That awkward moment when you have to tell all those people who read your book, paid you money to create a bunker, or otherwise financially supported you in anticipation of the end of the world that you are full of it. My question to humanity. Can we please stop trying to create a fatalist sense that the world is doomed by some pre-set governance? The reality is that society needs to stop absolving themselves from responsibility by blaming the end on some ordained message in the stars.
We today, and by the way every day up until this day, have always controlled what kind of people we will be. Frankly we don’t need some higher force to destroy us, we are doing great at it already.
There are logical, and self caused, explanations to what some call signs of the end. Earthquakes in the midwest aren’t a signal of a great earthquake, they are caused by frak’ing, and the bigger worry should be the contamination of the water supply. Violence isn’t erupting in the middle east and Africa as a final countdown, it is the result of a half century of muddled, and often selfish, foreign policy from the developed world. Hurricanes slamming the US more powerfully, with high surges, and more damage than ever isn’t the beginnings of a biblical flood, it’s the earth finding equilibrium with our increasing pollutant output. All of these being over-reported, and yet mis-reported, by the media thereby creating a greater sense of uneducated alarm.
Sadly (for those who don’t want to admit they are hurting the world) the end is in our own hands. In other words, how you act will have an impact on our future. The end, or avoidance of the end, is in our own hands.
It is ironic that at the core of this latest incarnation of Armageddon has been the Mayans. No people in the history of the world offer us more knowledge on how to avoid doom. The Mayans were not removed from the world via a great ball of fire or cosmic event. The Mayans became over populated and lived too fine of a line with the resources around them. As they began cutting down their trees and using poor agricultural techniques, they slowly wiped away their resources like a locust swarm. When even small fluctuations in weather began destroying their farming ability the Mayans became fearful and warmongering. Each region separated and became aggressive towards their neighbor in the fight over limited commodities. Eventually the entire civilization collapsed as the idea of mutual benefit and community broke apart, and the once powerful civilization met it’s own end of days.
If you want to remember one thing about the Mayans it shouldn’t be the calendar they left behind, but the lessons about sustainability that continue to fall on deaf ears. The story of the Mayans isn’t a message of when humanity will find it’s end, but instead a lesson on how it would happen at our own hands. The sun continues to rise over Mayan Temple of Tikal, but its residents are no longer there to see it.