21st of December 2012 DIscussion

[Kees_L]

What his professor said just seems like Captain Obvious stuff. Where is more important.

I'd say that discarding or discrediting anything due to seeming obvious would be quite dumb. Plus did you get all of it, even if it might have gotten recounted into different wordings?

And the where as in either 'at which place' or 'how would it have originated precisely' does not seem a very fruitful or practical a question to me,
since historical studies or scientifically researched accounts already have been pointing out doom prophecies as being at least pre-Islamic both as pre-Biblical both as pre-Judaistic or pre-Talmudic, whereas such stuff as pre- or proto- Etrusk / Byzantian / Sumerian / Incan / Mayan / ancient Middle-Eastern / Euro / Asian / African / Pictish cultures or traditions will lose themselves in producing written or recorded accounts as being to only outdate any actual originatings most likely.

And well, science or sense would dictate only a most fruitful or most likely effective approach I'd think. Seeming either obvious or not so much?

[Gryphon]

Incidentally the mayans didnt have the same concept of leap years as we do, did they?Because if they didnt then the date has long passed.

[blakey]

I figured I'd bump this thread since the date is almost a month away...

[Gryphon]

In fairness to the crazies in their 2012 bunkers, is it any more crazy than most of the religious beliefs out there? Other than it will be automatically disproven once the calendar hits Dec. 22nd? I wish ideas like angels or the healing power of crystals had an end date on them.

Yes it is more crazy.

[Paradox]

Eh, we already paid too much attention last year to counting down to some prediction being wrong. The rantings of terminally stupid people aren't even interesting any more.

[Paradox]

Gryphon wonders:

Incidentally the mayans didnt have the same concept of leap years as we do, did they?Because if they didnt then the date has long passed.

I can't say for sure because I've never specifically looked into it, but isn't it an astronomically accurate calendar? That would mean the 1/4 day a year would have been worked in there somewhere, if not in the same way we do. It's not the same system, anyway, so the current system date probably came about by counting days rather than years, so whether or not that adjustment had been made probably wouldn't change the date they came up with.

[IssunBoshi]

you know i was just thinking about including this in my latest thread.

yeah the mayan 2012 phenomenon is surely something. I'll miss it when 2013 comes and will have to look for another faux-doomsday date phenomenon to revel in.

[tonythelion]

It's pretty interesting to read/watch documentaries about.

However I really don't believe the world is going to end on this date. If you look at the fact of the "theory".

A calendar ends. Therefore, the World is ending.

My desk calendar expires every year, yet the world doesn't end. I just get a new calendar. The Mayans never actually predicted the world would end. All they did was put their calendar out there, and the Western world media put their spin on things, so much so that people believe it.

The fact I don't believe in it probably won't stop me from worrying about it in the back of my mind for a bit (until December 22 at least). Last year with the whole Harold Camping thing, I remember searching "earthquakes" on twitter all morning because he claimed that's how it'd start before Jesus came back. I don't even believe in Jesus, yet I still worried about it. Took until early evening before I fully realised nothing was going to happen.

As for plans, it's my last day of work for the year, so I'll probably be in a pretty good/drunk mood. Probably get a takeaway and play some Xbox :D

[mikekerrIII]

I still don't know how Y2K got started.

I just want to know what the next Doomsday date we have to worry about is. There is always another one. I remember my family was freaking out cause I was flying on 6/6/6 exactly, but nothing happened than either.

Y2K started becasue of real concerns about computer systems failing becasue of date pronlems casued by two digit dates, the vulnerable systems were fixed well before they became real problems. For exampe the whole telephone switching system in the west would have crashed hard if fixes had not been implemented

[Vibranium]

I heard a new one that on the aforementioned date, gravity is just supposed to stop working and we are all going to float off into space

[7thangel]

unless the 21st is the day we finally go forth with our offensive in The War On Christmas and finally defeat them in the name of Happy Holidays, it's just a distraction

[Gryphon]

Now that we are in December, I am seeing the crazies everywhere on the streets which is bad enough, but then I heard a radio ad saying that since the end of the world is coming now is the best time to buy a good car. Don't feed the crazies.

[Paradox]

Gryphon lives in the Great White North:

Now that we are in December, I am seeing the crazies everywhere on the streets...

See, in the US, that's Tuesday.

[The Black Guardian]

I'd say that discarding or discrediting anything due to seeming obvious would be quite dumb. Plus did you get all of it, even if it might have gotten recounted into different wordings?

And the where as in either 'at which place' or 'how would it have originated precisely' does not seem a very fruitful or practical a question to me,
since historical studies or scientifically researched accounts already have been pointing out doom prophecies as being at least pre-Islamic both as pre-Biblical both as pre-Judaistic or pre-Talmudic, whereas such stuff as pre- or proto- Etrusk / Byzantian / Sumerian / Incan / Mayan / ancient Middle-Eastern / Euro / Asian / African / Pictish cultures or traditions will lose themselves in producing written or recorded accounts as being to only outdate any actual originatings most likely.

And well, science or sense would dictate only a most fruitful or most likely effective approach I'd think. Seeming either obvious or not so much?

That's precisely why the "where" is more important. The "why" is rendered irrelevant because of the ubiquitousness of such things. We know that already, and it's precisely what was not being asked... probably for that reason. It's no different than explaining how locks work when someone asks where their keys are or the combustion engine when they lose their car in a parking lot. It just so happens that the 2012 thing was not eschatological until its idea was perverted very, very recently.

Incidentally the mayans didnt have the same concept of leap years as we do, did they?Because if they didnt then the date has long passed.

No. The whole 2012 idea accounts for leap year. There were only 360 days in the Mayan year, so it wasn't all that precise to begin with. Dec 21, 2012 just happens to be when the current cycle ends. This cycle has been in process for 7800-odd years.

Now that we are in December, I am seeing the crazies everywhere on the streets which is bad enough, but then I heard a radio ad saying that since the end of the world is coming now is the best time to buy a good car. Don't feed the crazies.

Just remember: those crazies were there in November and will probably still be there in January.

[Dizzy D]

Y2K started becasue of real concerns about computer systems failing becasue of date pronlems casued by two digit dates, the vulnerable systems were fixed well before they became real problems. For exampe the whole telephone switching system in the west would have crashed hard if fixes had not been implemented

Yeah, Y2K was a valid concern that required some work to solve to prevent any problems. The fact that it didn't cause any real problems was because people had actually done their job. (Which is probably more shocking to some than the end of the world).

As for Mayan calandars: I had this same discussion on another board and I keep running into the same problem: why do people believe the Mayans (ignoring the fact that the Mayans never even said that the world was going to end)? They don't have a history for actually predicting anything, as far as I know, but doomsayers have been around since the beginning of history.