Dec. 21 doomsday a farce

 

by Chris Richards

Comic provided by Jim Richards

The Mayan calendar walks into a bar and says the world is going to end.

Pause for laughter.

Unless you’ve been locked up in a closet for the last three years, you’ve probably heard the hype about Dec. 21, 2012 – the day the world is supposed to end. Less than three weeks away, this doomsday theory isn’t just another run-of-the-mill Harold Camping calculation. This time our demise is quite literally set in stone by way of the Mayan calendar. But before you return your Christmas presents and stock up on Spam, take a second to read up on what’s going to go down.

First and foremost, the world will not end on Dec. 21. Any implosion, explosion, or flipping inside out of the planet on that day will be the biggest coincidence in Earth’s last fraction of a second of history. Logic does dictate the world will someday come to an end as all things do. But in the Mayan calendar apocalypse theory there is one piece of information believers the world over seem to be missing or ignoring: it’s a calendar.

The Mayan calendar itself is actually a system of calendars that exists to measure different cycles, events, and circumstances. According to the Popol Vuh, the oldest known document of Mayan creation lore, the world as it currently exists is the fourth created after three failed attempts. The creation of the fourth world occurred after the destruction of the third world. The third world was said to have existed for 13 b’ak’tuns – a Mayan unit of time measurement – or roughly 5,125 years. Translating the date of the destruction of world three and the creation of world four into our current calendar structure, today’s world would have started on Aug. 11, 3114 BC. Fast forward 5,125 years and you have Dec. 21, 2012.

To the Mayans, the date would have been important simply as a milestone in their history and culture, outlasting the lifespan of the previous failed world. Anything extra attributed to the date like the annihilation of the planet is simply the creation of mass media and Hollywood culture as a means to draw profit from a real but non-event. The production of Roland Emmerich’s 2009 film 2012 depicts the destruction of the world. Shock Top Wheat Ale’s current ad campaign states “It’s the end of the world. Live life unfiltered,” and the company is even planning an end of the world party in a “secret underground bunker” somewhere in the United States. As the date draws nearer, be prepared to see promotions and events at your local bars and clubs to the same tune.

The current Mayan calendar may be coming to an end, but that’s all that’s going to happen. The last time I checked, the planet didn’t erupt into flames when Dick Clark counted down to zero in Times Square. So wrap up those presents and spare yourself the Spam.

See you in 2013.