The Mayan Prophecy has passed by, when is the next doomsday?

The Mayan Prophecy has passed by, when is the next doomsday?

In early days, due to the lack of telecommunication, thoughts and ideas could only travel by word of mouth, which was not only inconvenient, but also took a l  lllp long time to pass on. Today, things have changed; we are living in the Information Age. The invention and advancement of the Internet has helped spreading word of mouth faster and broader. It is easy to know within half an hour what is happening on the other side of the earth; the news is available on social media as soon as it is reported online. As a result, countless amounts of the news articles are stored online and it is sometimes hard to find the origin of the story. The original story of apocalypse is hard to fine, it might start as soon as the history of human being was started, but the fear of the apocalypse may have been started with the Book of the Apocalypse of St. John. The trend of talking about the apocalypse still can be seen around today as a pop culture in the modern society. As a result, the Mayan calendar, the hottest topic of 2012, was the biggest apocalypse that had been discussed globally for a few past decades.

The earliest news on the topic of the end of the world related to the Mayan calendar was published in the American Edition of The Newsweek on August 17^th, 1987. The article starts with some stunning words, “Don’t panic or anything, but this weekend may be the beginning of the apocalypse” (Newsweek), which does not really help people not to panic after reading this, but only evokes people’s interest. The Newsweek has a long history as a national magazine, so it has been read by many readers across the country for a long period of time; however, its information was only limited to its readers in 1980s. The news announced that, according to Dr. Jose Arguelles, obsessed with the Mayans and wrote some books about their culture, the Ma yans’ great cycle is nearing its end. August 16^th and 17^th 2012 are critical dates that are a “cosmic trigger” of our world when the earth can synchronize itself with the rest of the galaxy in 2012 (Newsweek). However, there are not many evidences found on the article that can support his obsessive argument on the topic. The article therefore also includes many scholars’ skeptical viewpoints that this prophecy is only a a “New Age belief”, and claims that “it’s a game that has become popular with amateur archeologist” (Newsweek). The scholars’ arguments are more credible at this moment because they are less biased, and Arguelles’ words are not really directly spoken by Mayans who should know better than him, even though their calendar moves towards its end. Thus, this is the whole beginning of the discussion on the apocalypse related to the Mayan calendar. However, due to lack of information available, they story has not discussed further publically until 21^st century.

After the publication of the first news article on the end of the world, the news of the Mayan calendar did not appear so frequently on media because many people did not find great interest in the topic due to its unguaranteed and unpredicted future of Earth. However, it was slightly mentioned on other news outlets asas a joke or some sort of taste for the Mayan apocalypse arararticles. Nonetheless, this topic again floated on the surface of the wwwwater as time approached the year 2012. Unlike the first news’ information, a new date was given to its readers by the Daily Star: December 21^st of 2012 (Again, the origin of the source of the date is not clear, but I would refer to Daily Star). This date is more “accurate” than the previous one given by Arguelles, because along with the Mayans, the Chinese prophecy also claimed that the world was going to stop on December 22^nd of 2012 (Partasides), which to the west, would be equivalent to the 21^st. Although the Daily Star brings in more “evidence” of nigh apocalypse, it does not provide further references or links in the article. To support his article, he states that many scientists, historians, mystics and religious experts recognizes that “a combination of global warming, nuclear war, earthquakes and supervolcanoes” are the key factors that will wipe out all life on the earth (Daily Star). However, who knows if it is just a series of continuous coincidence, and tricks of human psychology, because people tend to believe what they want to believe unconditionally.

The rumor of the apocalypse related to the Mayan calendar has affected people’s behavior anyways, regardless of the truth of the story. Some people saved canned foods, life necessities in their basements, or created a bunk or “Noah’s Ark” as provision for the catastrophe; some people did not consider this phenomenon important at all. Rather, some used this as an opportunity for its economy. On January 14^th of 2012, The Advertiser of Australia published that Mexico “will spend $8 million promoting tourism to Mexico's “Mayan World”, which takes place on the southeastern region where the Mayan culture thrived (Mexico). Even though they don’t expect the world to end on December 21^st, but “hope the attention will draw tourists” (Mexico), which means that Mexicans do not believe in the prediction, but they are content to use this phenomenon as a marketing strategy for the tourism industry. The article lists the exact number of money that the country would be using to draw readers’ attention to show the dramatic impact on Mexico where there has the most influence of the Mayan culture, and its hyperbole title “MEXICO End of the world tour” sounds like that people get to experience the end of the world by participating the Mexico’s tour. On the other hand, many people think the end of the world is not really news anymore. Because there have been so many failed predictions on the doomsday on Earth for countless years, the news cannot attract these people who already experienced the failure anymore. Brian Palmer, the author of news article with another catchy title “Doomsday? Are you sure? I don't see it here on my calendar”, gives an example of the predictions of doomsday that never happened. He states that the pastor Harold Camping from California predicted that the world would end on May 21^st, which was later revised to October 21^st, but it did not happen on either of days at all (Palmer). By addressing this example, he forecasts that there is a big possibility that the apocalypse would not happen anyway. His title, which contains some sort of joke, also addresses the skeptical view on the apocalypse as the scholars once did in late 1980s. Andy Ho of the article “Too much read into Mayan calendar” forwards the same idea as Palmer, t that it is not too unusual to have an end point on our calendar (Ho), and it should be the same for the Mayan calendar as well. Unlike Palmer, Ho lists some scientific evidence that the end of the Mayan calendar does not indicate the end of the world. He says that there is no evidence that the Mayans knew this complicated galactic system in advance of several thousands of years (Ho), which he simplifies the issue that therefore there is no doomsday on the 21^st of December, 2012.

Not surprisingly, the topic of the end of the world reached the peak on the media sphere in December of 2012. Everyone talked about our world would end or not, and how we should react to the doomsday. On December 21^st of 2012, nothing happened to our world; instead, the Mayan calendar ended. We are still alive in this world, and we will be in the future. However, the discussion on this topic has not ended yet. Martin Bishop states that “if anyone feels disappointed that the world that didn't come to an end, don't despair; there are many more doomsdays to come” which indicates that the rumors of the doomsday raised by the Mayan calendar were not the only ones, but there are certainly more coming up, whether they are ccredible or not. It contains some degree of easiness and joke in this sentence, but he indicates the deeper meaning that the words about the apocalypse has been continued many times, and there should be more coming up in the future, then what is the exciting part about the doomsday.

The reason many people believe in the  the Mayan calendar theory is that “the ancient Mayans got a whole lot right…they were famed for their written language, art, architecture and sophisticated mathematics and astronomy” (Evans), and that is totally true. They have had many contributions to our civilization, but it does not mean that they can predict the future of our world. In fact, there are so many Mayans who are not educated at all, and know nothing about their ancient calendar. Ironically, the Mayan elders once announced that the end of the Mayan calendar does not indicate the end of the world, but not many people listened to this news because they were too busy preparing forffor the apocalypse. They were too much into their own belief to see the truth of the rumor. Therefore, the failure of the Mayan Prophecy of 2012 raised lots of anger of some strong believers of the apocalypse. On December 23^rd of 2012, two days after the D-day, the telegraph of the United Kingdom reported that Mayan Temple, which is one of the UNESCO sites, has been destroyed by tourists. It states that “it was forbidden to climb the stairs at the site and indicated that the damage was irreparable” (Telegraph), and the choices of dictions in this short sentence such as “forbidden” and “irreparable” foreshadow the irrecoverable and unforgiving mistake driven by senseless tourists. It is understandable that they were despaired by the normal day of December 21^st, but the distortion of the temple does not make the rumor come true, it is not okay to vent their anger on a historic site. They have to accept the truth that they will continue to live in 2013, and so on.

The origin of the news, the end of the Mayan calendar, may not sound as attractive as the news of the apocalypse for many people, but after the huge swift of this pop culture, it is clear that the wrong interpretation of any kind of story becomes a problem if it spreads worldwide, especially today, the Information Age. Without any proven evidence, people are fascinated by the topic, but they do not know it would cause bigger and bigger troubles. Nothing happened on December 21^st, and it was just a day like any other. Today, we are living in 2013, in which the Internet affects people’s behavior from time to time, or always. We have to be aware of which information we are following; the news has to contain credible evidence for its readers. However, the journalists should also learn how to attract their readers without mere dry evidence and facts that usually fail to attract them, because we the readers never stop following the trends that fascinate us with some hyperbole titles, and now we already ask, “When is the next doomsday?”