Nibiru . . .

Talking of doomsday, isn't this supposed to be the year of the Apocalypse?  If YouTube and the conspiracy theorists are to be believed, we're all toast just before Christmas this year; 21st December, to be exact.  Don't suppose most people will pay much attention though, unless this huge heavenly body that is reckoned to be hurtling through space is tapping us on the shoulder by then.  We'll be pre-occupied with shopping 'til we drop, and the TV will be full of snow peppered festive ads for M&S, Asda, Tesco, Wal-Mart . . .

Maybe that's good diversion therapy.  I don't suppose we'd get to know much about it anyway.  Seems logical that such a devastating event would be kept from the masses to prevent panic, or maybe I've watched 'Deep Impact' too many times (twice).  But maybe not.  Even something we might class as a 'minor' crisis, like snow bound roads during a hard winter, preventing supplies getting through to the shops on a specific day, or the current financial turmoil we face, is enough sometimes to almost have us running for the hills.  Or stripping supermarket shelves.  Charity and 'goodwill to all men' goes right out of the window.   It's dog eat dog now, translated as 'crazed shopper punches neighbour for a carton of milk'.

Nibiru?  Sorry folks, it's just the sun again.

I found it hard to believe during the recent January sales, watching news reports that told of people becoming violent in their desire to get the early bargain.  Is a dress with 90% off really worth caving someone's head in for?  Surely not?  I suppose it really depends on how much you measure the desire for goods against the consequences of the physical violence required to obtain.  Isn't this just plain avarice in the end?  Of course.  But that's the way we are, isn't it?  We're survivors and scavengers.  Some would say, and have said, this all stems from the time we hung around in caves, as if a '50% off' sale is enough to regress us into hairy hunters again. It's our primitive nature coming out in the most distasteful way.

The Bible talks a lot about human nature - and it has little to do with us being ape men or hairy hunters.  I'm not here to throw Bible quotes all over the place, or preach, it's just a point of reference, and most interesting.  The battle, according to scribes, is Cosmic, and nothing to do with the savagery of our ancestry.  It's to do with a high ranking angel who decided he could get one over on God by a little temptation in a garden called Eden.  Now whether you believe that or not, it is a most fascinating premise.  Just a story?  Well, there's a lot of fuss going on about the Mayan calendar right now.  To me it's not scientific; it's some other capacity for imagination we have inside us to give credence to the fantastical and prophetic.  It's that thing that insists we're more than just flesh and bones.  We have History, but we also have Myth, and sometimes the Myth is what we choose to embrace as reality.

Take Harold Camping for instance, the veteran American preacher who predicted the Biblical 'gathering' of the believers followed by the end of the world on May 21 2011, and then when that didn't happen revised it to October 21.  That didn't happen either - or not so you'd notice.  However, it made news and gave the guy notoriety - and took the credibility of the charismatic church movement to a lower rung.  In all this there were many Camping followers expecting the event to happen, no question.  They gave up their jobs, their earthly lives, convinced themselves they were about to be 'raptured'.  To blazes with the physics involved to translate flesh into spirit.  That didn't matter, because the believing mind was running in a Cosmic gear where facts are just as elastic as Myth, where both can intertwine to become pseudo reality, where the seemingly ludicrous is not only possible, but expected.

It does serve to illustrate how our marvellous imagination can be used for ill as well as good.  Those speculative writers of the fantastic create worlds and situations in which we can escape and find value, and long may they continue to do so.  To go along with this, however, is that strong ability to embody Myth with real flesh, where the lines between fantasy and reality merge.  This facility, even now, is causing many questions to be raised about the validity of Scripture.  We are obsessed by science and science/myth mash ups.

This to me, is why we fear the coming of Nibiru, shape-shifting reptiles, the illuminati, aliens . . .

All these things could be, and maybe should be, regarded as ridiculous to any rational person.  Then the mash up mind kicks in.

And you start to wonder again . . .

What if all this is true?