A recent Bizarro cartoon (one of my favorite strips) showed a Mayan stone carver holding up a completed, round stone calendar disk and informing his fellow carver that he had, “only enough room to go up to 2012.” “Ha!” laughed his colleague, “That’ll freak somebody out someday.”
Indeed. We’re freaked. As 2009 comes to a close, the images of the movie 2012 still linger, with that wall of water sweeping over the Himalayas and the ground tilting until New York City slides into the sea. I expect the public appetite for the ultimate disaster to subside slightly as we return to the business of a new decade, but you can be sure that fear will return—and most of it will be referenced to the Mayan Calendar, which will be cited as evidence for the end of the world.
Don’t go there—either to fear or to assuming that the Mayans could foresee the future. They couldn’t. In fact, if you choose, you can understand far more about 2012 than the Mayan priesthood of 1500 A.D.
