So no matter what time zone you live in and what part of the world, the end of days associated with the Mayan calendar was as anti-climatic as Harold Camping's failed rapture call. So perhaps the end of the world will not come with a bang, but through a slow process of attrition like a river wearing down a rock. The rock doesn't explode. It just wears down.
Many people joked about the end of the world (including me). But I have to wonder if there was this niggling idea in the back of many people's minds wondering "what if?" And I think there may be just a bit of a sense of relief (or disappointment) that nothing happened.
There is a certain "carrot and stick" aspect to human nature. We are motivated by the potential of events happening. We, as a species, seem to need something (positive or negative) to look forward to. It could be as simple as the weekend or as complex as the end of the world. We need something to look forward to in order to escape the mundane.
Perhaps it is how we deal with the inevitability of our own death. It would somehow be easier to accept our own end if everything else was being snuffed out at the same time.
I write this as I watch yet another documentary about the Mayan prediction of the end of the world (or the Western world's interpretation of the Mayan prediction). I suppose it is the last day when they can screen such a documentary. Because tomorrow, it all gets filed as bull shit and we will move on to the next ancient text prediction of the end of the world.
Just please don't let it be Harold Camping who comes up with it.
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