[ExI] mayan forecast

[Mike Dougherty]

On Fri, Dec 21, 2012 at 11:26 AM, spike <spike66 at att.net> wrote:

> According to the Mayan calendar, the world is supposed to end today.
> Either that or they ran out of stone for their calendar, which may have led
> eventually to the invention of “paper.”  I look out my window and it sure
> appears the world is still here.  On the other hand, it is ambiguous on
> what time today the world is supposed to end.
>
> ** **
>
> Regarding my snarky comment on stone calendars, I can look at it another
> way.  In a few years, all our paper calendars will be gone, but after
> thousands of years, the Mayan calendar is still here.  What are we doing or
> making that has that kind of durability?****
>
>
>
I was thinking about how our culture has taken the end of the long-count
calendar to be the end of time.  Our calendar ends in 12/31 and we observe
the arbitrary passage from one day to the next as a special when this
happens.  We then +1 to the year and reset the month to 1.  This pattern of
making dates isn't recognized to be cyclic - because the year number never
repeats.

Natural systems rotate and orbit in cycles, why doesn't our observance of
the passage of time?

Mayans didn't think of time like we do.  The long-count calendar  tracked
astronomical time - but they also used cyclical calendars that were much
shorter too.  The importance of a yearly cycle is important for farming.
 They also observed the nature/flavor of the ebb and flow of culture as
cyclic in nature.  That's something we really don't understand:  we like to
delude ourselves that the rising trend will never fall.  I think this
concept applies most notably to the ongoing energy discussion too.
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