It'll All Be Okay

I note that tomorrow is ....12-12-12 (one of the last repetitive dates we'll see for quite awhile).

Also, according to the Mayan calendar, the world is to end on December 21st and apparently, many throughout the world are taking this seriously.

How is it that the end of the world has been predicted, time after time, and yet we are still here?

We'll be here at the blog on December 22nd so come join us if the world hasn't ended and/or become the land of the Walking Dead (and when is that zombie apocalypse coming)? 

Comments

Anonymous said…
it's still 12/11 here, are you posting from japan? lol

-happy holidays to all
Sorry, jumped the ship too quickly.
Charlie Mas said…
It's not the world that ends according to the Mayan calendar; it's just the calendar that ends.

Using the same logic the world is going to end on December 31 according to the calendar I got last year.
Charlie Mas said…
The next true repetitive date will be 1/1/01 on January 1st, 2101. That's about 88 years from now so I don't imagine that I will live to see it. There is, however, an excellent chance that my kids, now 18 and 16, will live to see it.

I often think about how we slingshot children into the future. I think of that line from the song "What a Wonderful World":

I hear babies cry
I watch them grow
They'll learn much more
than I'll never know
And I think to myself
what a wonderful world


I sometimes think of the change that our elders have seen, especially those who remember life before 1940. They have seen this nation come out of isolation and a depression, fight and win a world war (in five years), rise as a superpower, and establish global hegemony. They have seen the rise of the automobile and the airplane. They have seen a technological revolution in every aspect of life: communications, media, work, and science. They have seen our culture evolve to extend civil rights to blacks, human rights to women, and marriage rights to gays.

Then I think about the changes I have seen. If someone were magically transported here from 1977, I don't think they would have much adapting to do. All they would have to get used to would be cell phones - actually a whole suite of personal devices - and the internet. Everything else would be pretty much the same - houses, cars, appliances, most work, and most of life. There would be some cultural adjustments - they wouldn't have any doubt about who won the sexual revolution - but I think they wouldn't need long to get the hang of every change in the past 35 years.
Patrick said…
You think there's an excellent chance that your kids will live to 104 plus? Wow.

I think the generation that had the hardest time adapting would have been people who were born about 1840. As children, the fastest way to travel would have been sailing ships at sea or horseback on land. Most labor was still done my muscle power, either human or animal. Messages could travel no faster than one could travel.

By 1900, steamships crossed the Atlantic reliably in a week and steam railroads could cross the U.S. in a week. Steam and electricity were becoming widespread. Messages could be sent to almost any city in the world in a few hours by telegraph.
Anonymous said…
The upcoming date as the potential time of the "real" Zombie Apocalypse is quite the talk in the middle school minds that live around me...

Already feeling like a zombie

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