By Brian Lee
Here we are. Three weeks to go before finding out what heinous prank the Mayans intended when they set their calendar to self-destruct in 5,125 years.
While some run around making apocalyptic predictions about the day the calendar runs out of pages, others say Dec. 21 will mark the dawning of a new age of consciousness. Rather than apocalypse, some New Agers believe that it will usher in an era of spiritual transformation. It’s hard to say what that might mean but let’s hope it brings a solution to war and genocide, environmental destruction, oil dependence, capitalistic greed and Honey Boo Boo.
On the other hand, the glass is half-empty camp say our planet is about to tangle with a black hole that sits at the centre of the Milky Way galaxy. Or we’ll be fried by a massive solar flare. Or Earth will collide with a planet named Nibiru. The fact that most scientists claim Nibiru doesn’t exist makes one wonder what else the Man isn’t telling us.
Laugh at your peril but, for many, this isn’t a joke. I once sat eating a Sunshine Burger in Madeira while a friend (who was otherwise pretty normal) offered "irrefutable" evidence supporting the theory that after the Mayan calendar ends, so do people.
It is a nice thought, though. With all of the threats facing the planet right now, I can’t think of one we didn’t play a starring role in. We are such abysmally poor stewards that what better remedy for the planet could there be than to take us off it? Of course, by us, I mean the monkeys too — it won’t be long before they discover fire and that’s about where we started to tip the balance.
In all seriousness, we do seem to be at a fork where the choices we make will determine the future of the planet.Robert Pirsig wrote:
"You look at where you’re going and where you are and it never makes sense, but then you look back at where you’ve been and a pattern seems to emerge.
"And if you project forward from that pattern, then sometimes you can come up with something."
If you only consider our hand in species extinction and follow Pirsig’s reasoning, it seems pretty clear the path of human progress ends at a cliff. And when it carries us over, we will take everything else on the planet with us, destroying over three billion years of evolution in the process.
But if one can accept that ours holds no more value than any one of the other eight million or so species on the planet, then it’s possible to take comfort in knowing that the last heroic hope for the planet is our own end.
There’s no guarantee the collision with Nibiru will affect only humans but, if it does, Earth would quickly regain her former vitality. So, hopefully, we’ll undergo a spiritual transformation on Dec. 21 or, barring that, we get taken out.
Either way, it could be a fine day for the rest of the planet.
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