The world is ending, have a nice day

by: Suhaimy Kamaruddin
Source: www.themalaysianinsider.com

Originally, I was going to write an insightful and penetrating piece about something clever like the removal of petrol subsidy or the decay of the nation’s judiciary system, but that would have meant coming up with an analysis of such depth and sophistication that requires too much work.

So instead, I decided to write about a mildly thought-provoking topic: The 2012 Doomsday Prophecy. To some readers, the subject may be about as much fun as discussing bowel disorders or how ridiculously boring Singaporeans can be, but there has been a groundswell of interests about the topic that it merits an intellectual discourse.[1]

Apparently the ancient tribe Mayan predicted that the world as we know it will end on 21 December 2012.[2] The date is known as the Winter Solstice date, a rare astronomical event where the Sun conjuncts the intersection of the Milky Way and the plane of the ecliptis. We are talking about a geomagnetic reversal triggered by a massive solar flare, one with energy equal to 100 million atomic bombs.[3]

What does this mean to us? Opinions are divided, really. While some say that it is all pure, unadulterated hogwash, many believe that the Mayan prophecy points to Armageddon which will be preceded by a series of cataclysmic and apocalyptic events – volcanic eruptions, typhoons, glaciers, mega-tsunamis, you name it. This effectively means we have a little over three years to freak out.

The Mayan Calendar ends on 21st December 2012, but I am not even sure if the Mayans did actually attach any apocalyptic significance to it. I mean, I cannot imagine them spending their afternoons all those years ago obsessing about a time so far away into the future. Why did they bother? Exactly how did they peer into the distant future to be able to foretell our impending demise?

Even if they did, I wonder why they stopped and did not go beyond that date. For all we know, the whole thing started with a bunch of Mayans having too much time in their hands. Maybe someone decided that it would be a proper lark to come up with a calendar. Maybe they got as far as December 2012, got bored, went to a local pub, got spectacularly drunk, and then forgot completely about it.

It is also entirely possible that all the stuff in their art and carvings are just Mayan graffiti and random scribbling they did in between kneeling before their Gods. Many thousands of years later, someone probably hijacked the Mayan calendar end date and turned it into something not unlike the Y2K Millennium hysteria [4], but only worse. Adding to the frenzy surrounding the prophecy is a movie by Sony Pictures called “2012” [5], starring John Cusack, Danny Glover and Thandie Newton [6], which is precisely the kind of alarmist broadcast which is not necessarily supported by solid, reputable research. But then again this is Hollywood, so it shouldn’t really come as a surprise.

You may well ask: what if the doomsday prophecy turns out to be right, and it will indeed be the end of the world?

Personally, I don’t think we should be overly worried about Armageddon, because in many ways, we are right smack in the middle of one already. We only have to take a quick look at our catalogue of monumental cock-ups to see the kind of mess we are in at the moment: war and never-ending bickering, the consequent displacement and suffering, terrorism and scant regard for human life, global warming, climate change, diseases, drought, floods, and famine.

And of course, public toilets in Malaysia.

It is not a nice picture and it does give you an inescapable and appropriately foreboding sense that we are well and truly screwed. In the final analysis, we are not a very nice species, and we may as well vanish from the face of the earth.

The worse-case scenario is that all the darkest, grimmest outcomes will come true, and it will be the end of the world as we know it. Humans would literally be wiped out of existence (especially ugly ones) following a cataclysmic chain of events such as super-volcanic eruption, mega-tsunamis, an asteroid hitting the earth, and George Bush Jr. re-elected as US President.[7] I guess we will have to take this one on the chin and see if humankind is resilient enough to survive the calamity.

But maybe it will not be a full-on wipeout but rather just planet earth rebooting itself. Maybe it will just be a massive earth rejuvenation exercise, not unlike Malaysia’s attempt to use ISA to purge the subservient elements in the society. The world will undergo a positive physical and spiritual transformation, and mankind can actually look forward to a more enlightened period after 2012.

If it were up to me, I prefer only certain groups of people to be wiped out, rather than an all-out cleansing of the earth. We can start with unscrupulous bankers and money men whose insatiable greed economists ultimately triggered the current global recession. They should be followed closely by the economists who did a dreadfully appalling job at predicting the collapse of the financial market. Most of them didn’t see it coming and were caught napping in the middle of their own version of irrational exuberance.

I know it is not something you would wish even on your worst enemies but I think people have the right to be royally cheesed off. I mean, these are intelligent people with a supposedly fearsome grasp of economic theories, market mechanism and high finance and they are (or at least were) being paid an obscene amount of money to get it right. Yet, they behaved like fiscal half-wits, and now all of us have to claw our way back to economic recovery. Surely they deserve some kind of punishment?

And while we are at it, we could also do without idiot politicians, as the world is pretty well stocked up with these at the moment although thankfully, we don’t have any in Malaysia.

Then again, maybe the Mayans were not talking about Armageddon after all, but rather, were alluding to a new world order and a shift in geopolitical, military and economic powers. To some extent, this is already happening with China making huge strides in becoming an economic powerhouse, the Middle East riding high on petrodollars, and the US still struggling to recover from shooting themselves in the foot. So it is business as usual, really.

Personally, I wouldn’t get all worked up and bemoan the fate of Mother Earth just yet. The Mayans couldn’t even predict their own demise and they certainly did nothing to prevent it, so I’m buggered if I am going to dignify the whole fear-mongering by taking the prophecy too seriously.

Natural disasters happened in the past, so there is no reason why they won’t happen again in the future, with or without the Mayans’ prediction. Take the landslide in Bukit Antarabangsa, for instance. What did that have anything to do with Doomsday 2012 or an ancient tribe anyway? That was just gross negligence on the part of officials with a penchant for leopard-skin trousers and excessive hair product.

But if it is indeed going to be Armageddon, then we are toast anyway. I mean, what else can we do? Pack some Maggi mee and biscuits and hide under our beds? Maybe the only thing to do is to stop fretting about how tough life can be, and just go out there and spend our all savings. The guys should just go crazy and buy a Bugatti Veyron, and fulfil their dreams of becoming The Stig [8], while the women should, well, do whatever it is that women do.

Alternatively, some of us could invent a time machine and travel back to 1991 so that everyone can sport a Vanilla Ice haircut, and attend embarrassing tea dances.

Good luck with that.