Say It Isn't So...!

It's downright bizarre.  Difficult to fathom that people living in present-day Canada - let alone elsewhere in the world where we take it on faith that most people are rational, half-way intelligent and able to slough off notions that have no scientific basis other than that a myth has been handed down over a substantial period of human history.  We live in a scientific, enlightened age.  But that doesn't make any difference?

The end of the Mayan calender has fixed attention on the date of December 21.  The arrival of the end of the world, since the calender is fixed at that date; it proceeds no further.  Why would the world end on that date?  Not because we're sick and tired of behaving like barbarians when it comes to fearing and fighting one another, with one meaningless war after another taking away human life. 

Armageddon, that will do it.

The End of Days.  Sounds so romantic.  Sounds so erratically perverse, and absurd.  But people are drawn to the concept.  It fascinates them, fills them with dread and apprehension, infuses them with fear and expectation, makes their imaginations go into overtime mode at space-age speed.  We do live in the space age, the age of astral closeness in a sense, the age of space travel, of human beings remaining in space for extended, experimental periods of time.

But we're not ready to make it a permanent exodus.  We treasure our little Planet in our own Milky Way galaxy.  Why would we choose to believe and to anticipate that nature or some irresistible, omnipotent force we cannot quite imagine, is prepared to bring doom and damnation upon us?  A scant handful of wingnuts cling to what they feel is inevitable, so why be concerned?

Well, a recent Ipsos survey of a representative sample of people in 21 countries retrieved the data that ten percent of global citizens are in agreement that "the Mayan calendar, which some say 'ends' in 2012, marks the end of the world."  Well, these are obviously people living in backward countries who never were exposed to the advantages of a good, modern education.

On the other hand, in Canada, a technologically advanced country with an exceptional and broad education system fully nine percent of the population appear to side with the ten percent global sample clinging to the belief that termination of the world is nigh.

"Humans are very preoccupied with their own lifetimes.  There's a latent concern in everybody that maybe there's something (threatening) out there that they should be aware of", is the considered opinion of an associate professor of environmental studies at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario. 

Or, as yet another assistant professor, in the school of Earth and Ocean Sciences at the University of Victoria would have it: "Ultimately, the apocalypse will be something called a runaway greenhouse...Venus in the past is the Earth in the future" ... but, he rounds out his statement: "I wouldn't change your Christmas plans."