by Robert L. Gisel
The world is not all bad evidently, as the end of the world has not occurred, and there has not been some great cataclysm as of this day 21 May, 2011.
This suggests something has been lost in translation or in the millennium of misinterpretation. The word "apocalypse" comes from the ancient Greek word meaning "revelation" or "to uncover". It refers to a moment of disclosure or enlightenment. I'm sure the end of the world would come as a great surprise, but that is not the original meaning of that word from the times of which the tale evidently begins.
Mankind is certainly due for an enlightenment. Just as the "mob mentally" can telepath through a group, in the rush of a crowd from fire or a mob in a riot or the group enthusiasm of a gathering beseeched with great news, so could mankind spontaneously arrive at a cosmic consciousness, and enlightenment. I second that motion.
That "The Apocalypse" got heralded as the event of great destruction and cataclysmic events has to do with Jewish and Christian writings of Apocalypse, this work being of unknown genesis and various interpretations of its poetic rendition. For one, what survives in the writings of the Bible is not necessarily the writings before its compilation and editing in 397 AD, when the "official" Bible was adopted. Secondly, which John is said to have written it, what was said, as well the date of its origin and its prophetic value is in thorough dispute. In other words, it doesn't withstand the acid test. Thank you very much Harold Camping of the Calvary Bible Church, your opinion has been noted.
The Mayan civilization, quite apart from the Christian or Jewish lines on this, had their own prediction of a time of great celebration of the ending of a cycle, which has been misinterpreted as "the end of the world". Not what they had in mind.
This Mayan "apocolypse" is now speculated to be a calendar date of the winter solstice 21 December, 2012, when once in about every 26,000 years the sun will be directly between the center of the galaxy and the earth, i.e., the end of a 26,000 year Mayan calendar cycle. A solar "eclipse" of the center of the galaxy, so to speak, isn't the end of the world by any means, in spite of all interpretations to the contrary.
Whatever the academic or theological or astrological postulate on this mythical event, today is not, by empirical observation, the day. So would someone please take down the billboard on Fountain Boulevard which proclaims the end of the world on today's date? Whatever they are selling, we're not buying it.
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