Oct
Doomsday or Dumday?
Recently, there have been advertisements for a film that is based on an interpretation of a Mayan manuscript. According to the story, the world is supposed to end in the year 2012. The basis for the interpretation is rather flimsy. Supposedly, the Mayan calendar ends in 2012.
A few things refute this. There is another Mayan manuscript which mentions future dates past the year 4,000. Even more important is the reaction of the Mayans themselves. They think it is silly, and that the doomsday interpretation is wrong. The Mayan doomsday is a fallacy.
I remember an incident over 40 years ago. There was a rumor going around that unless all teenagers went to church and prayed on a particular Friday, either the world was going to end or some other silly disaster would strike. Friday came, the churches were not full of teenagers, and nothing happened.
The Jehovah’s Witnesses predicted Doomsday many times, and each one came and went without a flutter. The only result was that the Witnesses had to make some sort of excuse to explain why their prophecy failed.
Many fundamentalist Christians believe that the book of Revelation in their bible portends dire events and doomsday. That take the book literally, when it is actually something else entirely. The book is more of a gnostic text, although with the use of Middle Eastern symbolism. It is allegorical and symbolic, not prophetic. Other people look at the prophecies of Nostrodamus as if they are infallible. Few know that some of that work was tampered with several times. Also, many of its prophecies have not come true.
There are people who regard Ragnarok as a portent of a future doomsday. A few Heathens even burn their nail clippings so as to help delay those events. Ragnarok is a composite story, and is at best a myth in transition. The stories are nice, but they are just stories. For the most part, the myth is an allegory of the annual cycle when the world descends into winter and then re-emerges in spring.
Doomsday is a thing of hype rather than fact. People have been predicting the end of the world since the earliest times. Doomsday myths occur in all cultures. Most center around a series of cataclysms, all of which are exaggerated versions of natural disasters. Many also have a human component, such as the great battle of Armageddon in the Christian book of Revelation. These stories need to be taken with a grain of salt the size of size of a basketball.
There will always be people who like to frighten themselves. They latch onto doomsday prophecies, much as a morbid few obsessed about the “Bomb” during the days of “duck and cover”. We do best to ignore them and their silly horror tales. Life is to be lived fully. A pall of trepidation is no way to live. Make up your mind that you will go forth confidently. Allow no prophecy to cause you worry. Remember that the power to make a difference goes to those who have faith in life rather than fear of troubles.
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My old jujitsu teacher had been a Marine at Guadalcanal. He remembered how the men huddled in their foxholes when the Japanese artillery shelled them at night. The men waited for the barrage to be over, hoping that they would not “get theirs.” Years later, he was reminded of it when he taught self-defense. The man was appalled at the people who were so afraid of “getting theirs” that they hid in their apartments. As he put it, “They are so worried about “getting theirs” that they never get to live.”
Better to live courageously than to hide in self-imposed confinement.
Perhaps it is like the turtle. The only way the turtle can go forward is to stick his neck out.
