“Why are atoms so small, the cosmos so big, the ocean so deep, Dad?

Why does the

present become the past, the future the present? Why does our planet revolve
around the sun, Dad? Dad? What’s an Oedipus complex?”

“Shut up, Scotty, can’t you see your father is trying to read the paper,” mother
explodes indignantly.

“Let him ask the questions, Mom. How else will he learn?” says the man as he gets
lost again in the sports section.

“How about 2012, December 21? Is it true we’re all gonna turn into hash?”

The man puts down the paper and looks severely at his 15-year old:

“Listen, son! I don’t ever want to hear that malarkey again. You will be a senior
in high school in 2012, playing football, getting ready for college.”

He turns to his wife:

“How could anyone have the nerve to frighten children with a hoax like this just
to make a buck?”

Scotty can hardly suppress a chortle: (“I sure got his attention. The old bear is
dancing the Apocalypso as if there were no tomorrow. “)

And, indeed, Dad continues:

“I heard a NASA guy on the radio. He put an end to the whole hysteria. We are not
going to be smashed by the planet Nibi or Nibu something . . . “

“Nibiru,” corrects Scotty.

“That’s right, son. And do you know why? Simply, because there is no such thing.
People are afraid of some dark cloud out there far away among the stars. It’s
dust. The movie and whatever else is being hyped up on the Internet is total
nonsense. The Earth is in no danger. End of story.”

Parental eyes lock in agreement. Mother is grateful. She has been scanning the net
for “2012” and heard the same program on the radio her husband mentioned. She
noticed that the NASA scientist brought up only those potential cataclysms that
are easy to dismiss.

Scotty, who has been carefully watching the scene he has created, decides that
this is the perfect moment to ask permission to attend a rock concert. Permission
is granted. All three know that this would not have happened so quickly had not
the talk strayed into the realm of the latest death threat against the human
enterprise, a prophecy that seems to have more clout than any previous challenger
to skepticism and reason in living memory.

The trio is a microcosm of broader society. Some would like to sweep the subject
off the table; others, who like to listen to both sides of an argument, became
confused. After all, adding a hundred cries and a hundred counter-cries together
cannot yield anything but cacophony. And some, as represented by shrewd young
Scotty, consider the anxiety-tinged uncertainty an opportunity to manipulate and
exploit.

Absent is the fourth group that comprises those who are convinced that mass
extinction is on the way, roughly on the scale portrayed by the silver screen
thriller. You find them on every continent, accumulating emergency supplies,
building shelters, quitting jobs; living the end-days.

At the moment, the “2012 state of mind” is not widespread but it can grow easily
on the humus of discontentment and a presentiment that our leviathan civilization
is eating up the farm.

Officious prattle accompanying marginal and sham efforts, stern exhortations and
glorious pep talk by well-intentioned individuals notwithstanding, the frenzied
destruction of the environment and the depletion of precious nonrenewable
resources is accelerating. The growing difference in living standards within and
among nations (obscene bankers’ bonuses versus the new spell of global
pauperization) is dimly sensed as a vulgar violation of physical and moral laws.

An infernal lake of muddy waters is accumulating in the collective psyche from

which a large variety of events with incalculable consequences could emerge; even
spontaneously, let alone when particular interests see apprehension as a chance to
implement their own agendas.

To boot, the ranks of humanity continue to multiply, flashing out the

incompatibility of material ambitions with earthly limitations.

The planet’s population, now close to seven billion, is projected to swell by

another three billion by mid-century, most of them to see the daylight in the
developing world, where people are understandably determined to reach developed
country levels of living.

Can anyone imagine that the number of automobiles, now close to a billion
worldwide, would double in two decades (as forecast) while reserves of cheap oil
are declining and carbon dioxide emissions are rising?

Can per capita consumption currently enjoyed by a minority be generalized for 10

billion or more without a demographic collapse into 2 billion souls mumbling the
name “Thomas Robert Malthus” as they roam the devastated land under El Greco skies
darkened by permanently dirty air -- handiwork and bequest of the “sorry-
generations”? (Those who would, if they could, say one day “sorry for failing to
grasp that our semi-barbarian behavior in the hothouse of greed would have such
woeful side-effects.”)

Moist-eyed homage to bioethics and compassion, public kudos handed out for “saving
the environment” with quivering lips, rhetorical validation of the “new simple” --
reading Voltaire from high resolution computer screens between hoeing the
vegetable garden and chopping wood -- simply won’t do.

Inertia anchored in our canonical money-metric values and linear-rational

traditions is too big to change the course toward an auto-destructive crisis.

But this may not be the last word on the deep survival instinct of Homo sapiens.

“If you stare into the Abyss long enough, the Abyss stares back at you,” said
Nietzsche more than a century ago. The momentum of fear may suck humanity into a
primordial maelstrom of spiritual transformation.

It could all begin with hording.

Battery-operated lights, lanterns, candles, flashlights, radios, stoves and other

heating appliances; extra batteries; bottles of water; canned and packaged food
(fruits and vegetables); dry goods (rice and beans); blankets, basic medical
supplies and as much of prescribed pharmaceuticals as one can possibly get;
detergent, toothpaste, soap, toilet paper; seeds for starting a vegetable garden;
perhaps equipment for electricity generation (there are packages advertised on the
Internet); weapons and ammunition -- just in case.

If a small but growing number of households tried to acquire everything on this

list, a threshold of total panic could easily be reached; mutually enforced
positive feedback loops could erupt into bank and business failures, government
defaults; collapse of social safety nets, rampant crime, and civil disturbance.

True, since the movie “2012” made a big splash around the world in November 2009,
new news and new movie sensations have blunted interest in our alleged rendezvous
with a sea of troubles. Nevertheless, the underlying danger inherent in the
combination of enhanced public receptiveness to Cassandra’s augury, the
juxtaposition of rare cosmic developments and quite a few correlative prophecies
-- and, of course, “the Scotty factor” -- casts a dark shadow on the next three
years.

Unusual solar activity, further indications and details concerning the planet’s
weakening magnetic belt, another devastating tsunami, a series of high-strength
hurricanes, earthquakes, and unexpected volcanic activities may all be used to
show that Apocalypse is on its way. New evidence for such an occurrence may come
to light either in the form of bona fide science or pure fabrication or a mixture
of the two.

It is a vain hope that first-rate scholars will unite to reassure the public. Only
events that have already occurred under well known circumstances can be predicted
-- an inapplicable premise in the doomsday context.

When the last ominous cyclical coincidence came to pass on the highways of heaven
during pre-historical Stone Age, science in the contemporary Western sense
corresponded to killing wooly mastodons and picking tasty nuts and berries. Since
then, the galaxy, along with our solar system, has migrated to new precincts of
the empyrean.

Astronomical deliberations of more recent ancient times are suspected of

containing a shamanic component, making them logically improper, hence discredited
in the eyes of modernity. At the same time, even the most business-like mind knows
implicitly that reality beyond our grasp may be revealed to us in ways that escape
academically approved methodological scrutiny.

Perplexity and blind angst cannot be reduced below a minimum by assurances and
this gives enough space for even the most hard-bitten scientists, who believe only
in empirically testable facts and falsifiable theories, to be split into two or
sectored into several camps by differing rationalizations. As history has shown,
large communities can always mediate their position in the form of positive
knowledge. Science vibrates sympathetically with widespread popular beliefs.

Two wobbly matrices, one containing announcements of mass extinction and the other
dismissals, interface like metal sheets. Electricity between them fills the air
with sparks of stupor and apathy. The certainty of uncertainty remains and, since
the world is predestined to change, it is inclined to amplify and spread, rather
than push down and restrain disturbances affecting its day-to-day existence, its
organization and functioning.

In the end, the composite impact of particular sales efforts (attempt to liquidate
non-moving inventories of expired elbow macaroni; to sell high-altitude real
estate, etc.) could awaken a rage of incoherent trepidation, increasing the size
of the “Fourth Group.”

From mid-2011 onwards, many (perhaps too many) people could be lying awake in
their beds, eyes open in the dark, hearing the distinct grumble of inscrutable
forces, ready to twist their walls and wash away their lives with mountain-high
waves.

What should responsible public authority do if the “Fourth Group” begins to

dominate the other three during 2012?

Once a frightened cat is out of the bag it is next to impossible to recapture it.
It is running too fast and changes direction abruptly. Counter-intuitively, like
turning the steering wheel to the right when one wants the car to go left on an
icy road, government should declare:

GENERAL MOBILIZATION OF ARMED FORCES, LAW ENFORCEMENT AGENCIES, FIRE DEPARTMENTS,

AND THE CIVIL SERVICE TO HELP THE POPULATION ANY WAY POSSIBLE!

To encourage civic solidarity, the mantra should be displayed everywhere and

repeated relentlessly:

BE GOOD TO EACH OTHER UNTO DEATH!

In the ensuing melee, Eros, the son of Aphrodite, the spirit of self-preservation,
would get the better of old death wish Thanatos, the father of blame and strife,
setting our unsustainable world free to behold the pure river of life.