Is The Movie 2012 Denigrating Mayan Science?
As the science fiction movie 2012 opens Friday, a science writer challenges the idea that it’s harmless “disaster porn”.
The film’s writers are arguing that millions of people believe the final day of the Mayan calendar — December 21, 2012 — will bring “some kind of shift in society, or a shift in spirit,” which this article calls “blithe cultural arrogance and staggering anthropological ignorance.”
And it interviews BoingBoing blogger Xeni Jardin, who knows Mayans through her work with a Guatemalan nonprofit. She calls it a parody of Mayan culture, and describes explaining to a laughing Mayan priest what the movie cost to film. (The priest’s response? “Well, that’s gringos for you…”)
The author suggests a better response — “that we step up to our social responsibilities and engage passionately with the issues…
World’s Largest Pyramid Discovered, Lost Mayan City Of Mirador, Guatemala
Just in time for the 2012 craze, CNN reports on a brand new massive Mayan pyramid discovery, including an amazing stone frieze showing the Maya sacred creation story, the Popol Vuh:
2013: Or, What to Do When the Apocalypse Doesn’t Arrive
Gary Lachman is the author of several well-respected occult-themed books (including the Disinformation book Turn Off Your Mind: The Mystic Sixties and the Dark Side of the Age of Aquarius). He asked us to run his take on the 2012 phenomenenon (the essay was originally published in EnlightenNext Magazine):
The belief in a coming end of the world as we know it may seem understandable to people living in the first decade of the twenty-first century, but a look at history shows that it has been part of Western psychology from the beginning.
The central figure of Western religion, Jesus Christ, told his followers that the end was nigh, and most people who accepted Jesus believed that the cosmic last call would come in their lifetime. Yet Jesus worked within an age-old…
