My friend's ten-year-old son was not his usual self; he was not talking, asking questions or showing any interest in chocolate bar. He, his father told, could not sleep last few days because he is very afraid. "Why?", I asked. He said, his son has been reading all stories of global warming and doomsday prediction and is very worried now about future in general. I was almost choked in my attempt to restrain my sudden urge to laugh. Kids, I know from experience, take it as personal insult when adults do not take them seriously. Only if they knew that adults become adults only when they learn not to take all that is said and professed with utmost seriousness! Fact is our daily newspapers in desperation of making everything in print newsworthy, put colours in order to catch readers' attention. Often that makes a docile information like certain end of counting cycle, an ominous prediction! Mayan long count calendar ends their longest cycle on a day which incidentally happens to be 21st December, 2012 in Gregorian calendar (there are different opinions on the accuracy of the date). As such this snippet of information is simply an archeological artifact. A curious mind could find interest in how they calculated and why they started on the day that makes the end day of the day coincide with winter solstice but nothing can catch everyday-person's imagination unless it can be translated to something ominous, some startling prediction, that aligns with his innate fear. Evolution has made our emotion particularly biased towards fear. Fear has been one strong guiding emotion that helped us, the human species, to survive against ruthlessness of nature but in the 21st century, when our everyday existence is less connected to natural cycle, fear has been out of job and has become a tool in the hand of institutional PR machines, Religious zealots and attention hunting media. Doomsday prediction is one easy way of grabbing attention, albeit an innocuous, harmless one. Unless someone becomes possessed by his fear [I am not making any connection to Connecticut shooting as yet] there is very low probability of any physical or psychological harm to anyone from this type of prediction. So I told him, only the stupid believes such kind of extreme prediction and being afraid of such stuff where one cannot do much is not a very intelligent behaviour. For a kid, it is embarrassing to feel afraid but not as much as to live with a stigma of being considered unintelligent. So that worked and next time when we met he ensured that I am updated that he is not afraid any more!
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| Mayan Calendar: photo of stone artifact, courtesy: http://blog.needsupply.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/mayan_calendar1.jpg |
For those who are curious to know more about Mayan calendar, this wiki page provides a good synopsis. It seems that Mayans may have understood the precession of equinox, but perhaps not as precisely as we know today. It is highly unlikely though that they understood the basic science behind it or actually made any connection to it [Science as we know, did not have any explanation before Newton]. Far less probable that they could connect it to galactical alignment [Solar system appear to be crossing the equator-equivalent of milky-way galaxy for last few years, although many object to use of the concept of equator in the context of galaxy] as many doomsday predictors have alluded to.
But all these illustrate an interesting aspect of human thought process. Psychologists tell us that human mind as such is not adept to comprehend statistical patterns and more often it replaces that searching process with causal analysis by drawing line with only two dots, sometimes even approximating the second dot. More startling the conclusion is, more it is capable of invoking innate belief system where the answer is made readily available. In its bias towards definite actionable knowledge, the mind often makes mistake of substituting with belief for missing facts, succumbing to known fear instead of diligent fact-finding, choosing to panic without being conscious of the choice. It requires lot more emotional awareness to be not swayed by meaningless sensationalism and active opinion campaigning process, prevalent in digital media.
On a more factual but less dramatic note, scientists made a prediction in june this year that, a giant gas cloud is on a collision course with the black hole in the center of our milky-way galaxy, and the two will be close enough by mid-2013 to provide a unique opportunity to observe how the super massive black hole named Sagittarius A* [mass equivalent to mass of 4 million suns] sucks in material, in real time.
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