2012- The End or a New Beginning?

What would you do if somehow you come to know the time of your death? Some might panic, some might rush to mosques or chapels to pray, some might do all the adventurous things they have been wanting to do, and some like me might think of it as a silly notion and go back to sleep.

2012 was just another ‘eye-opening, mind boggling, heart churning, nail biting(pardon the expression, but I have seen many nervous wrecks do that) drama cum action cum what not sort of a movie. It created many “what if’s” in our minds too. So what exactly is it about the 2012 phenomenon that has made it a hot topic for discussion all around the globe?

Saeed Khan and I, after going through many sites and all the data available on net, have screened out a few of the absurd theories that point towards “death, destruction and doom” in the year 2012.

Now, all the non-sense started with the Mayans and their great love for calendars. The Mayans were a civilization that lived about 3000 years ago. They formed 15-20 calendars for various purposes, some were meant to calculate crop cultivation, the sun cycle, and most important of all The Long Count (which I personally think, ought to be named The Last Count), that points towards the END OF THE WORLD, somewhere near December 21st, 2012. Now you might think why 21st? It’s because the date coincides with the Winter Solstice during which a pole shift will take place and we will be toppled upside down, sounds amusing though, right?

Next in the line of absurdity is London Tipton, Oh, beg pardon, I meant Mother Shipton! Anyway, she was born somewhere in England, close to her home was a “mystical well”! She exhibited prophetic and psychic abilities from an early age. She wrote her prophecies about events to come in the form of poems. Odd thing is, she too predicted doomsday in 2012? One of Mother Shipton’s prophecies say:-

“When pictures seem alive with movements free, when boats like fishes swim beneath the sea, when men like birds shall scour the sky, then half the world, deep drenched in blood shall die.”

Wait, only half? What are we even worried about?  Anyway how do we know all this? The credit goes to her Biographer Richard Head, who for fame (read Dollars) created a fictional character out of the poor old woman just in order to sell his book, The Life and Times of Mother Shipton. Frankly, I would have named it, The life and lies of Mother Shipton, now that would have been a great hit!

Then there were The Hopi Indians! They too were a little demented and thought of time to be cyclic. They made up a number of worlds. According to them, when the world begins, it is pure and innocent, but as time goes by it is corrupted by man’s endeavors, so when the decay reaches its peak, the WORLD ENDS!! And, everything starts over, (so sadly we’re back to square one) some refer to it as The Great Purification. It is believed that the predictions of the Hopi Indians were a sort of a revenge on the White people, and they have no factual basis whatsoever.

Okay, so next is I-Ching (Read itching). In the pre-800-number era of human existence, the people of China received their psychic advice from one of their oldest texts, the I-Ching. You asked the I-Ching a question and a certified physic flipped three coins in to the air, drawing a hexagram based on the results. This told your fortune, somehow. You wouldn’t be surprised to know that I-Ching too predicted the END in the year 2012! (Kind of like heads I live, tails you die sort of a thing).

Then comes Baba Nostradamus, the great man who predicted many events! How can he be left behind when we predict the Doomsday? In 1982, his work was discovered which had three different writing styles (Bells ring), and the events mentioned in it were so accurate that it took the world by storm, but wait, all the events actually took place BEFORE he predicted anything (Bells ring again). Hmm, that doesn’t really make him a credible source now, does it?

Last (can’t tell you I relieved I am, Phew!) is the Web-Bot. Now, Web-Bot is a computer program that was made to make stock market predictions. Basically, it was designed to tap in to our collective unconscious by analyzing information on the Internet and then make predictions based on its findings. In 2001, the brainiacs assumed that if the Web-Bot could make stock predictions, it should be able to predict the future as well. And, guess when it predicted Doomsday? TA DA!! 2012! The reason being every single person is discussing 2012 and the end of the world, so obviously the Web-Bot picked it up.

One thing which might puzzle you at this stage could be that why all the theories point towards 2012? If all of these predictions are bogus (which they most certainly are), how do they manage to have 2012 in common? Why not 2013? Or hell, 2020 for that instance? The History Channel, that’s how. In late 2007, the History Channel ran a special about Nostradamus’ lost book, stretching interpretations so thin you could make a doomsday crepe out of it. As with all of the above “prophecies,” 2012 sites around the Internet took the ball and ran with it.

Nothing as such is going to happen in 2012, all the doomsday theories are just a propaganda to create chaos and confusion in our lives, it’s best if we ignore such absurdities and enjoy life. So,

” Dream what you want to dream; go where you want to go; be what you want to be, because you have only one life and one chance to do all the things you want to do. “

Long live Pakistan!