2009 & 1450 Days

Tuesday, January 12, 2009

"I come to Berlin as so many of my countrymen have come before, although tonight, I speak to you not as a candidate for president, but as a citizen--a proud citizen of the United States, and a fellow citizen of the world." Barack Obama, Berlin, July 24, 2008

"Economic analysts from hard-line socialists to monopolist capitalists and all grades in between operating from within the nationalistic framework stop far short of the obvious and vital relationship between global politics and global economics. While analyzing today's deteriorating economic situation as 'crisis-ridden,' with its soaring inflation, exorbitant interest rates, stagnating industrial productivity, ballooning national deficits, wobbling and absurd 'floating exchange rates,' rising unemployment, shortages of critical materials and parts, exponential increase in bankruptcies in both business and nations themselves, and monstrous, futile and suicidal armament budgets in the midst of agonizing human misery and need, they myoptically reject a world political government as 'impractical,' 'utopian,' or simply 'irrelevant.' Who Owns The World?, World Government, Ready Or Not!, Booksurge, 2003

"HOW MANY MORE OF US WOULD IT TAKE TO REGISTER, AND MAKE THE POINT THAT NATION STATES ARE OBSOLETE? Worse yet: they are harbingers of universal death. Only a World Citizen could be expected to see that the two mighty powers, representing all that overkill, rattle their spears at each other in mere ritual. But each of us IS a world citizen. We know the risks. We know exactly where the profits are. WE HAVE NO VOICE UNTIL WORLD GOVERNMENT MASSIVELY DECLARES ITSELF."
Stafford Beer, President, World Association of General Systems and Cybernetics, Managing Modern Complexity, Fifteen Years After, 1985
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On the History channel this week, the prophecies of December 21, 2012-only 1441 days from this writing-including those of Einstein and Nostradamus, that a humongous change will take place on planet Earth dominate that public media space. It pictures dinosaurs appearing on Earth nearly 250 million years ago in a period of time geologists called Triassic. Their feet shook the planetary soil for nearly 200 million years - 40,000 times as long as recorded human history- yet suddenly they all mysteriously disappeared at the end of the Cretaceous Period about 65 million years ago. We can only guess why.

Today, googling for "2012, The End of the World" brings up nearly 700,000 hits. More than 6,500 videos about the fateful day have been posted on YouTube. There are also countless books on the topic, many published in the wake of the success of Daniel Pinchbeck's "2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl," which has been selling thousands of copies each month since it was released last May.

The Mayan calendar, an extraordinarily exact recording of the sun and moon's positions vis-a-vis the Earth also ends on December 21, 2012. It corroborates the Hindu Prophecy in the Brahma-Vaivarta Purana where Lord Krishna tells Ganga Devi that a Golden Age will come following the Kali Yuga period when rulers became unreasonable, avarice and wrath was common, men openly displayed animosity towards each other, ignorance of Dharma occurred, lust was viewed as being socially acceptable, people had thoughts of murder for no justification, and saw nothing wrong with that mindset.

But we do know what will happen cosmically on December 21, 2012.

In brief, for the first time in about 26,000 years a total lunar eclipse will take place; the sun will be aligned with the center of the Milky Way on the same day. Some scientists say that will disrupt the energy flow to Earth, or that the high rate of sunspots or sun flares that NASA has predicted for 2012 could affect Earth's magnetic fields. Others say a polar reversal, where the North Pole becomes the south, where the sun rises in the west, will trigger natural disasters around the world.

Still others say the date marks a worldwide spiritual awakening-the prophetic Millennium-that is, IF humanity gets its trip together.

So how do we humans spend our time during this wink of a cosmic eye period: a mere 1140 days from now? Is human doom inevitable? The dinosaurs made our planet home for 200 million years. So we wipe ourselves out in an insignificant 10,000! Big deal. The planet itself is 4.5 billions years old. It will certainly be indifferent to our demise..or staying power. Well, too bad. It was fun while it lasted..sometimes.

As I write, the headlines of the world recount that the Sons of Abraham-Jews and Arabs-are at each other's throats (again) in a part of the world called "Gaza" and "Israel." Is not the real meaning of "The Patriarch" the father of a family? We are appalled and saddened by the suffering of the innocent children. But "Israel" and "Gaza" like the "United States," "Russia," "Iraq" and every other nation-state are bloodless and lifeless, mere imaginary human creations on one planetary soil. Yet humans are bleeding and dying to defend them as if these temporary political fictions and not the humans are real. After all, humans live and die, not Jews, Palestinians, Christians or Moslems.

Hey, let's get real!

The nation-state divisive (and dysfunctional) system cannot but be seen as an underlying motivating factor for much of the social problems humans face today. Defying systemic organization, carried over from the agricultural world of the 18th and 19th centuries and imposed by fiat on the 21st when both time and space have collapsed to render an interdependent world community fact, the national myth, is being exposed daily as humankind's deathtrap.

As Einstein proclaimed in 1945, "Everything has changed except our way of thinking" when THE BOMB, being genocidal in its very nature, humiliating our whole race by its mere existence, thereby irrevocably prefaced the ominous December 21, 2012 dates of possible total human elimination.

Our human species, lacking unity at that crucial moment, therefore would obviously deserve its cosmic fate.

How then do all these dire warnings equate with the Sermon on the Mount, The Decalogue, the "Golden Rule," the Bhagavad Gita, Koran or Torah, the Nuremberg Principles, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights or the evolution of the world citizenship movement-with President-elect Obama even proclaiming his own world citizenship to the world as well as to those who elected him-or indeed the so-called Space Age with a Space Station circling the planet every 90 minutes at 1700+ mph?

But even more revelatory and hopeful are the growing movements of outraged women such as the Council of Women World Leaders, Peace X Peace, Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, and events like the World Women's Wellness conference in Channai, India scheduled for this coming March.

Is the distaff side of humanity at last awakening to its righteous role of protector of humankind as "Earth Mother"?

If so, perhaps we humans can make it together past December 21, 2012.

The heavens await.