I haven't watched "2012," but I still feel as though I've seen this movie before. In fact, several decades before the invention of motion pictures Americans watched "2012," only they called it "1843" back then. When the apocalypse came and went without incident, the Millerites who prophesied it were widely mocked. Therein lies the difference between predictions with deadlines and open-ended predictions. Though both are equally worthless, the former have a tendency of discrediting would-be Nostradamuses while the latter make their source seem sagacious, oracular even. It's hard enough for people to get the past right. Why are they so hubristic that they think they can pinpoint the end of the world? Anticipating the future, though a popular present pasttime, works when the future is still in the future, but once the future is history so is the prognosticator (or at least should be). It says as much about us as it does about predictions that we award them respect before their sell-by date but ridicule them the day after. Something never proven valid, which describes such conjecture both before and after its due date, should not be given credence. Today, 2012 is almost two years away. In 2013, 2012 will be 1843--at least that's my prediction.
Y2K. Global Warming. Global Cooling. Pending Global financial meltdown. The list is endless. The sky is constantly falling with our leaders.I have a prediction. I predict this movie will be as good as Kevin Costner's Waterworld.
I asked some of the Myans hanging around outside the 7-11 what they thought about the end of the world, but they didn't seem to understand what I was talking about....
Mayans...spelling...
Homer, you kill me. LOL.
Good point. You should check out Nassim Taleb's The Black Swan. It's an entire book on the topic of this post and is good for challenging the way one thinks about knowledge and decision making.
What did O's right hand thug Emmanuel say - never waste a good crisis?
Keep the plebs scared and keep them on the defensive. They are much easier to control when they are convinced that Government is going to ride in and save them from something.
"They are much easier to control when they are convinced that Government is going to ride in and save them from something."
Absolutely true. And we see this also in the cases ofswine flu, bird flu, AIDS, economic "collapse", illicit drugs, terrorism, etc.
