07-10-2007, 11:43 AM
Saturday, 07/07/07
<span style='font-size:14pt;line-height:100%'>As Mayan 'Year Zero' nears, it inspires talk of spiritual rebirth</span>
By RAY WADDLE
Opinion
Humanity is weary. Science is poisoning us, religion dividing us. Earth yearns for transformation. Does the world float closer toward chaos â or toward the Mayan moment?
More than a thousand years ago, the Maya people of Central America charted a 5,126-year calendar and, after gazing skyward and doing the math, saw fit to end it abruptly in 2012, a termination point of the current world cycle.
They didn't know we'd become a civilization of software, world war and Paris Hilton, but they reckoned the world by now would be ready for a fresh start, a spiritual facelift, Year Zero. It's
hard to blame them for thinking so.
And so, five years out from the big date (around Dec. 21, 2012), anticipation grows for the latest dream of a New Age a-coming. (See The New York Times article last Sunday, which notes books like 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl by Daniel Pinchbeck and Maya Cosmogenesis 2012: The True Meaning of the Maya Calendar End Date by John Major Jenkins.)
The date coincides with a rare alignment of the sun and the Milky Way's midsection. It happens every 26,000 years. It's hard to know how Mayan stargazers of 900 A.D. could predict this astronomic convergence â if they did so, or cared. Amateurs and experts debate arcane details of calendar accuracies and Mayan intentions. But supporters ascribe hugely mysterious ramifications for human life to 2012. Many cast it as a benign earthly rendezvous with eternity, a grinding halt to negative human impulses, the reconciliation of opposites, an outbreak of peace.
'Convergence' redux
These phrases echo the "Harmonic Convergence" of 20 years ago, which marked a 25-year countdown to 2012. This New Age peace initiative was lampooned as naive and weightless (the "moronic convergence"), but it enlivened a collective dream of alternative spirituality that persists in today's millennial climate of terrorism and ecological anxiety.
Surely the longing for Maya-minded renewal suggests a deficit of big visions in post-Y2K life. Marxism lost credibility after the Soviet disaster. Biblical Armageddon, after so many false claims, goes on holiday. We're left with globalization, anti-globalization and a passion for text-messaging. Religions thrive and agitate, but they send contradictory signals: They enlarge horizons of global compassion ⦠and give people reason for tribal hatreds.
Are the Maya saviors? Scholarly argument says these Mesoamerica ancients would regard 2012 as a celebratory moment, not a stagy endtime intersection.
And New Age vibes, accelerated evolution, sudden leaps from the third dimension to the fifth â these 2012 phrases sound both too vague and too technical for overhauling the human condition.
But lacking other news, other coordinates, the connoisseurs of 2012 are daring to dream ambitious dreams of reconciliation, maybe because no one else will.
http://tennessean.com/apps/pbcs.dll/articl...70329/1023/NEWS
<span style='font-size:14pt;line-height:100%'>As Mayan 'Year Zero' nears, it inspires talk of spiritual rebirth</span>
By RAY WADDLE
Opinion
Humanity is weary. Science is poisoning us, religion dividing us. Earth yearns for transformation. Does the world float closer toward chaos â or toward the Mayan moment?
More than a thousand years ago, the Maya people of Central America charted a 5,126-year calendar and, after gazing skyward and doing the math, saw fit to end it abruptly in 2012, a termination point of the current world cycle.
They didn't know we'd become a civilization of software, world war and Paris Hilton, but they reckoned the world by now would be ready for a fresh start, a spiritual facelift, Year Zero. It's
hard to blame them for thinking so.
And so, five years out from the big date (around Dec. 21, 2012), anticipation grows for the latest dream of a New Age a-coming. (See The New York Times article last Sunday, which notes books like 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl by Daniel Pinchbeck and Maya Cosmogenesis 2012: The True Meaning of the Maya Calendar End Date by John Major Jenkins.)
The date coincides with a rare alignment of the sun and the Milky Way's midsection. It happens every 26,000 years. It's hard to know how Mayan stargazers of 900 A.D. could predict this astronomic convergence â if they did so, or cared. Amateurs and experts debate arcane details of calendar accuracies and Mayan intentions. But supporters ascribe hugely mysterious ramifications for human life to 2012. Many cast it as a benign earthly rendezvous with eternity, a grinding halt to negative human impulses, the reconciliation of opposites, an outbreak of peace.
'Convergence' redux
These phrases echo the "Harmonic Convergence" of 20 years ago, which marked a 25-year countdown to 2012. This New Age peace initiative was lampooned as naive and weightless (the "moronic convergence"), but it enlivened a collective dream of alternative spirituality that persists in today's millennial climate of terrorism and ecological anxiety.
Surely the longing for Maya-minded renewal suggests a deficit of big visions in post-Y2K life. Marxism lost credibility after the Soviet disaster. Biblical Armageddon, after so many false claims, goes on holiday. We're left with globalization, anti-globalization and a passion for text-messaging. Religions thrive and agitate, but they send contradictory signals: They enlarge horizons of global compassion ⦠and give people reason for tribal hatreds.
Are the Maya saviors? Scholarly argument says these Mesoamerica ancients would regard 2012 as a celebratory moment, not a stagy endtime intersection.
And New Age vibes, accelerated evolution, sudden leaps from the third dimension to the fifth â these 2012 phrases sound both too vague and too technical for overhauling the human condition.
But lacking other news, other coordinates, the connoisseurs of 2012 are daring to dream ambitious dreams of reconciliation, maybe because no one else will.
http://tennessean.com/apps/pbcs.dll/articl...70329/1023/NEWS