2012 According to the Mayan Calendar

Supposedly, the Mayan calendar predicts that the end of the world or something as significant as that will occur on December 21, 2012. This is based on the fact that the Mayan calendar ends on exactly that date. The bottom line is that the ancient Mayans did not project their calendar beyond that date, which implies that it somehow makes no sense to do so because beyond that date, you would no longer have any use for the calendar, perhaps because by then, the world would have ended.

I consider this unfounded for at least two reasons: common sense and the credibility of the source of the prophecy. On the basis of common sense, it is of course certain that the Mayan astronomers who calculated the calendar would have to end up somewhere in their calculation. In theory, they could have followed and calculated a million-year calendar. But would they do that? That would have been impractical and a simple waste of time and effort. They simply had to stop at some date and it turned out to be a date corresponding to December 21, 2012 on our modern calendar. It could have been January 11, 2014, November 30, 2016, and any other date of your choosing. If the Mayan astronomers stopped their projected calendar on November 30, 2016, I guess the doomsday prophets would now also be saying that the end of the world will be on November 30, 2016.

Second, what credibility do the Mayans have in the first place? They had a degenerate civilization characterized by genocidal tribal warfare and human sacrifice as part of their religious worship. These probably contributed to its complete destruction. They simply disappeared from history. If the Mayans were not even able to predict the total disappearance of their culture and civilization, why would you attribute to them the ability to predict the future of the world?

Despite this, however, the feeling of apprehension is a very difficult thing to eradicate, especially in these times when we are faced with many uncertainties about where the world is really going. Consider the impact of climate change, for example, and how it will affect the earth for decades to come. Consider the not-so-remote possibility that one of these days, a giant comet or meteor strikes the earth with devastating consequences. These are all scientific facts or possibilities and we cannot simply rule out the possibility that, in fact, the end of the world as we know it is not a remote possibility.

Linked to the scientific scenario is the curious fact that a large number of prophecies claim that the end of the world is coming, something in the near future. The most important of these prophecies is none other than the long-awaited second coming of Christ among Christians, which is supposed to be accompanied by world upheavals, an event that can also be equated to the “end of the world”.

What if in the end, all of the above is mocked and, in fact, we are now on a countdown to something big and momentous that could happen as soon as we get closer to December 21, 2012? Well, there really isn’t much we can do about it. But it is a good thing to be aware and psychologically prepared for what may come on that date.