mayan — Features — In the footsteps of an Itinerant Child

Once more, the world is facing down a date which some amongst our population have decided is to be the day of our destruction. This isn’t a new thing. It’s not so long ago that we were all being told that at midnight of 31st December 1999 all of the world’s computers would have a collective, digital brain-fart and reset their clocks to 1900 rather than 2000 which would result in planes dropping from the sky, nuclear missiles being launched and all of our bank accounts being reset. Spoiler alert – it didn’t.

In fact Wikipedia lists 83 individual, failed apocalypse prophecies and 9 more, including next week, which have yet to happen. Predictably various Christian sects and American evangelical churches are the worst offenders, being responsible for almost two thirds of the tales of impending woe and destruction, but always offering salvation for supplication.

However, some predictors may surprise you; for example, Issac Newton was part of the Y2K brigade. Botticelli claimed that the year 1500 would be our last. John Wesley, founder of the Methodist Church had us penciled in for holy destruction in 1836.

These names though are the respectable side of apocalyptic predictions. There are some more sinister names upon the list. Charles Manson is one that jumps out. In the late 60’s Manson was enjoying a literal orgy or drugs and sex with his followers before he discovered the hidden messages in The Beatles’ White Album. He called his vision of apocalypse ‘Helter Skelter’, after one of the songs. He saw a race war between black and white Americans destroying the country. But he was going to lead his followers to safety in the ‘bottomless pit’ which he believed was somewhere in Death Valley. As the last years of the 60’s unfolded tensions rose with the assignations of powerful black leaders such as Martin Luther King. Yet he grew inpatient and ordered the Tait – La Bianca murders as a way to kickstart the end. In fact, when the Manson family was arrested it was for stealing dune buggies to search for the pit and the arson of some construction machinery they had found. They would only be linked to the murder when family member Susan ‘Sadie’ Atkins confessed to a cell mate.

The 70’s would give the world the largest mass cult suicide at Jonestown, Guyana which left 914 people dead and would make offers of Kool-Aid slightly sinister – the drink actually laced with poison was ‘Flavor Aid’. Lead by yond and charismatic preacher Jim Jones the cult went through a number of transformations as it moved around northern California but Jones outspoken support of communist regimes in North Korea and the Soviet Union had marked his card. Rumours grew and grew about strange practices with Jones’ church and threats made against people who spoke out or wished to leave. Despite holding some sway in local politics Jones became increasingly paranoid and moved his followers to the Guyanan jungle.

Jones would become convinced of plots to kill him, of secret spies lurking in the jungle and of an impending nuclear war. Back in America the cause of the Jonestown families had been taken up by Congressman Leo Ryan. Ryan organized a trip to Jonestown with concerned relatives. When they arrived things seemed in order but gradually people passed them notes in secret asking for help. The next day some people wanted to leave. Jones, clearly angered let them but refused to allow their children of family to go with them. Eventually Ryan gave in and took the few people to the airstrip. Within 45 minutes he and all the members of Jonestown would be dead. They drank cyanide on his orders; the arrival of Ryan was the last portent of the apocalypse. There is an audio recording of the final hour of Jonestown and images from the helicopter which went to investigate two days later why no-one had come home.

The worst offenders of all though were the Bible Student Movement, a milenialist and restorationist Christian sect which is behind organizations such as Jehovahs Witnesses and the Watchtower. They predicted 9 separate apocalypses between 1874 and 1925.

So, we probably won’t see our poles switch suddenly, super volcanoes burst forth or a massive food inundate the world but what are the more serious potential extinction events on our horizon which we are merrily not thinking about. The obvious ones are over population den climate change, both are undeniable. The old classic, nuclear war, is never far away – August 29th 1997 anyone? Or the biggest elephant in the room, peak oil.

The most serious predictions all put the end far off. In 5 billion years our sun will begin to go into its red giant phase which will destroy this solar system. The Big Rip Theory claims that in 22 billion years the universe’s continual expansion will begin to tear it apart. I don’t even know how to say 10600 years but that is when scientists believe the ‘heat death of the universe’ will occur, total and utter game over.

So what does all of this rambling prove? Nothing more than that there have always been those who call out ‘the end is nigh’ on grey and cold mornings or those so riddled with their own madness and arrogance that they lead the weak willed to their own mini apocalypses but, as with most great threats and evils, it comes not from the supernatural or the cosmos but from us. We are the apocalypse.

Maybe that is why our culture enjoys the macabre spectacle of apocalyptic movies and literature more and more. As our news becomes darker than our films where else is there for the consciousness to go than to imagined doom?

If the Mayans could predict the future to such a degree then why weren’t they prepared for Cortez? Why didn’t they see the plants that would give them antibiotics? Why didn’t they work steel or make black powder? I know the hippies like to think of them as some peaceful, pious to their gods and naively welcoming – you can thank Niel Young and Crazy Horse for that one – but they were aggressive and war like, heart munching, chocolate smoking warriors.

For me all the evidence points in one direction - that the Mayans had a finite counting system or a finite amount of rock to write it on and we are all just distracting ourselves again.