Well i have been thinking a lot about this one, not that i am thinking about the end of the world b/c the possibility of that seems absurd.

What i have been thinking about is why has humanity always been thinking that we are at our end.
It has happened throughout almost our entire history.
I think this happens maybe b/c we create these events to happened and when said time comes and nothing happens, i could see this dramatically effect human thought collectively.

And the reason that it is so wide spread is b/c a large percentage of the world is connected to the web.

Another point i want to add, which i have said before, We are in the year of the Dragon, and according to the Chinese and us obv Dragons are not real, and the year brings a lot of the imagination.

We are entering the year of the Snake, to the Chinese the will be shedding its skin and being fresh to start new.

Ive often thought about this too. Not the end of times, like you I think thats rediculouse and people spend far too much time thinking about it.

I feel each generation of humankind has felt the end times are near are a protective response we all have developed as we evolve.

If you were to take a random poll about the state of society and the world Id bet most people would say we have never been in a worse state but the truth is that the world has never had less war, plauge, genocide, slavery, and like horrors that come along with our species. This isnt to say things are great...not by a long shot but things can be shown and prooven to have never been better.

So....where Im going with this is nthat i feel every generaton wrestles with the pain and horros of our times and one way to feel comfort is to know that its all coming to an end one way or another. Some see it as a paradigm shift, others as quite litteral end of the whole planet and everything that falls in between.

Thats my 2 cents and thoughts Ive come up with.

just remembered seeing that back many years ago


anyways, i dont think the world is going to end.. but we do seem to be going through a sort of bottleneck/pivotal point in history, in a lot of ways..imo

Seconded.

I actually studied millennialism a while back and it turns out that, indeed, over the years people have regularly proclaimed and believed that the "end is nigh." For example, the Franciscans believed, after the Americas were discovered, that the New World would be where the Book of Revelation would be fulfilled. Columbus himself possibly believed this.

As you say, olympus mon, basically every generation feels that it's come to "the point of no return" (just think of the generations who lived through the two world wars!).

Life is change. Will bizarre transformations occur as things continue? I have no doubt, as they've been occurring regularly, but I do doubt that they will constrain themselves to a particular calendar day.

The whole "end of the world" obsession of humankind is simply the collective fear of personal death transferred onto the entire species. Most people are terrified to meet their end, and by transferring it into some sort of global cataclysm they somehow feel better about it. That they won't die alone. At least that's my point of view on it.

I'm not sure I agree with the statement that "things have never been better" olympus mon. Things are pretty rough at present, and they show signs of getting rougher in the near future. The earth has swelled with huge growth of populations and we're already at the point where the earth can barely sustain us. So from that perspective, there will be a necessary "die off" period at some point. Not some apocalypse or cataclysmic event, but a slow and painful thinning of the population of our planet. We cannot continue to grow and grow exponentially without limit, and we're already beginning to realize this.

Like DoctorMantus said, this new year brings a "shedding of the skin", a chance to start anew. Not just the Chinese but many cultures see this time as being a time of death/rebirth. A new world age begins, and we can learn from our mistakes and grow towards a better future. All I'm saying is that learning can be painful, and I think we're in for some tough lessons ahead.

All well put responses I like how you said the perspective of the whole world going down and the fear of dying alone it makes much sense.

When you Say we have some tough lessons ahead I agree completely.

There sure has been a lot of celestial events this year and if I know anything astrology tells a lot and there is something going on right?

I mean right now I am trying to figure the planet alignment over the 3 pyramids of Giza mercury Saturn Venus.
Three influences love communication and karma or discipline were a lot of work will be in order.
I made a thread it has more info on the planets.

And olympus you are right we spend far too much time thinking about what could be or happen.

It's like you arrive to this date and when nothing happens it makes you reflect a little upon the time you have wasted, in which could of been used for something more productive.

I think there's a lot of truth in what you say, fear of the unknown is at the root of a lot of human behavior.

Just for the sake of a different perspective on this subject, when I look back on my life up until now, it is remarkable how, as Dec. 2012 approaches, the spiritual awareness/turbulence in my life has been progressively cranked up. I wonder how much of that has to do with my cognisance of that day and its attached meaning. I know when I first heard about it as a teenager, it had an affect on me. Even though I had no idea what a "shift of consciousness" meant at that point, I felt somehow that I had work to do before then to accomplish it.

I like Oly's take on it. But I'll go one further: that the "end is nigh" reflex is just a part of the human condition, a side effect of the way we are wired. Partly for fear of our own death... Partly out of disbelief that this world can actually continue to get crazier in any sustainable way... And maybe partly because we secretly want it to happen, so that we can personally be present at history's Big Moment. An affirmation of our own personal significance.

Now, won't we doubters feel awfully silly if the aliens show up next month?

One has to be careful, taking premonitions coming from religious cults seriously. Which is what mayan theology is. Its important to remember, they derived this date of "whatever is going to happen" in a theological context. IE underworld/heavens, and not to mention all the human sacrifices and other mumbo jumbo that is in no way scientific that people use to rationalize this whole 2012 thing.

Not to dismiss their ability to be badass astronomers, statisticians, and chronologists. They looked at at the stars and made some accurate predictions into the future in terms of how cosmological bodies would change position. IE the whole milky way center alignment thing. But taken in context, and looking at how that data they observed was interpreted, i think its a non-scientific prediction coming from data interpreted by a religious cult.

And that makes me think, its about as significant as Y2K. Correlation does not imply causation, and people look for order/structure/connectedness because its comforting, not because its true or accurate or scientific.

2012 has been here for 11 months, where have you been?

I think we'd all feel silly in some respect. They would most likely be very different from how we've imagined them, and it would be pretty humorous to them, if they had a sort of humor.

As for the Mayan religious cult comment, I know people will find what they're looking for simply because they're looking for it. Jesus appeared in my bowl of oatmeal this morning!

But it's more than just the Mayans. There are many cultures that point to this time as a time of transformation. That's what really piqued my interest and had me getting books from the library about the subject. I heard about the Mayans years ago and didn't give it much credence, much the same as you. But then I started to hear more and more, other cultures interpreting the same thing around the same time. There's more to it than some stupid Y2K that everyone knew was a load of crap before it even happened. This has the feel of something different, and I'm not the only one saying so. Sure, it can get all entangled with the crazies out there, preaching the end of the world and other insane theories. But there are some legitimate claims that really raise the hair on the back of your neck, if you listen with an open mind.

I'm not here to crap in anyone's cornflakes (especially the ones with that one flake that looks like jesus wearing sunglasses riding a harley :lol.

We all see the world through our own lenses. My mind is open, i've read about the i ching and alot of other historical references to 2012. I just belive the future holds the unknown, and literature written centurys ago doesn't seem like a good place to find predictions about what is going to happen. Science holds the gold medal in that dept. But even then its just a probability and not a certainty.

I guess i can't dismiss the idea completely, i'm just agnostic about it. Since it can't be proven either way. My lens is science and mathmatical probability through observation and reproducable models. But thats still a ideology you have to believe in, it just delivers the cake more consistently than claims that don't have facts behind them in my expirence.

I just can't take premonitions made centurys ago seriously, especially from mystical/theological sources who don't have any solid facts behind them. At least relative to non-belief something will happen. Agnosticism is my cop out in that regard. Occams razor is the factor that makes me lean towards the idea nothing special is going to happen. But thats a belief, not a fact.

Really were all shooting the doodie about something akin to whether or not a divine entity exists. No one can bring a fact to the table that something will or will not happen either way. I think im going to just put it out of my mind until my birfday, the 21st of december.

Then its time to party like its the end of the freaking world .

We don't have to look for prophecies for the end of the world. We are working on our apocalypsis ourselver, by trashhing and poluting our environment, putting garbage and poison in the oceans, heating up our atmosphere, exploiting ecosystems that will not recover as long as there are humans around... We have a giant and still massivly growing world population that has an immense hunger for ressources. Our planet cannot support our survival the way we live today and one day there will be an important piece missing in our industrial machinery. WE are building up and up and up and someday the whole building has to fall, because we did not care about the foundation for a long time. Immagine the logistic systems breaking down for some reason. Non of the big cities could be supplied even with enough fresh water and food.
Of cause we cannot put a date on this inevitable breakdown. It could be 2012 or it could run for another 100 years.
Don't worry about cosmic events. Maybe IF something happens it will help us by giving everyone collectively to think about, what insane lifes we are living right now.

That would be great

at this point of time when dec 21st is just 23 days away ,
all i can imagine is morpheus (from the matrix) saying "yesssss" ,

its funny and scary at the same time , funny because i hardly believe in the end of the world prophecy and scary because many a times in my life i've been quite wrong , so i await whatever is to come

What Questions me, is why we took a prophecy which the point of getting to it was a huge Celebration,

How we have converted it to the end of the world is beyond me.

There was a conspiracy about the 2012 Olympics.

All manner of crap like Illuminato, UFO, false flags, Big Ben getting destroyed, blah blah etc.

I watched the olympics and the only assault on the human race was the return of the 'Spice Girls'.

A Great little segment that i pulled from the Movie 4:44 the last day on earth, Gay movie by the way,

But i transcribed this segment i felt was appropriate, it was of Joseph Campbell it not word for word but pretty close.

The serpent which reprosents the dynamic of life. The serpent It can shed its skin and to be reborn again. and so represents the power of life to throw off death, it represents the bondadge of life to time, the dynamic of life and consciousness and the field of temperal pairs of opposites, birth and death and all that, and life goes on through it. Its been turned into a Negative principal in our tradition as though our tradition were against life, and uh.. so since our tradition is against life well the deity himeself is against life and you have a deity who is talking about supernatural grace and virtue and all, when life is something to be as if despised instead of celebrated, and the body as something awfull rather than awesome.

So basically if we all think negative that's how it will be perceived as negative.

If we where more positive humans this world could be a way more productive place.

an event far worse than any predicted throughout the history of our species