13th B'ak'tun
Today is 13th B'ak'tun on the Mayan long calendar. This event only happens every some 300 years. It may not be the doomsday many Americans wanted to celebrate, but it is kind of a cool moment.
Of the people who actually know what's going on today there does seem to be some confusion however. Some places are reporting that today is the 13th and some think it'll be tomorrow. (Link to one source)
Above is a site that tracks the Mayan and Aztec calendars. (Picture is link.)
The Mayan count goes up to 20 before changing, except for the months which go up to 18, so the second place value from the right starts over on 18. Tomorrow will be 13.0.0.0.1 and once that's 20 it'll be the new month (so it'll actually be 19 and 20 would be 0). The Mayan calendar is cool in that it makes us look at time differently. We tend to think we know what year and what month is it, even though we're aware of a long history and various cultures and ways of telling time. Humans have probably been around for some 10,000 years and we have records going back pretty far, further than I'd image- more than 6,000 years.
While I find this fascinating, I know more people are happily poking fun at a misinterpretation and wide-spread modern myth about it being doomsday. There's something kind of perverted about our culture and our constant desire for some kind of epic ending to our planet. There will be an ending, at least to life on Earth and we are contributing to that, but no one is interested in the real and serious side of a doomsday. It's the fact that we know this is a fantasy that makes it so fun to people.
My last paper to graduate from college had to to do with our need and desire for delusions like this "doomsday" and the Y2K scare that happened at the end of 1999. It's a cultural escapism, much like our personal escapes. There are far more serious things, but we're rather focus on a fantasy. We need distractions and delusions to keep our mental health, even as a society. If you look into it, yes, there are a lot of bad things happening in the world. There are too many people where we don't have resources, there's too much waste in first world countries, nuclear strikes are a realer threat today than they were when it was a cultural fear and the more people there are, the more we expand, the more pressure we put on other species. That doesn't even begin to get into global warming or a global economy or how everything we do and all we have has a cost that someone or something has to pay for. We need cultural escapism from that and we also need that occasional escape from the state of our personal lives (which is largely defined by our society as well.)
So enjoy your doomsday or your 13th Baktun and the upcoming holidays. Hopefully this 13th baktun really is the opening of a new era and a better one
Of the people who actually know what's going on today there does seem to be some confusion however. Some places are reporting that today is the 13th and some think it'll be tomorrow. (Link to one source)
Above is a site that tracks the Mayan and Aztec calendars. (Picture is link.)
The Mayan count goes up to 20 before changing, except for the months which go up to 18, so the second place value from the right starts over on 18. Tomorrow will be 13.0.0.0.1 and once that's 20 it'll be the new month (so it'll actually be 19 and 20 would be 0). The Mayan calendar is cool in that it makes us look at time differently. We tend to think we know what year and what month is it, even though we're aware of a long history and various cultures and ways of telling time. Humans have probably been around for some 10,000 years and we have records going back pretty far, further than I'd image- more than 6,000 years.
While I find this fascinating, I know more people are happily poking fun at a misinterpretation and wide-spread modern myth about it being doomsday. There's something kind of perverted about our culture and our constant desire for some kind of epic ending to our planet. There will be an ending, at least to life on Earth and we are contributing to that, but no one is interested in the real and serious side of a doomsday. It's the fact that we know this is a fantasy that makes it so fun to people.
My last paper to graduate from college had to to do with our need and desire for delusions like this "doomsday" and the Y2K scare that happened at the end of 1999. It's a cultural escapism, much like our personal escapes. There are far more serious things, but we're rather focus on a fantasy. We need distractions and delusions to keep our mental health, even as a society. If you look into it, yes, there are a lot of bad things happening in the world. There are too many people where we don't have resources, there's too much waste in first world countries, nuclear strikes are a realer threat today than they were when it was a cultural fear and the more people there are, the more we expand, the more pressure we put on other species. That doesn't even begin to get into global warming or a global economy or how everything we do and all we have has a cost that someone or something has to pay for. We need cultural escapism from that and we also need that occasional escape from the state of our personal lives (which is largely defined by our society as well.)
So enjoy your doomsday or your 13th Baktun and the upcoming holidays. Hopefully this 13th baktun really is the opening of a new era and a better one