Will the World End in 2012?
A friend of mine casually posed this question after seeing a program broadcast by the History Channel. (Bless ‘em, those intellectually-bankrupt sons of bitches, they finally ran out of Hitler-based programming several years back.) Taken by the moment I prattled off this response.
Let’s saw you’re a Mayan astronomer, and adviser to the king. One day, inspired by appreciation for your powerful, cyclical number system, you casually mention to the king that you can create an accurate calendar indefinitely far into the future. Realizing your mistake just a moment too late, you react with horror, if not surprise, as the king replies he wants you to construct a calendar that will last until the end of time. Knowing that you could write until your death of old age and never complete a calendar that must go on forever, but knowing also that death will come immediately if you refuse his demand, you set to work, hoping against hope the king will lose interest in his decree. But as time goes on he does not, and so you write and compute and write and compute and so on until you’re certain you’ll go mad. Days and weeks pass and finally, your mind frayed, your hands worn to bloodied claws, you can go on no more. You give in, resigned to the knowledge that certainly, if nothing else has, you’ve reached your own end, for the king will not tolerate an unfinished calendar.
Sure enough, when his highness comes again to check your progress, he rages and cries out and demands to know why you’ve ceased, why you’ve stopped your work here and gone no further, knowing he, the king, has demanded a calendar that spans all of the days. And in your empty despair, with nothing to lose, a thought occurs to you. Why not?! “But my lord”, you say, “there is nothing left to do! The work is done. All days have been accounted for!” And the king is at first hesitant, as he tries to grasp the meaning of this, but soon he is amazed and pleased. For he now knows the date of the end of the world. And with that end-post in mind, he returns his thoughts to building his empire, comforted by knowing, as he amasses the strength and power he needs to ensure its longevity, just how many years he must prepare for as he lays the foundations it must have to last to the end of time. And you, in this narrowest of escapes, have learned its often best to hold your tongue around those with great power and little sense.
In other words, barring destruction at our own hands—perhaps via nuclear or biological means—no, the world will not end in 2012. And of course, even if we were to wipe out every last one of ourselves, the world would still not end, it would merely cease to be interesting. (For if it were still to be interesting, well, to whom?) And let’s say, though we do not, that we have the power to destroy the world, meaning the planet Earth. We still haven’t achieved the colloquial meaning of the phrase, for existence will continue to spin onward and outward, almost entirely unaffected by the blink of time bookended by Earth’s formation and cessation, the latter by our unguided hands.
