The Mayans say it’s a one-term President.

January 3, 2008

Well, it’s an election year and we’re all excited about that. Hillary Clinton’s not running to the right since she was already there (contrary to to those Republicans who’d love you to think that center is the radical left), and Obama — with his “end of social security” rhetoric and “unity” rhetoric and slagging of Kerry and Gore, etc. etc. — to be trying to race Hillary to Fox News. These are supposed to be the front runners? Oy.

But we don’t have to worry, because as Some Call Him Tim has pointed out, the world ends in 2012. Expect to hear more about this over the next four years and (of course) nothing afterwards. Especially expect to read more of this kind of nonsense:

Calendars, in general, do not end. The whole purpose of developing and/or keeping a calendar is to predict future events based upon the cyclical nature of the world — to keep such things as agriculture in line with the seasons or inform out-of-line politicians when their terms of office are up for reconsideration. [In this regard, politicians are like babies. Both need to be changed periodically, and often, for the same reason.] But the idea that everything is coming to some sort of completion, i.e. the end of cycles, the end of days, the end… period… This just doesn’t compute when it comes to the idea of a calendar. [ Library of Halexandria ]

Spoken like someone who hasn’t a clue about counting systems.

As someone whose lived through the “end” of one calendar — Y2K — I can assure you that calendars do end, assuming the counting method one uses is cyclical. Fortunately we use a mathematical system which imagines numbers getting progressively larger into the future. But our own calendar is cyclical. We have a seven day week, a four week month (more or less), a twelve month year, and every four years we get an extra day. Well, not quite every four years:

The Gregorian calendar, the current standard calendar in most of the world, adds a 29th day to February in 97 years out of every 400, a closer approximation than once every four years. This is implemented by making every year divisible by 4 a leap year unless that year is divisible by 100. If it is divisible by 100 it can only be a leap year if that year is also divisible by 400. [ Wikipedia: Leap Year ]

The Mayan calendar is cyclical, which means it both ends and it doesn’t. Much of the 2012 hoopla centers on the supposed “end” of the “long count” calendar — which doesn’t really end. The “long count” is linear rather than cyclical, but since the Mayan calendar is usually implemented as a wheel, you have to end the long count somewhere. The Mayans appear to have chosen to end the long count in most of their wheel calendars within a single b’ak’tun, since a b’ak’tun represents 5,125 years. It is the end of the current b’ak’tun we are apparently approaching, at least according to those modern researchers who have attempted to map the Mayan calendar onto the Aztec Gregorian. It’s a quirk of mapping a linear counting system onto a cyclical notation system.

The point is that the Mayan calendar, long count or no, doesn’t end at the end of a b’ak’tun. The wheel calendar simply runs out of digits. It is a prehistoric Y2K bug, except the Mayans had more foresight than the Cobol programmers of old — their calendar reset once every five millennia or so, whereas ours reset on the century mark. And 5,125 years is perfectly respectable. This Perpetual Gregorian Calendar actually only runs up to 3899, after which I guess you have to do the math over again.

“But what about all the natural disasters,” you say. “The sunspots and the reversed polarity and the et and the cetera?” Well, I don’t know any more than you do. But I doubt the Mayans calculated their calendars to mark the end of time. They probably just took as many digits as they though they were going to need — at least until they could get around to printing new calendars.

Edit: Carl Johan Calleman says the calendar does not predict the end of the world, but rather a season in human evolution:

Yet, the fundamental issue at hand is not so much what is the actual end date of the Mayan calendar, but how we are to understand this calendar and its relationship to the cosmic plan. This is also why the end date question requires an open mind and even a fairly deep knowledge of Mayan calendrics to address. Those that promote the December 21, 2012 date almost invariably lack a model for understanding evolution based on the Mayan calendar and are instead placing all the importance on what will happen on one particular day; December 21, 2012. What they suggest for this date is typically an event in the sky or a pole shift, a comet that will hit the earth or some other physical or astronomical singular event. In my view the most absurd of these interpretations is probably a book that sets out to prove that this is the day when the world will come to an end because of a pole shift and there is nothing we can do about it (The Orion Prophecy). For someone who does not have a scientific training and background its purported « mathematical proof » for this may even seem impressive. Those supporting the December 21, 2012 date, such as www.diagnosis2012.co.uk, prefer such depressing rubbish to an analysis of the evolution of consciousness, simply because it is consistent with the end date they propose. To them, the end date has become like a religion and if some author agrees with this anything goes. That representatives of the contemporary Maya reject this end date will then obviously not be popular among them as they do not attribute any meaning to the Mayan calendar apart from what may happen on this particular day. [ The Question of the Mayan Calendar End Date ]

Is that the dawning of the age of Aquarius I hear? I do believe it is.

Posted in Deep Weirdness