Information is Beautiful examines several claims made by 2012 believers and finds their claims lacking.

Information is Beautiful: 2012: The End Of The World?

Mary Dery writes:

Pinchbeck, like New Age thinkers all the way back to Madame Blavatsky, preaches a refried gospel of ancient wisdom and mystical, supra-rational knowledge. In 2007, he told The New York Times that “the rational, empirical worldview…has reached its expiration date…we’re on the verge of transitioning to a dispensation of consciousness that’s more intuitive, mystical, and shamanic.”

Well, somebody say “Amen”! There’s entirely too much rationalism and empiricism clouding the American mind these days, in a nation where, according to the Harris and other polls, 42% of Republicans are convinced President Obama wasn’t born in the United States, 10% of the nation’s voters are certain he’s a Muslim, and 61% of the population believe in the Virgin birth but only 47% believe in Darwinian evolution. [...]

When I asked her what she thought of Pinchbeck’s invocation of Mayan beliefs, and of the 2012-ers’ use of the Maya in general, she was blunt. “What makes me angriest about Pinchbeck’s bogus, profiteering bullshit isn’t so much him, but the fact that that many people are racist enough to believe any asshole white guy who declares himself an expert in Mayan culture. Did it ever occur to anyone to ask practicing Maya priests out in the villages? [...] It absolutely enrages me that while people I know in Guatemala, traditional priests, are struggling to figure out how to provide clean drinking water to their families, how to feed their communities, how to avoid being shot by the gangs and thieves that plague the roads more than ever—while they’re struggling to survive and keep their communities intact, assholes like Pinchbeck are making a buck off of white man’s parodies of their culture.”

h+: 2012: Carnival of Bunkum

(via Chris Arkenberg)

See also: Tracing the origins of the 2012 phenomenon

Gary Lachman, author of Turn Off Your Mind writes:

Much has been written about 2012, pointing out both the value and the flaws in Argüelles’s and McKenna’s interpretations. I don’t intend to repeat those here. The strangeness of the ideas did not repel me. At the time that I came across them, I was reading Rudolf Steiner, who had his own prophecies concerning the third millennium, which, to be honest, were rather vague. I had also already spent some years in the Gurdjieff “work,” so odd ideas were not a threat. What troubled me then and today is what I call the “apocalyptic gesture,” a point I raised recently on the Reality Sandwich website, much of which is dedicated to the 2012 scenario. The desire for some once-and-for-all break with the given conditions of life seems, to me at least, to be embedded in our psyche and is a form of historical or evolutionary impatience. Social, political, or cultural conditions may trigger it, but in essence it’s the same reaction as losing patience with some annoying, mundane business and, in frustration, knocking it aside with the intent to make a “clean start.” While in our personal lives this may result in nothing more than a string of false beginnings and a lack of staying power, on the broader social and political scale it can mean something far more serious. [...]

The “Summer of Love” in 1967—which by many accounts wasn’t as groovy as believed—quickly became the year of “Street Fighting Man” in 1968, when the “generation gap” promised to turn into something like revolution, and dangerous slogans like “If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem” promoted a simplistic us-or-them scenario. Yet by 1969 the hopes of an Aquarian Age had been severely battered by the gruesome Charles Manson murders and the Rolling Stones’ disastrous concert at Altamont, when Hell’s Angels murdered one man and terrorized hundreds of others, including the Stones themselves. (I tell the story in Turn Off Your Mind: The Mystic Sixties and the Dark Side of the Age of Aquarius.) Exorbitantly high hopes can often lead to very deep depressions, and in a microcosmic popular sense, within a few years the peace and love unreservedly embraced by the flower generation became the “no future” of the punks. Cynicism, jadedness, and pessimism often constitute the hangover from the intoxication of excessively high expectations. No one rejects ideals more vigorously than a bruised romantic.

Disinfo: 2013: Or, What to Do When the Apocalypse Doesn’t Arrive

It’s not what Lachman is writing about here, but a detailed account of the origins of the 2012 myth can be found in Sacha Defesche’s excellent paper The 2012 Phenomenon.

In his master’s thesis Sacha Defesche traces the origins of the 2012 phenomenon, from the brothers McKenna to Jose Arguelles to David Icke and beyond.

here has the notion of the year 2012 as holding a special apocalyptic or millennial significance originated? What are the most important historical sources for the 2012 phenomenon? Are there indeed several ‘pure’ (as in independent) sources of prophecy that separately mention the importance of the 2012 date as is often thought in New Age circles?

Full Story: Skepsis

Based on this episode of Post Modern Times

The European aerospace giant EADS is going into the space tourism business.

Its Astrium division says it will build a space plane capable of carrying fare-paying passengers on a sub-orbital ride more than 100km above the planet.

[...]

Tickets are expected to cost up to 200,000 euros (?135,000), with flights likely to begin in 2012.

Full Story: BBC.

(Thanks Chaoflux).

Above is the first part, Key 23 has links to the next two portions.

See also:

Rolling Stone: The New Psychedelic Elite

and

New York Metro: The End of the World As They Know It.

The Phenomena Interview Padre Engo: New York’s Voodoo High Priest, Militant Messiah, Music Producer and Musician Dateline:

Ed – You have stated that you are the incarnation of a Mexican god. How did you discover this?

PE – Yes I am Quetzalcoatl in the flesh. I am the first and there will be other avatars of the Feathered Serpent to come after me.

Only a black man can hold this spiritual title. Also, being a Moor (a black Muslim) and an avatar of Quetzalcoatl is not a contradiction in terms. Most people have no idea as to who Quetzalcoatl really is. All the so-called New Age books on Quetzalcoatl fail to tell you who he really is. Quetzalcoatl was not a ‘White Man with a beard’. The Mexican Indians never believed such nonsense. This idea only exists in the letter Cortez wrote to the King of Spain. Quetzalcoatl is a West African god that was always viewed as a black man from the East. This has been proven by the Harvard Professor Leo Weiner.

Quetzalcoatl is the product of the Mandingo magicians that colonized Mexico long before the birth of Christ, and again in the 1300s. He was originally depicted by the ancient Mexican Indians as a black man with a beard wearing a white ‘Islamic’ robe. His white robe is why he is often called a ‘White God’.

Full Story: Key 23.

Late night rant about techno-utopianism and passitivity in dangerous times:

I think there’s a great value in technology, and I think much of our ability to survive in the future will be based around technological innovation. But a lot of it is going to also have to depend on adaptation. We simply cannot continue our current path and expect technology to solve all our problems. It’s faith in technology for salvation. It’s not science, it’s religion.
Read the rest of this entry »

Messages received by Danny Chaoflux and me night before last.

Thee larger context.

Personally, I’m evenly split between the sort of cosmic all-at-onceness Rucker espouses (even though I’ve never done LSD) and Kurzweil’s chomping-at-the-bit transhumanism. Like Rucker, I’m a little wary of “The Singularity Is Near.” Not because I fear I won’t enjoy it (I thought highly “The Age of Spiritual Machines”) but because I fear Kurzweil’s consummate punditry. It’s great fun to wonder what the postsingular future holds in store, but Kurzweil (and many others of the same general outlook) seem to have overlooked William Gibson’s observation that the future’s arrival is seldom evenly distributed.

Full Story: Posthuman Blues.

R.U. and company interview neoshaman Daniel Pinchbeck about his new book 2012 : The Return of Quetzalcoatl.

Mp3 on R.U. Sirius Show.

Disinfo has posted the first two chapters of Daniel Pinchbeck’s new book 2012 : The Return of Quetzalcoatl:

Chapter 1.

Chapter 2.

End of the World Between 2006-2010.
After 2010.

Here are the results from the 2012 poll. Now that the synchronicity buzz has worn off, I’m less convinced anything out of the ordinary will happen in 2012. But it’s still fun to speculate.

What do you think will happen in 2012?

Nothing (25%)
All of the above (10%)
Catastrophic climate change (10%)
Alien/interdimensional/god contact (9%)
Other catastrophe (6%)
Quantum computing (5%)
Nuclear holocaust (5%)
Human cloning break through (5%)
Other scientific break through (5%)
Time travel (2%)
Teleportation (2%)
Apocalyptic disease outbreak or bioterrorism (2%)
True AI (2%)
Affordable consumer space travel (1%)
Telepathy drug (0%)
Brain back-ups (0%)
Catastrophic water shortage (0%)
Humans attain immortality (0%)
Matter Fax (0%)

134 total votes

I have to admit, I’ve never been to into the 2012 myth… sure it’s interesting that the Mayan calender only went so far… but maybe they just decided that 2012 was far enough and they should maybe get to work on some other stuff like more words for their written language, and little pullys for water and stuff.

But seeing the National Geographic article that links 2012 with the peak of sunspot activity got my brain going on the subject. So yesterday I went to Robot Wisdom to find the polling site that Jorn uses… and low and beyold he had this link to a Jack London story set in a future in which a massive plague hit the world in 2013.

Spooky stuff.

Anyway, tell me what you think:

Poll: What Will Happen in 2012?. Update: Poll close. Results here.

“2012,” he shrilled, and then fell to cackling grotesquely. “That was the year Morgan the Fifth was appointed President of the United States by the Board of Magnates. It must have been one of the last coins minted, for the Scarlet Death came in 2013. Lord! Lord!?think of it! Sixty years ago, and I am the only person alive to-day that lived in those times. Where did you find it, Edwin?” The boy, who had been regarding him with the tolerant curiousness one accords to the prattlings of the feeble-minded, answered promptly.

Full Story: The Scarlet Plague by Jack London.

(via Robot Wisdom)

Passed on without comment:

The stronger solar storms could start as early as this year or as late as 2008 and should peak around 2012.

“We predict the next solar cycle will be 30 to 50 percent stronger than the last cycle,” said Mausumi Dikpati, a solar scientist with the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, yesterday in a telephone briefing with reporters.

The last cycle peaked in 2001.

Full Story: National Geographic.

(via LVX23).

This sounds reassuring:

According to these tourists remote viewers are seeing world powers in the course of self-destruction. They also see that the world will not be destroyed. Between now and 2012 the world super powers will continue to engage in regional wars. Terrorism and covert war will be the main problem. In world politics something will happen in and around 2010. At that time the world powers will threaten to destroy each other.

[...]

In 2012, the world will start plunging into a total destructive nuclear war.

And at that time something remarkable will happen, says, Buddhist monk of Tibet. Supernatural divine powers will intervene. The destiny of the world is not to self-destruct at this time.

Link (via Dark Planet)
Read the rest of this entry »

Atlantis Rising Magazine has a free issue in PDF format on their web site this month. Contents include:

INSIDE THE EIGHT-YEAR SOLAR WINDOW: Have Mayan Prophecies for Between Now and 2012 Begun to Unfold?

SHIPPING OUT TO MARS: John Kettler Explores the Montauk Route to the Stars

INCIDENT AT NORTH BERWICK: Jeff Nisbet Produces Photographic Proof for the UFO Presence

ROYAL RIFE’S AMAZING HEALING MACHINES: Was the Cure for Cancer Discovered in the 1930s?

SACRED RELICS: Steven Sora Investigates the Power and the Business

Link (via Invisible College).