Predicting prediction for 2012

Let me take this opportunity to wish readers of this column and all other beings a peaceful and happy new year; the year we talk about as the alleged ‘end of time’ year of 2012.

I must confess that I would not wish for you to acquire more material wealth than you need for yourself and to assist others.

That is because I wish for you to be on your way to shunning greed.

Having peace around you and within you will mean that you will have the time to reflect on conservatory ways to make the most of the resources and opportunities we have to reduce stress, be content and healthy.

The Buddha word and all other religious leaders said, that would make each of us a person, mindful and caring. What more can we wish to be, than being content, healthy, mindful and caring of all beings and things around us.

More of the same

In my youth, I was an avid reader of the astrological prediction columns of newspapers.

Not that I took all of it seriously, yet I must admit that when it sounded good, the feeling emanating was also good. I was looking to see what the stars held for me and what I needed to be cautioned about in guarding myself against the bad. We all know that good news pleases and not so, the bad.

Then ‘there is a sucker born every minute’, it is said. I have not read these pages lately or called into the several programmes now on daytime vernacular television where astrologers armed with notebook computers and prediction software, venture to forecast our future.

I realised sometime ago that there is a game of ‘cut and paste’ going on with many of these astrological predictions. That is when I stopped bothering to be interested in them. With some of them, yesterday’s prediction for Leo, was today’s for Scorpion and tomorrow’s for Virgo; word to word.

‘Astrologers’ who present these, bank on the premise that most humans fall prey to what sounds comforting, are basically selfish, being only interested in predictions of one’s own or at best, one other.

Science of astrology

Please do not get me wrong. I am not for a minute claiming astrology as a science or the influence of what is happening in this wide universe and the solar system is not having an impact on what we are and will become. I am simply saying that like in many things around us there are those who seek short cuts, attempt to place smoke screens and/or pull wool over our eyes. Now let’s get back to the year 2012.

Prophecies and predictions

For those in the know of what is ‘predicted’ by the Mayan ancestors of the ending of the Long Count Calendar Cycle, or the prediction in The Kolbrin Bible, a secular wisdom text studied in the days of Jesus, preserved by generations of Celtic mystics in Great Britain or belief in the return of God Almighty-Amon-Ra, ‘the God of the heavens and sky, most particularly the sun and light’, to start a new world where starvation and war does not exist or the claim of a Tibetan monk that “the whole world will get polarized and prepare for the ultimate dooms day, before which heavy political maneuvers and negotiations will take place with little progress with the world starting to plunge into a total destructive nuclear war in 2012” or the American Indian belief of the ending of the Cherokee Calendar this year when all is reborn, for the Feathered Rattlsnake comes and shall be seen in the heavens in the year 2004 to 2012 when the ‘Stars of the Heavens’ of the Cherokee Zodiac, the ‘Rings of the Calendar’, and ‘The Venus Alignment’ tell the story of a Chickamaugan Prophecy or the claim of after the Armageddon when, we are said to witness the falling away of the old structures and the birthing of the new, over a 20 year transitional period as the Solstice Sun crosses the Galactic Equator and moves in to a new hemisphere or the ‘Zombie Apocalypse’ with its claim that our world could be forever changed on by an unnoticed eschatological asteroid, disease or terrible quaking of the earth or the ‘Wave of Love’ where at the centre of the Milky Way Galaxy the Galactic Centre, powerful transmissions of energy waves known as ‘Waves of Love’, have been increasing in intensity since 2007 and will continue to do so as we near the end of 2012 or the much quoted cryptic four-line prophecies and predictions of Nostradamus claiming disaster with a date stamp of December 21, 2012.

There is an unbelievable number of web sites on the Internet, where the many ‘prophecies’ of doomsday scenarios are discussed in great detail.

Then there is ‘2012’, the 2009 American science fiction disaster film directed by Roland Emmerich portraying a scenario of what is predicted by some of the above. Not only will a simple Google search of few related key words demonstrate to us that all of this is no freak prediction or prophecy, but one that has concerned humankind for a very long time now.

Yet like in all things, when we want to believe that ‘bad news is not good news when it can impact you’, we hear little of all of this in the conventional media. Some, like the reported claim and strategy of an expatriate teacher of an international school in Sri Lanka, to prepare his students for doomsday by having a rollicking good time prior to it or the residents of the tiny Southern French hamlet of Bugarach with a population 194, where a rising influx of Doomsday believers are convinced it is the only place that will survive judgment day, December 21, 2012, much like the Noah’s Ark. Yet others will claim that ‘it is bad for the global economy or for business to indulge in discussion of such phenomena’.

Hope and wish

Given the huge amount of scientific, astrological and tracking of historical data that is presented it will do well for us in the least to understand that all is not well with this only planet we have to live in. But we all want to hope that these predictions and prophecies will not hold and that 2012 will pass as a yet another leap year. And that I assure you, is my hope and wish too.

The recent e-mail I had from a friend from Australia had a tag-line which read “I have learnt from reliable sources that the world will not end in 2012”. Some of my Sri Lankan friends ventured even further reflecting our modern day ethos; ‘Nawa Gilunath Band Chune Machan’ (Even when the ship sinks the music must go on my friend). That I guess sums it all up and as for the rest we must hope that our survival kits are in tact. Just in case.

Once again accept warmest wishes from me for a happy and peaceful 2012 and many more years beyond.

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