The question whether or not 2012 will be the end of the world pops up on the stage of public concerns controversially in 2010. Fears and doubts came abreast, echoing the Hollywood movie 2012. When the movie hit theatres, rumors went like crazy. It seemed like everybody was spreading the uncertainty about the future in every possible way. I think that many of these people as I did, have an instinct which is the original zeal of questioning – what is our common destiny and whether or not we can chart it. However, with the movie cooling down, nobody seems to be that keen on having that question answered.
Trying to answer this question at this point may get more rationality credits. How on earth could we chart our destiny if we suppose we could?
Steming from human nature, people tend to feel helpless to think about the end, if it lies in the near future. Ending it up by turning a blind eye to is a simpler alternative. If we adopt this option, to chart our own destiny is like a dream.
Helplessness as a kind of pushy trait, was borne by innocence. God knows where to turn to, to find out the truth. Science as a subject has its privileged audiences. The Maya Prediction is where the rumor starts. To some extend, it created chaos worldwide. However, what on earth is astrology? What is the mechanism of it? What is going on out there? Who knows? Far too frequently, we were informed of what is happening in here, and were consoled by explaination from experts, authorities or other elites. We never ever get a door to learn truly why the world is like it is. How could we convince ourselves then, that we at least have the basic sense of what we do care a lot about?
Society has its allocation of tasks for different members of it; that’s undeniably true.We certainly do not expect everybody to understand Albert Einstein, or Stephen Hawking. But when science has the key to the question of an all-involved question like will 2012 be the end of the world, it’s a little bit weired to assume that just because not everybody can understand science of any kind, it could be reasonable to leave them behind. (I mean far far away from truth.) Some of you may be doubtful and claim that if you care, it’s your choice to learn about it and nobody is actually avoiding you from doing that. True. The key is, what is education for if it does not encourage the pursuit of truth? Being ignorant is a shame from this perspective. The liberty to choose what to learn based on one’s interest is one of the greatest invention of modern education and the best possible interpretation of respect for humans. Though, education can and certainly should achieve far more than that.
There are facts that we just have to know, whether we like it or not at the moment. Science is not only for Scientists, or would-be-scientists because in some cases, it has us all involved. It’s possible that besides science pundits, nobody cares about the fact. But the point is, why don’t they care on one hand and were so zealous to know the 2012 truth on the other? One hypothesis may be, we care, yet we don’t know much about it. We don’t hink about the things we care. We yell it out instead.
Why it is? What we have now concerning education and furthermore what the social systermized structure make us to. To chart our own destiny, a utopia will be needed.
The writer is a China based correspondent of Youth Ki Awaaz.
image: http://escuadrondelaverdad.files.wordpress.com/2009/11/world-end-in-2012-2.jpg