Tick-Tock Tick-Tock 2012

December 21, 2012. The end of the Mayan calendar. This is the 'big day' people have been pointing to as the 'end of the world.' And now it is finally here...

Just like all the other 'end of the world' days previously predicted in the past - numerous other times religious sects have marked as 'the last days' foretold in holy writings. According to a Huffington Post article (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/20/apocalypse-predictions-182-other-days-world-supposed-to-end_n_2341088.html?ir=Comedy) there were 182 other 'end of the world' predictions.

Question is, why do people want the world as we know it to end?

Yes, there is unfairness, there is suffering, there is hunger, there is death, there is evil perpetrated by misguided and just plain cruel individuals and groups. And yes it is a wonderful flight of fancy to believe that something much better will replace what's here now. But imagining it does not make it true. No one knows what the hereafter holds for those who cross the threshold from life to death. No one has ever definitively returned to proclaim that a hereafter even exists, where the essence of a person continues on in a sentient state.

There are many individuals and groups who try to cash in on that basic ignorance and desperation that grips people who are taught from infancy to believe unquestioningly in the words of others. Most of those words are suppositions, guesses, stories told in the framework of understanding at the time to explain the why and how of how the world works. And believing the words of some 'prophet' with ulterior motives (like trying to get folks to strap on a bomb vest and blow up a building full of people in exchange for 100 virgins in heaven with Allah) may be the only way out of the dismal life many folks have right now. But of course that doesn't answer the reward quotient for the women who are forced to don said vests in hopes of protecting their families from being murdered by said 'prophets' and their lackeys. The women don't get the promises of virgins, and many may not even be tantalized with a life in heaven with Allah. So there are some illogical inequities built in to a lot of these fantasies perpetrated against people who fear to examine - yes, even doubt - the long-held traditional beliefs that seem to have no relevance today. Take for instance the Jonestown massacre in Guyana. What was the point of that? http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/notorious_murders/mass/jonestown/index_1.html
It's just crazy people killing other people. Belief doesn't matter. Motive doesn't matter. Reason doesn't matter. End result tells the moral. These murderers are just effing crazy.

Ignorance and fear and superstition will always trump reason and fact. Why? Because it's easier to believe in something that illogically promises the impossible - especially if that impossibility can never be substantiated by any known means. That's why fairy tales and comic book superheroes are so popular and remain so even today. It's easy to glorify the impossible, but much more difficult to find real heroes who try to do the right thing, here and now, in the world of today as we know it. Let's try focusing on making things better for everyone, and stop giving credence to the nutcases and butchers and mass-murderers who steal all the glory. Let's stop predicting the end of the world and start trying to take care of it and make it a better home. Right now, and for the foreseeable future, it's the only one we've got...