Could someone clue me in to the significance of the year 2012?

[coloradodem2005]

I keep hearing that something drastic will happen, but I am a little fuzzy. Is it the end of the world? End of life as we know it? What?

[tjdee]

1. It's the end of the Mayan calendar, for one thing...

So that means...uh...something...

often wondered this too, someone will be along to tell us :)

[Newsjock]

2. I believe that's when ...

... Ken Jennings finally loses on "Jeopardy!"

[Hamlette]

14. LOL Newsjock

Almost had one of those spit coffee on screen moments.

[madinmaryland]

16. I think we need a seperate forum just

for Ken Jennings and Jeopardy, since it seems like he is going to be on forever. Forget Alex Trabek!

[LiberalAndProud]

3. 2012 is the final year on the Mayan calendar.

Some believe the Aztecs the end of the calendar = the end of time.

[On Par]

6. With * In Office....

...the date could be insignificant.

OP

[xpunkisneatx]

9. but doesnt that happen

Every so many years? Isnt it like every 52 years the world is gonna come to an end? Its all utter bullshit.

[American Tragedy]

25. the Jehovah's Witnesses come up with a new year every so often

after that year passes, then it turns out the world is really ending some other time in the future. This has been happening since that denomination was formed; not a good track record for prophecy.

[Deja Q]

21. Mayans != Aztecs

Besides, maybe the Mayans were wiped out before they could whip up 4024. :-)

[Cerridwen]

4. Mayan calendar - snip and link below

The Mayan Calendar

The Mayan Calendar is something profoundly different than just a system to mark off the passage of time. The Mayan Calendar is above all a prophetic calendar that may help us understand the past and foresee the future. It is a calendar of the Ages that describes how the progression of Heavens and Underworlds condition the human consciousness and thus the frames for our thoughts and actions within a given Age.

The Mayan Calendar is not predicting the end of the world 2012, but the start of a new era; the golden age.

http://www.experiencefestival.com/mayan_calendar/

[gordianot]

5. Mayan calendar yes. Do a goggle search you will be overwhelmed.

[DoYouEverWonder]

7. It's also the year Venus transits across the sun

Venus transits don't happen very often but when they do they come in pairs.

The first transit was in June of this year. The return trip is scheduled for 2012.

The Mayans and other cultures have predicted the return of Quetzalcoatl and/or Jesus and/or some other major event that will change the course of humanity.

[rockymountaindem]

8. It's the end of the Mayan calendar.

They developped one of the most accurate calendars in history prior to the technology age, so some oddballs think that they must have unlocked some secret of the universe with it...

Here's the deal; on Dec. 23, 2012, the complex series of cycles and wheels on the calendar run out of space to repeat their cycle or something. Basically, their measurements of time come to an end, signifying the end of the modern era. Now since there aren't that many traditional Mayans left today, nobody's sure exactly what all that means. Some people say that all of mankind's creations will turn on us and destroy humanity....

I'd take this as seriously as all those fundies who think that *now* is *really* the time Jesus is going to come back... all those people over the past 2000 years forgot to carry the one, and it's really 2005, not 1005....

[TalkingDog]

10. Aztec/Mayan Calendar

The Mayan Civilzation had some of the most advanced astronomy of its time and hell, for quite a time after they were extinct as a civlization.

They fortold, by a couple of thousand years, all sorts of astronomical happenings.

Their calendar ends in 2012. Their is also, in their "written" mythology, talk of a catyclism which translates loosely to: The world will be overrun with bad people. They will create tools (machines) that will rise up against them.

Now, there could be a host of explanations for why they stopped it then.
We can't know. But along with those people who think we'll pass through some sort of dust/frequency/other galaxy edge and the folks who think a planet in our extreme orbit will pass through and by some amazing line up of planets, it earth, while the poles shift and the mole people from the hollow earth come up and attack us while the greys come down in their spaceships and begin the rapture (because they really angels) they think this has some special significance.

It's hard to say.

[truthseeker1]

11. Age of Aquarius

I believe it's the beginning of the Age of Aquarius?

And I also remember reading something about it marking the end of something like 12,000 years and completing some orbital revolution (all of the planets making their orbit around the sun maybe?)
Maybe someone will clarify this for us....

[Lerkfish]

12. If I'm not mistaken...

(and I could very well be) that's a significant year for Nostradamus predictions of the antichrist as well.

[Columbia]

13. The end of the Mayan Calendar has to end sometime

It's not the end of the world. That's like saying after December it will be the end of the world. In their calendar, they just wrote out to that year and then it starts over. Very smart if you ask me. I doubt 100,000 years from now people would want to write out 11-13-102,004 in their checkbooks.

So, in short, nothing special will happen that year.

[Algorem]

15. When Emperor Jeb opens the death camps for Democrats?

[independentpiney]

17. The Mayan calendar thing is a myth

There is a great deal of nonsense that has been written about the Mayan long count. It has been claimed (most egregiously, in a Discovery Channel TV series) that it will 'come to an end' in the near future, and along with it will arrive a Mayan apocalypse, a pole shift, earth change, cosmic convergence, whatever. Given the completely cyclic nature of the long count, this is an idiotic characterization. Once any given cycle ends, another begins, endlessly. The full long count is currently only at baktun 12; there are still 8 baktuns (or about three thousand years) before it turns over. The current Katun will increment about ten years from now (13.0.0.0.0 will be on December 21st, 2012). However, there is no reason that date should be any more cosmologically significant than the end of the common era millenium was!

http://www.sacred-texts.com/time/cal/mayacal.htm

[Generator]

18. No that end of the world date was November 2nd, 2004

Dia de los muertos, indeed.

[On the Road]

19. Terrence McKenna, The Most Creative Lunatic I've Ever Read

has an extensive theory involving 2012 as some sort of huge disconnect or change in human history. He was playing around with the I Ching and fractal patterns and did some kind of recursive formula which resulted in a huge irregular function. He then superimposed this on a historical time line and claimed that it represented the introduction of novelty into human history. The timeline mysteriously plunges to zero in 2012. Here's another description:

The Invisible Landscape by him and his brother Dennis, and more recently in his The Archaic Revival (HarperSanFrancisco, 1992). The theory of Timewave Zero was revealed to Terence by an alien intelligence following a bizarre, quasi-psychedelic experiment conducted in the Amazon jungle in Colombia in 1971. Inspired by this influence Terence was instructed in certain transformation of numbers derived from the King Wen sequence of I Ching hexagrams. This led eventually to a rigorous mathematical description of what Terence calls the timewave, which correlates time and history with the ebb and flow of novelty, which is intrinsic to the structure of time and hence of the temporal universe. A peculiarity of this correlation is that at a certain point a singularity is reached which is the end of history-or at least is a transition to a suprahistorical order in which our ordinary conceptions of our world will be radically transformed. The best current estimate for the date of this point is December 21, 2012 CE , the winter solstice of that year and also the end of the current era in the Mayan calendar.

http://www.alternativeculture.com/spirit/timewave.htm

Terrence McKenna wrote extensively on the history of psychedelic drugs, and he is one of my favorite writers. But, boy is he out there.

http://deoxy.org/mckenna.htm

[Liberalynn]

20. Never Heard This One

but I remember the one by Mother Mary Shifton ( I think that was her name?) and the "end of the world shall come in the year 1981!"

Guess she was either cracked, got her dates mixed up, or just changed it from the real date because it rhymed better? :shrug:

Then there was one that went around our highschool back in the late 1970's that the world was going to end at noon on a certain day. Some wise crackers in our school who thought it was funny set alarm clocks in their lockers to go off at exactly that time and even those of us who thought it nonense started jumping at all those ringing bells.

[TalkingDog]

22. In 1987

Some Fundy preacher predicted the Rapture would happen in June or July of that year. Well, naturally, it didn't and he recalculated, moving it to September (I think...anyway school was in session)

It was mad. People were giving away all their possessions, turning over custody of their kids to the state or friends. They were ready to go.

Well, the next date came and went. It had been pretty persistent in the news and I was really fed up with it. So I got a Sharpie and made a tee-shirt that said:

Somehow
I Missed The Rapture.

I wore it the next day and while I was pumping gas this man walks up to me, leans in and says: I'll pray for you.

I figured he can pray for me all he wants. He's still here too.

[cali]

27. Happens ALL the time

As someone who actually studied millenarianism, I can tell you this has happened repeatedly throughout human history. Narrowly, millenarianism concerns the end times- a variant of Christian eschatology, rooted in the authority of the Book of Revelation. Briefly, that after the second coming of Christ, he would establish a kingdom on earth that lasted 1,000 years. After which would come the resurrection of the dead.

These days millennial studies has a far broader scope and encompasses end time beliefs in many different religions.

[Mandos]

30. McKenna

In Soviet Canuckistan, Terrence McKenna is still very much alive. As a controversial documentary maker.

[leftofthedial]

23. a bunch of neuvo-fundies believe that is to be the date of the rapture

and they want the neocons in power long enought to fulfill biblical "prophecy"

[gordianot]

24. I hope it is the type of rapture where they just disappear.

If the fundies are going to heaven I'll choose to go where the dogs go like Will Rogers.

There are a couple cats, horses, and some non church going relatives and friends. Doubt if I care about anyone who would want to join the fundies.

[Cleita]

26. I wish it would come already.

The date will pass without incident and things will go along as before I believe, but at least it will be over with until some other prophecy is invented for some future earth shattering date.

[murray hill farm]

28. A lot of things begin in 2012

It is the coming together of all the elements that occurs about that time. The compression of time in the sense that change is accelerated and the event known as "singularity" which is the point of acceleration of technology to the point that that the supercomputer occurs in time. at present computer power accelerates and doubles at a rate of every 18 months, it will surpass the human brain somewhere around that time..and at that time the computers will be able to better than humans able to design more intelligent computers...that would in turn create more intelligent computers, etc. the doubling of computer intelligence will then double faster..every nine months and then every four monthes...and on until the computer intelligence doubles every day...every second. At that point we have arrived at "singularity"..the point at which the mathematical equations break down and the old laws no longer apply. Some of humanity will have or will be able to tolerate this new evolution..and others will not.

[Ezlivin]

29. It is only to remind one of a great rock-n-roll album by Rush...

...2112

The album is considered a classic and it is rumored that in the year 2112 Rush will again top the charts and there will be peace in the world.