Breathless Hyperbole and Critical Thinking

More than a week ago humans stood on the cusp of change. We were rapidly coming to the end of the Year-count — a calendrical numbering system derived from ancient counting methods first devised by the Egyptians, refined by the Romans, and revised into today’s form through a set of mysterious-seeming changes instituted by Pope Gregory XIII.

In short, we were rapidly approaching a change-over.  As the last days of December ticked away, we were all faced with the knowledge that a cycle of time was coming to an end.  There wasn’t a lot of information available to us about what would happen after that cycle ended. Nobody knew what would happen when 2009 finally arrived. There was zero scientific evidence that anything WOULD happen, but there were numerous things that could easily threaten humans in the new year.  Things like war.  Peace.  Asteroid sightings. Financial ruin. Political changes.  Medical issues.  Pestilence.

And all these things could be connected back to this mysterious changeover of time from one year to the next.

Worried yet?  No?

Good for you.  You probably recognized that I was talking about the the New Year, when we ticked over from 11:59:59 31 December 2008 to 12:00:00 1 January 2009.  At that moment, the very human-based method of timekeeping that we call the Gregorian Calendar, ticked over from one year to the next. And with it, life on Earth stepped forward one more instant into the future.  We are a time-based species and each second is a step into the future. No second is any more special than the next in the grand scheme of things.  We keep breathing, eating, sleeping, working, making war, making peace, doing things. The planet keeps going around the Sun. The Sun keeps moving through the galaxy, and the galaxy keeps spinning around.

There’s nothing mysterious about any of this because it’s all part of our existence — time flows forward and things happen.

Cum hoc ergo propter hoc (or, Correlation Does Not Imply Causation)

You may have noticed a certain breathless hyperbole about the coming year 2012. This is a time when, according to a widely varying number of woo-woo “historians,” overeager New Agers, and folks who have books they want to sell are telling everybody that somehow something is going to happen that will affect all of mankind.  This is pretty standard woo stuff; amusing to read and usually having little basis in logical thought. It speaks to a human propensity to attach meaning to things that are usually unrelated in an effort to tell a good story. There’s nothing wrong with good storytelling, but there’s an unsubtle difference between doing so and coming up with wild theories that sorta kinda sound scientific and attaching them to distinctly odd metaphysical weirdness.

Anyway, this latest spate of delusional storytelling is based on the Maya Long Count, which is simply a calendar that the ancient Maya came up with to count time. It’s a calendar, not a prediction device. It doesn’t have weird powers or require that you have a doctorate to understand that it measures time just like the calendar in your kitchen does.

However, some folks saw that the Long Count is coming to an end in 2012 and attached meaning to things that they think will happen at that time as evidence that the Long Count is somehow connected (or even causing) these events.  Some of the events are simply made up; others (like climate changes and political events) are going to happen no matter what, but they make a good story when connected to the 2012 “tick-over” of the Long Count.

Like every other calendar, the Long Count has an end date, and like every other calendar, it expects to tick over to a new period of time. It’s as simple as going from 1:59:59 31 December 2008 ticked to 12:00:00 1 January 2009.  I’d like to point out that on New Year’s Day, we all flipped over our calendars and proceeded along with our lives as we always do.

There’s an excellent quote on the Wikipedia article about the Maya calendar and the end of the Long Count that I will share with you here:

“”For the ancient Maya, it was a huge celebration to make it to the end of a whole cycle,” says Sandra Noble, executive director of the Foundation for the Advancement of Meso-American Studies, Inc. in Crystal River, Florida. To render December 21, 2012, as a doomsday or moment of cosmic shifting, she says, is “a complete fabrication and a chance for a lot of people to cash in.”

Of course, there are all kinds of web sites out there that are taking this Long Count business WAY outside of the realm of logic and critical thinking. They are promulgating things like mysterious galaxy-wide metaphysical beams that will somehow bring along a new age of enlightenment or something. One of my favorite sites for this Woo-vian blah-blah even goes so far as to say “Nobody knows what will happen!”  And then goes on to imagine the most amazing spun fantasies that seem kinda, sorta scientific if you don’t look too closely.

We’ll probably be hearing more about all this nonsense over the coming years. Hollywood has weighed in with some silly movie about researchers fighting off volcanic eruptions and typhoons for 2012.  Of course, volcanoes erupt every year, and typhoons are a yearly occurrence so, I’m not sure why they’d take on more meaning in 2012. But hey, I’m not woo, either.  Anyway, based on hard evidence from other movies I’ve seen that take on science (and science loses nearly every time), I predict that the science in the 2012 movie will suck and the critical thinking factor will be just about zero. I just keep telling myself, “It’s only a movie… ”

Anyway, for your edification, I submit Ian O’Neill’s lovely posting about the 2012 “enigma” here.  He does a good job debunking this whole 2012 thing.  And, while you’re at it, go read here about the Maya calendar. If you’re interested in learning more about Mesoamerican cultures and astronomy, I suggest you pick up Ed Krupp’s SkyWatchers, Shamans, & Kings. his Echoes of the Skies, or Tony Aveni’s Stairways to the Stars: Skywatching in Three Great Ancient Cultures.