What I Think About the Mayan Doomsday Theories and the 2012 Phenomenon

For years, a monstrosity of pop culture sensationalism, pseudoscience, and wack-job doom chanting has been rubbed into our faces.  The monster of the 2012 doomsday phenomenon has its supposed basis in the Mayan long-count calendar, which ends on December 21st 2012 (or, may be offset slightly to read as December 22nd 2012).  Not only does this date align perfectly with the winter solstice, but it also matches up with the galactic alignment (in which the Milky Way will line up with the precession of the equinox).  Chances are that the date lines up with other astronomical or cultural phenomenon.  This has led to people speculating over an exorbitant number of disastrous theories:  Planet X will collide with the Earth, the galactic alignment will cause the magnetic poles to shift and wreak havoc, some other alignment (such as with the supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy) will wreak havoc, some photons from another planet might affect us, some random far-away star might go supernova, or aliens will invade the Earth.

Is there really any credence to these theories.  If nothing else, they all sound outlandish.  Science and fact tells us that they are indeed.  Alignments with the galaxies, the galactic black hole, and other stellar bodies have happened throughout Earth’s history, without any discernible impact on us.  The Earth has even undergone magnetic polar shifts before, without causing a catastrophe.  In fact, such shifts occur over thousands and thousands of years, so slowly that we’d never know it’s happening.

If there is a Planet X or Nibiru on its way…then where is it? NASA has publicly announced that there is no discernible threat to the Earth.  Even if you say that they might have missed something (or, as the most paranoid of people might claim, they’re covering something up), wouldn’t we be able to see a whole planet coming up to us? It’s not like some random planet is going to zoom up to us, crossing entire light years of space, in a matter of seven days.  Even if it does (assuming it travels at hypervelocity), why would it shoot straight at us? Wouldn’t the combined gravity of the sun, and the solar system’s larger planets, affect such a planet’s trajectory? The idea of having a rogue planet zoom into our solar system in a straight and narrow path never made sense to me.

What’s left to believe? If you believe the movies, maybe the sun will send out a solar burst that wipes out the planet.  To which I still ask, where’s the proof?

The problem here is that it’s all too easy to get caught up in the hype of things.  We have people who really believe that these things will happen, and try their best to rationalize their theories.  We have people who constantly bring it up, either as a joke or a conversational topic.  Then we have people who listen to it all and take the alleged threats seriously (as I see people in China have already done).  The date, 12/21/12, has been brought up all over the news, in all the movies and video games, on occasional TV specials, in books, and all over the Internet:  people can’t help but to listen to the theories and wonder (and fear) what could happen.

I’ve done my fair share of research regarding the matter, and my conclusion is this:  I’ll bet that nothing happens.  If for no other reason than the real experts – the scientists and the Mayan experts – have nothing that conclusively proves beyond all reasonable doubt that the world will indeed end.  Per what I’ve read, the ending of the Mayan long-count calendar doesn’t mean that the world will explode or anything.  The Mayans never believed that.  If anything, they believed that humanity might change, but everything else will stay the same.  In fact, they believed in a spiritual shift, like the ending of one era and the beginning of another, for the human race.  Now that sounds nice, doesn’t it?

Heck, even the calendar itself never really ends.  It’s circular in nature, with 12/21/12 representing the start of a new b’ak’tun (the thirteenth, to be exact, and a b’ak’tun is a unit of 394 years).  Over the past year or so, in Guatemala, a new Mayan site was excavated, which included a lunar table with calculations that run on for the next 7,000 years.  So, how can they predict stuff that far in advance, if they thought the world would end now? The answer is, they never believed the world will end now.  The experts would go on to say that the 2012 doomsday theory is a pure perversion or fabrication of Mayan myth and culture, running totally contrary to their beliefs.

Sure, I say all this now, but suppose December 21st comes and a rogue planet suddenly does appear and smash into ours.  Oops, I guess I was wrong, and I would be the first to admit it.  I won’t deny that there is an inherently morbid fascination with apocalypse theories:  they’re scary, interesting, insightful, and sobering all at once.  I wouldn’t doubt that the human race is heading for some kind of disaster, one way or another.  I won’t even deny that there’s still a possibility that something could happen on December 21st.  I just don’t think it’ll be a rogue planet or stellar alignment or anything else wild like that.  I certainly don’t put any stock that the Mayans knew it was coming.  I would much rather believe that, if anything happens, it’ll be something cultural, political, spiritual, or environmental in nature:  an event that could alter all our ways of thinking and steer our crazy modern society in strange new directions.  That, I can believe, and it would fit with the Mayan concept of the passing of ages.

And if I’m still wrong and our planet is crushed…well, there’s nothing anybody can do about it.
I, for one, won’t let this flimsy doomsday theory get to my head.  I’m not going to dump my money, my possessions, or my day job over all this.  As far as I’m concerned, December 21st will be business as usual (I might just keep my eyes on the news and the sky, just out of curiosity).

This would be the second major doomsday scare I would have lived through.  I still remember sitting around January 1st, 2000, waiting and wondering with fear and wonderment if there really would be a Y2K incident.  Nothing happened, and it was a relief.  One can’t help but to look back and think about how silly it all seemed.  I think chances are good that we’ll look back on 2012 in the same fashion.