/12 and those who think that 'eastenders' is a documentary.

Macheath said...

f211 - There are certainly plenty of them about:

'A woman was plagued with almost 3,000 text messages and hundreds of calls after her mobile phone number was displayed on EastEnders.'
(Daily Mail, April 2010)


Ripper said...

Oh crap.. You mean it isn't going to end?? I'd better beg for my job back, dump the 19 year old blonde that I left the wife for and return the Ferrari I just got on finance. Oh, and the half million quid loan..

banned said...

People like you were equally mocking of the Year 2,000 (Y2K) disaster and look what happened then!

Peter MacFarlane said...

Reminds me of the Y2K debacle as well.

Actually I did rather well out of that, because my employers convinced themselves that there would be a shortage of IT support people and started paying out huge "retention bonuses".

Well, we were retained OK. We retained the money too. But the senior managers all vanished about a month after nothing happened on 1/1/00. :-)

Anonymous said...

Stonyground says:

How well supported by evidence are these examples of idiocy? I only ask because newspapers do have a bit of a reputation for lying and making stuff up.

On the other hand, we do have that video of the guy looking baffled after he had given all of his money to Harold Camping. He just couldn't understand how the world could still be here the day after Harold's prophesy.

Macheath said...

It's a shame the idea didn't take off that everyone living near Harold Camping's followers should hide somewhere on the appointed rapture day, leaving the faithful wandering around asking themselves, 'Hey, guys, weren't we the ones who were supposed to be raptured?'

Craig said...

David Ickes forum has a lot to answer for here.

F'cking crackpots.