Finding Peace with the 2012 Apocalypse

Through a CNBC show about the 2012 I finally understand a way to think about the 2012 apocalypse.  Breathe.

What??

Yes, I feel affected by the shift in the Mayan calendar!  There, I said it.

But here's what I understand.  That having a deadline is good for human culture.  It gets people thinking and focusing on change and results.

That is what the role of these kind of events is.  To stir up people's sense of motivation.  To stir the coals under the fires of humanity.

We are inherently slow, which is generally a good thing.  We don't want to be changing at the whim of popular thought.  But sometimes change is needed at a deeper level.  At a moral and ethical level.  Where people choose to stand on the side of a kind of idealistic truth, in the face of potential political backfire.  Where people choose to stand on the side of people instead of money.

This shift will be very painful and very messy.  Families pulled apart, and new families created.  People making wrong decisions, but thinking they are making the right ones, and people making the right decisions, but thinking they have it wrong.  Then seeing the destruction that they have unknowingly sown in their wake.  But seeing people more clearly now as they start to separate themselves from people who shade them and link up with those who illuminate.  Apologizing to those they have hurt, but without the self-effacing martyrhood, just acknowledgment of behavior and moving on, into a supportive community.

Also, noticing the complete tragedy of human existence.  Each of us attempting to subdue the world by categorizing people into good and evil.  The hippies attempted to remove the evil, and say Love is All.  Evil sins are just human ways, we all do this stuff because we are all just wild and free apes, like Jane Goodall's clan of Flora and Frodo and Figg.  But if I am offended by evil, then I am equally offended by the good angels.  If the devils are humans then the angels are too.  If someone comes across as morally superior then I have to question that.  If someone comes across as ethically superior, then I have to question that.  Doesn't that go against human nature?  Then I have to see peaceful warriors, like lamas, as special humans, outside the realm of normal humans.  Normal humans act like grumpy jerks and snappy bitches to their spouses and children.  Monks and murderers are both outsiders.  And yet they are both humans.

Also, Buddha's teachings would be meaningless if he meant them to be for only special humans with special abilities.  Same thing for Jesus' teachings, but the Catholic saints are supposed to be extra special, outside of human nature.  But I digress.