Prophets of doom never give up, so why should we?
It’s been a while since people have been running around like frightened chickens expecting the sky to fall on their head or the earth to split wide open and gulp them down. The Romans, for example, believed philosopher Seneca, who had prophesised that the world would go up in smoke. So in AD 79, when Mt. Vesuvius erupted, they believed the apocalypse was here. In 1665, when the Great Fire of London set the town on fire, Londoners imagined that it was a result of God’s wrath and that the whole world was to go up in flames. The year after, 1666, was also believed by European Christians to be a year of doom, as 666 is described as the number of the Beast in the Bible. Sixth June, 2006, saw a revival of the same sentiments. Jehovah's Witnesses, a Christian offshoot, had predicted 1914 as the year the world would end. When it did not, they predicted that it would end ‘shortly’. In 1997, a UFO was supposed to follow the Comet Hale-Bopp, and though nothing of the sort occurred, 39 members of Heaven's Gate cult did choose to commit mass suicide, so that their souls could board that aircraft. More recently, we were all supposed to have perished when the planets Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn fell in line with the Sun and the Moon on 5 May, 2000.
Despite all the panic caused by end of the world soothsayers since hundreds of years, the world has happily continued. Will the world continue to spin post 21st December, 2012? Considering how previous prophecies haven’t affected our world one bit, we’d say it most probably will. As Yogi Ashwini says, “Nothing would happen in 2012 and we have to stop looking for reasons to panic and start hoping for peace and spreading joy.”
It’s been a while since people have been running around like frightened chickens expecting the sky to fall on their head or the earth to split wide open and gulp them down. The Romans, for example, believed philosopher Seneca, who had prophesised that the world would go up in smoke. So in AD 79, when Mt. Vesuvius erupted, they believed the apocalypse was here. In 1665, when the Great Fire of London set the town on fire, Londoners imagined that it was a result of God’s wrath and that the whole world was to go up in flames. The year after, 1666, was also believed by European Christians to be a year of doom, as 666 is described as the number of the Beast in the Bible. Sixth June, 2006, saw a revival of the same sentiments. Jehovah's Witnesses, a Christian offshoot, had predicted 1914 as the year the world would end. When it did not, they predicted that it would end ‘shortly’. In 1997, a UFO was supposed to follow the Comet Hale-Bopp, and though nothing of the sort occurred, 39 members of Heaven's Gate cult did choose to commit mass suicide, so that their souls could board that aircraft. More recently, we were all supposed to have perished when the planets Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn fell in line with the Sun and the Moon on 5 May, 2000.
Despite all the panic caused by end of the world soothsayers since hundreds of years, the world has happily continued. Will the world continue to spin post 21st December, 2012? Considering how previous prophecies haven’t affected our world one bit, we’d say it most probably will. As Yogi Ashwini says, “Nothing would happen in 2012 and we have to stop looking for reasons to panic and start hoping for peace and spreading joy.”
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