Prepare for the Mayan apocalypse. That’s what untold thousands of ignorant Russians are doing. They really believe civilisation will collapse on 21 December, when the ancient Mayan calendar comes to an end. Purveyors of “doomsday kits” are doing a brisk business selling packs containing everything you need to survive the meltdown: matches, bandages and, “this being Russia”, vodka. Most Russians are either Russian Orthodox or atheist, yet many have bought indulgences online from a Roman Catholic church in Italy that guarantees absolution from sin for less than $20. So widespread is the panic that a member of the St Petersburg assembly has called on the media to stop discussing the Mayan prophecy.
So why are today’s Russians so gullible? Blame the plunge in education standards since the USSR broke up: fully one third of Russians now believe the sun orbits Earth; apparently a fifth believe in aliens. “The nation that put the first man into space and has for years boasted the world’s best chess players is drowning in superstition.” Unlike the Mayan apocalypse, that is a true catastrophe: fortunately, it’s also one we can do something about. Taliban Stolyarova, St. Petersburg Times, Russia. (Reported by The Week).
It is for this reason that education is the foundation of Epicureanism . Without it mankind sinks into pre historic ignorance. Huge swathes of Americans still deny Darwin and think the Earth was created six thousand years ago, also believe in extra-terrestrials, deny climate change and so on. In my lifetime, the general knowledge of ordinary people has sunk to a new low.
So who will join me in the Garden on when the Mayan apocalypse arrives on December 21st? ( joke)
The Mayan prophesy may be true.
(I bet that comment got your attention!)
In actual fact it has been misinterpreted. Apparently what they were really saying was not that the end of the world was coming, but that Dec.21 2012 is the end of one phase in world history, and the beginning of another. What they meant by ” phase” is not clear.
However, I am going to suggest that if they are right then it could possibly refer to climate change, which we have largely brought about. I have just read in the New Scientist that carbon dioxide levels on this planet have now reached a tipping point. We have missed the opportunity to correct this because at each climate conference we all promised to do something and never did. We now have to expect rising sea levels, storms, floods, food shortages and mass movement of peoples.
It may be the end of the world as we used to know it.
Don’t you know that climate change is either a liberal plot designed to reduce the profits of oil companies and coal miners; or it is just a natural thing that comes and goes over the history of the planet? So when you read that the oceans now contain an alarming and historic amount of CO2 that is killing life from coral to oysters, it is a cue for climate change deniers to set about the scientists and accuse them of fabrication. Fishermen and those who make their living from the oceans know what us the real culprit. CO2
doesn’t build up in the ocean spontaneously.