Big Darkness, soon come. Take my word for it. Hunter S. Thompson
A container of ashes might one day be thrown from the sky, which could burn the land and boil the oceans. Hopi Prophecy
Things are looking gloomy as we rocket toward the end of the first decade in our new century, a fouler and more hopeless one than the last. An adherence to all the flawed -isms in the world has finally done us in, and if we cannot universally accept concepts like the possibility of human-accelerated global warming or the partial validity of evolutionary theory as posited by Charles Darwin, how the fuck are we going to fix ambiguous nightmares like the global economy or national hubris? If science—flawed and worthy of healthy skepticism as it is—will not be regarded even in passing, how to remedy any of our ills?
The track goes one way. The train can only slow down or speed up, but sooner or later, it’s going to run into a free fall. Then come the screams.
Some nasty, little bug is telling me this is the Big Darkness Thompson was talking about or the end of the Fifth Sun, and at this point, we don’t need world leaders or politicians or great luminaries to cure this festering ulcer of a society. What we need is a witchdoctor.
And why not?
Nothing has worked so far, and the primary reason is that most good, peace-loving people live in accordance with their beliefs that war is needless and that there are better ways to spend our time than in pursuit of material acquisition while underhanded, greedy rats plunder natural and financial resources and shit their ruin onto the meek. Our current economic crisis is a perfect example of this dichotomy besides being a symptom of the rampant economic ignorance this country exhibits on all levels. We are all to blame.
If the suits on Wall Street are allowed to make $10 million in severance pay after running an international conglomerate into the ground, it is our fault. If we’ve adhered foolishly to the tenets of Pure Capitalism while complaining about our manufacturing jobs continually being shipped overseas for cheap labor, we’ve been too dumb and foolish to realize that Capitalism in its current form has been the cause. When you play it by the book, you’ll get the end result. When you play for the bottom line, you eventually fail.
But take it from Warren Buffet or someone who is closer in approximation to the truth than I am. Most of my theories are based on vaguely proportioned scraps of information gleaned from the hourly literatures or concocted purely out of fantasy and seemingly hopeless idiosyncrasy. But trust me. From where I’m standing, it’s the rest of the world that appears insane.
This ramble isn’t just about the economy. How could it be? Humans have suffered the sociopathy of the wealthy elite since ancient Sumeria with surprising resilience and apathy. We could never hope to extract so intrinsic a characteristic from the human disposition. It’s the willingness to pass the burden that perpetuates much of what is going on in the world today.
Optimistic believers in the end of the Fifth Sun—Mayans, Aztecs, and Hopis, among others—that will supposedly occur on December 21, 2012 purport an impending Great Transformation resulting in the transformation of our DNA into a genetic blueprint for meta-humans, a higher form of man/woman in direct contact with nature and the mysterious cosmic forces that link the ends of our universe. It’s a nice thought, and unless proponents of renewable energy and so-called Green Solutions end up winning out over oil-mongers and warlords, I think I’ll take up the pessimistic side of the coin—the side that predicts cataclysm and an end to this crippled experiment that failed only because it wanted to.
NASA’s recent findings indicate that the Sun’s solar wind stream and density are at their lowest levels since the advent of constant observance in the 1950s. These levels have been steadily decreasing since the mid-1990s, which gives some credence to the Fifth Sun, or at the very least makes the coincidence eerie and disconcerting.
It doesn’t help that the Sun in general has been acting strangely of late, seemingly refusing to begin Solar Cycle 24 and pump out reverse-polarity sunspots. There have been one or two, but all in all, most scientists agree, the Sun’s taking its sweet fucking time heading into the next solar maximum. This, too, has been a fixation of apocalypse nuts like myself since the last time the Sun went into near dormancy (magnetically), we had what is referred to as the Maunder Minimum. Essentially, the Sun didn’t produce sunspots, and the Earth, consequently, cooled significantly into a Little Ice Age.
Mix that news in with the continued uplift at the Yellowstone caldera, rampant religious intolerance (from all sides), and a continued readiness to die in the name of flags, and the future isn’t looking too bright for humanity. Hell. I’m sure I’m forgetting some of the potential perils, but the whole point of this thing was to stay more or less on topic.
Having failed, I cease and desist. Little else to do during these bouts of planetary madness.
Tags: 2012, apocalypse, astronomy, Aztecs, Big Darkness, economy, End of the Fifth Sun, geology, Hopi, Hunter S. Thompson, Maunder Minimum, Mayans, NASA, politics, sun, Wall Street, Warren Buffet, Yellowstone volcano