Ben Ali-regimets undergang i Tunisia - Fortid

12 Fortid 1/12
In this limited space I shall address just one issue: why the
appeal of 2012 prophecy to American pop culture?
America in particular has a long history of Judeo-Christian
Apocalypse forecasting. For example, the “burned-over
district” of upstate New York was a hotbed of utopic ideologies
in the mid-19 th century (Mormonism started there).
One hundred thousand Millerites, Seventh Day Adventists,
anxiously awaited the «Blessed Hope», based on their
leader William Miller’s biblically based calculations of the
return of Christ slated for 22 Oct 1844. And most of us
will remember the anticipated cosmic reclamation project
that attended the end-of-the millennium appearance
(in 1997) of Comet Hale-Bopp, the return of the «alien
mothership» that ended in suicide for 38 members of the
Heaven’s Gate cult.
The idea that the Ages of Man are star fixed goes all the
way back to the Greeks and the Chinese, but it experienced
its 20 th century American resurgence in the publication
of the controversial Hamlet’s Mill in the late 60’s.
The idea seems to be that every time the equinox sun
passes into a new constellation of the zodiac a change of
direction in human culture takes place. Thus the sun in
Taurus signaled the age of the Egyptians (recall the sun
between the horns of the bull in Isis’ headdress as well as
in Minoan architecture). The sun in Aries heralded the
era of Babylon. Entry into Pisces (out of which it is still
slowly meandering) constituted the era of Christ. On our
time horizon the Age of Aquarius awaits us (the 5 th Dimension
who made that song from the musical «Hair» so
popular might be distressed to learn that it won’t happen
until about 2700 AD). Hamlet’s Mill spawned a panoply
of pop publications pushing the idea that seminal turning
points in this or that culture (including its demise) – the
Etruscans, the Incas, the Babylonians, etc – happened at
each of these stellar gateways. Today the Maya get their
shot at nurturing the monomyth. It all sounds like pablum
for the passive, but who are these prophets of world
alteration, really?
I think Y12ers are well intentioned people who want to
see the world change. Aligned politically left they are activists
who seem bent on running their own cosmology.
They are anti-science but they use and more often misuse
scientific concepts. Consider this mouthful from Jose Argüelles:
2012 would be the «most opportune time for us to
reconnect with the heliotropic octaves in the solar activated
electromagnetic field and lead to an upgrading of the
light-life radiogenetic process.» 4 2012 prophets are antitechnology
yet they proliferate on the internet. There’s a
growing populist demand for a more complete disclosure
of solar activity data from the scientists in charge – data
vital to our health, warns Joseph. «The forces of scientific
materialism have zealously guarded the portals to their
domain, keeping in mind a singular goal; to maintain the
myth of their ever-progressing technological superiority», 5
writes Argüelles. Adds Jenkins, «western civilization rules
the globe through dominator forms of coercion and
resource control.» But, he adds romantically, «our distant
ancestors participated in a style of culture that is fundamentally
antithetical to our own.» 6
Historian Hillel Schwartz enumerates the different kinds
of human experience that accompany the ends of centuries,
the loops of Western culture’s «big time», practically
all of which are attached to the current Maya fin-de-siécle.
These include a joyful insistence on the continuity of the
generations despite turmoil and threats of impending
disaster and chaos looming over our heads; the notion that
a critical, calculable moment is upon us and that moment
will open the door to global renewal; that such knowledge
is encoded secretly in calendrical numerology and astronomical
conjunctions or convergences. Sometimes prognosticators
of the end of time appeal to perceived higher
forms of knowledge such as the fourth dimension, out
of body experiences, and visions of a future world. With
the overturning of great cycles of time comes a polar shift
from decay to rejuventation, from death to purification
(here the apocalyptic view of Judeo-Christian Western
history comes to mind). Finally, contends Schwartz, there
are «strange stirrings of delight in the absolute fact that
everything must be (on the verge of) falling apart for everything
(at last) to come together.» 7
I would add to Schwartz’s list of characteristics of millenarian
attitudes, that secret knowledge about time’s end is
often thought to reside in artifacts or written records that
emanate from afar – far away in space, such as knowledge
possessed by alien civilizations, or far away in time, as for
example in the predictions of Nostradamus, mysteries encoded
in the Bible, or in ancient Egyptian or Maya script.
The pertinent question for the anthropologist in the contemporary
Y12-mania is: Why do people persist in reading
history’s lessons out of context? Can it be they feel it
unnecessary to understand the particulars of a culture so
different from their own in order to capture a sense of history?
If so, then we are not succeeding in teaching what
we have learned. Why do people seek hidden messages
enshrouded in mysterious codes – messages that contain
profound knowledge that can radically alter their lives?
Might they be disenchanted and dissatisfied with the present
course of human events?
One theory about ends-of-the world has it that cultures on
the wane are those most likely to dream up doomsday scenarios,
often to be followed by universal renewal. «What
will happen to us?» seems to be the sort of question posed
by a reflexive culture, seemingly bereft of free will and
disbelieving that people can play a role in affecting the
future (the popular bumper sticker «Shit happens!» comes