Apocalypse maybe

Okay, so if 2012 is the last year of the Mayan calendar, does it necessarily mean the end of the world? Or just that it was time for whomever did the stationery order to jot a reminder note to get the next year’s pre-Columbian Daytimer?

Society at large seems invested in doomsday scenarios, from young adult readers to the homeless guy on the corner who says We’d Better Be Good Or Else in an assortment of badly garbled Biblical quotations. Whether it’s zombies, Divine Wrath, or a socio-economic meltdown, we’re perversely fascinated. At times, I’d almost say eager to end it all. Why?

My own personal theory is that most of us work better with a due date. We need consequences. The notion of responsible living for its own sake pales beside the idea that we need to buy organic or the world will end. We must live peacefully with our neighbours or we’ll blow up the world. If we don’t cut greenhouse gasses, we’ll all drown in the rising ocean. It seems to take the threat of a catastrophe to get us moving in the right direction.

And then there are those who, for whatever reason, simply want to depress us. Books and movies remind us that we are bad, bad people who will go all Lord of the Flies at the slightest provocation. Just head out to the Boxing Day sales if you want proof. This Fun With Nihilism mindset seems to be big with teens, and (in my experience) the end of the world is the ultimate expression of the hopelessness attendant on approximately 87% of a teen’s waking life. Most of us get over it. As one gets older, the struggle for survival loses its romantic patina bigtime.

And then there are the devotees of big explosions. End of the world movies usually involve something going bang. I put this down to the frustrated psyche of male directors, who turn these moments into glowing, perhaps radioactive, examples of pseudo-erotic cinematography.
I think the end of the world is what we make of it. Or, perhaps a better phrase is the end of the world is what we need it to be. Motivation? A macrocosm to our microcosm? Relief? Maybe just an end to the story?

I personally like to think of the Creator-as-potter scenario. The universe will get squished back into a blob of potential and thrown back on the wheel to be crafted into something new and beautiful. The big mystery is what sort of vessel it will turn out to be.