Saturday, January 7, 2012

2012 Has Arrived

Why hello fans of Fixated Infuriation!

It's that time for my biannual post to this blog, just a few months early.

No, it's not because I'm trying to beat the date of December 21, 2012, but more that it FINALLY is 2012.

After many years of movies, television shows, specials, documentaries, internet blogs, videos, and water cooler talk, there is no question this is substantially the most anticipated year in recent history since the year 2000.  Of course, the world was supposed to have ended back then too.  It didn't, for obvious reasons I don't have to explain.

But it's here.  The year of the Mayans!

Now what?

I'm sure this will be the same question asked everyday for about two weeks AFTER December 21, 2012.  When January 1st, 2013 FINALLY arrives, all of the 2012 hoopla will be over COMPLETELY.  Heck, it may even end on December 22nd, but no matter what if nothing happens by that dreaded day, you can bet there will be a lot of explaining to do for why so many bought into this hype.

For one, all that stuff in the mass media I just mentioned above.  There's been a movie depicting every possible apocalyptic scenario in that one film that grossed nearly 800 million dollars back in 2009.  That compounded by the countless other melodramas that were birthed by this phenomenon, that hardly made any money at all, and Hollywood has spent literally billions suckering us into the theatres to witness "the end."  I Am Legend and the aforementioned 2012 were just a couple specifically aiming at "2012" as the year of "the end", but a bevy of end times films, documentaries, and TV shows have come out all along the way as well.  Knowing, any of the Resident Evil movies, The Darkest Hour, Mission Impossible:  Ghost ProtocolSkyline, Zombieland, The Book of Eli, The Happening, Wall-E, Terminator:  Salvation, Life After People, Earth 2100, The Road, Legion, Transformers:  Revenge of the Fallen and Dark of the Moon, The Day the Earth Stood Still (2008 remake), and The Walking Dead are some of the most note worthing in the last few years to acknowledge the 2012 phenomenon theme....humans on the brink of extinction.

The real question to be asking here is why are we so fixated on the end?  I've brought this up before I am sure, but it bears repeating.  Why do we want to possibly face our own demise?  Is it simply because we're all in the human condition, or I should say the life condition, which ultimately leads to death?  The other night I had to kill a roach bug with bug spray and watched the life force slowly trickle out of it's body second by second.  First it put up a fight the gradually it slowed and slowed and slowed until only a sputter remained before whatever life force it had was completely gone.  I've witnessed the same thing when a bird of mine died a few years ago, which was just as gut wrenching to watch.  These things were alive just as much as I am and something caused it's demise unexpectedly.

That, at least to me, is the essence of the 2012 phenomenon.  It's the possibility of a total unexpected end for us all at one time.  What would it be like?  How could it happen?  Is there anything we could ever do to prevent it?  In the case of this bug, there wasn't.  Was it because the bug was too inept to prevent it's own demise?  Hardly, it could have ran away once it saw me enter the room.  But, I was determined to get rid of it and did everything in my power to dispose of it quickly and efficiently without having to soil my shoes.

I've compared human civilization today to that of an infestation, much like roaches can be, or even to a virus.  We've spread ourselves out even more since I first posted that comparison way back in 2008, heading for the 7 billion mark for the population of the entire Earth for the first time in history by sometime this summer, if not by December 21, 2012.  But as I said before, we're spreading ourselves out, and wearing our resources thin.  So what happens if the powers that be decide suddenly that we're a plague that needs to be wiped out?  We're annoying, vile, disgusting creatures that aren't fit to live?  They might just as soon poison us as step on us so as to not dirty themselves up in the process.  For whatever reason, we don't deserve to live.  And who would the powers that be actually be?  Well, it could just be the Earth itself.

The Earth only seems like an object, but it's as alive as we are.  It reasons in a way that we could never understand.  We came from it and if it so desires that we no longer exist it can do a pretty good job of wiping us out all on it's own.  Take 75,000 years ago in Sumatra.  The Toba Eruption, as it was called, reduced the human population of the planet down to only a 1% difference in genetic composition, meaning hundreds of thousands of humans died out due to this epic eruption that was strong enough to blast an island in two.  Hmmm, I wonder if there's anything TODAY that could do that?  Look no further than the movie 2012 for the answer.  Yellowstone National Park.

My favorite part of this film is the Yellowstone Caldera eruption.  Although I hardly believe the eruption in the film did justice to what the actual eruption could be like, it did at least give you an idea of the damage that could be done.  What was humorous in the film is that somehow any other disaster would have to happen after that.  Yellowstone erupting as a supervolcanic explosion would be more than enough to set the world back for decades upon decades without the dramatics of Los Angeles falling into the Pacific or a Polar Shift causing a world wide flood.  There is so much lava underneath Yellow stone it could bury the entire continental United States in 6 feet of ash twenty times over, and still keep going.  It literally would be the end of the world if that volcano ever erupted, at least as we know it today.

You see, Yellowstone HAS erupted before and yet the Earth is still here.  Yellowstone is like a giant pimple filled with puss on a teenager's face.  When it pops, the mirror gets covered.  But, how often does a teenager get one of those kinds of pimples.  Maybe once or twice a year?  Put that on a geological time scale and a couple of times a year could be six times in millions of years.  Which is exactly what has happened at Yellowstone....and we're over due for another pop!

But, again, an imminent eruption on a geological scale could be the next 100, 1000, 10,000 years, or next week.  We just don't know.  But the leftovers do tell us that it has happened and will happen again, and it will vastly change things worldwide.

What does this have to do with 2012?  Well, it was in the movie, and scientists say it could happen anytime.  I love the pseudo-religious way "anytime" is used with any context pertaining to possible "endings" for any human, even on the individual level.  It's almost as if we should all live life either in dread of the future or hoping for death to whisk us away to a far, far away place of safety.

I have a better interpretation, and it's straight out of the bible, spoken by Jesus himself:  don't worry about tomorrow.  I believe I've brought this up before.

From my perspective, nothing is going to happen in 2012...except maybe for record tourism profits for Belize and the entire Mayan region.  My reasons for nothing happening....I have two of them.  Their names are Abby and Charlie, my children.  They deserve the same right to grow up and older as I have and no Mayan, Nostradamus, Edgar, DaVinci, John, or Jesus himself is going to tell me their lives will just end because someone supposedly predicted it thousands of years ago.  I believe Jesus would say, "They'll end when they end."