2012 - my apocolypse fatigue - npr story and my thots

In the late 1970s I was taken by my parents to go see that "Rapture Movie" that seems to have exerted a great deal of trauma on many other children of my generation who's parents were in one way or another linked to the evangelical/charismatic protestant tradition. Our elders may have been able to watch the hoekie special effects and not be scarred for years by the sight of a stick of butter dropped on the ground by a suddenly raptured "holier than thou" - or holier than me at least, B grade actor. But kids are very literal. So there i waited through he mid and late 70s for mom andf dad and granny and all to suddenly disappear one day and leave me and my sinful (or what a child imagines to be seriously sinful at least) ways behind to face the UN and it's Antichrist president's demon forces all alone.

But alas, that "late great planet earth" awaited by the Jesus Freaks and friends never occurred.

Pat Robertson resurrected the theme with new scenarios and dates to fill my still immature mind with throughout the 80s that then involved either Russian or Chinese or Arab (it depended on the latest news cycle) boogie men that were identified as either Gog or Magog etc etc.

then a brief break that was the post cold war. no nightmare images of nuclear fires raining down from the sky or robot/demon soldiers in blue UN helmets.

Ah, but then came Y2k. And for all the buildup and all the millennial hype nothing - nothing - nothing - occurred. Again...

On the heals of that "alert" the left stepped in to fill the end times void that the right temporarily abandoned and global climate catastrophe became the apocalypse d'jour.

That seems to be taking place surely, and slowly enough based upon my own observations of the winters here on the east coast during my short enough lifetime. But none the less, the global warming terror peaked with Gore and has begun the downward slump that the Malthusian prophecies calling for world wide famine in the 1960s took along with all the other end of it all alarms before and after have taken.

As the threat of imminent and immediate flooding begins to lose its currency it is now time for the next cycle - this time around it's the Mayans and their calendar and maybe some planets or earthquakes or stars aligning or alien coming down (again? harmonic convergence? hale bop? it becomes exhausting to try to keep track of all the theories over the years!) or something or other.

so, lets have a quick little look at what the hubbub is all about this time around:

"The apocalypse is "a very Western, Christian" concept projected onto the Maya, perhaps because Western myths are "exhausted."

If it were all mythology, perhaps it could be written off.

But some say the Maya knew another secret: the Earth's axis wobbles, slightly changing the alignment of the stars every year. Once every 25,800 years, the sun lines up with the center of our Milky Way galaxy on a winter solstice, the sun's lowest point in the horizon.

That will happen on Dec. 21, 2012, when the sun appears to rise in the same spot where the bright center of galaxy sets."

full article here:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=113714011