Since I abhor battles of any kind and much the more when opposite sexes are the combatants, I naturally dislike the old term, Battle of the Sexes, which has been around longer than anyone can remember. But I also see most of these so-called battles as mere rattles, due to the desire we all have to get attention. Fortunately, most of the fighting done between the sexes is limited to verbal skirmishes, but these can be pretty damaging, and in the awful extremities of the battle concept, can result in physical pain or worse. Still, there will always be the rattling of words, hopefully in lieu of sabers.
I have long had this title in mind, thinking one day to try to write a book or at least an article so named. Surprised it hasn't already been used as a book title by an authority on the subject - perhaps the writer of the Venus/Mars treatment. Somewhere on the web there is a site called Citizen Poet in which the expression Rattle of the Sexes was picked up in my search, but I failed to locate the full piece entered there. So I feel comfortable using it here in this little corner of the blogosphere. Now I will make my foray into the world of sociological comment on one of the most confusing and misunderstood areas of human life: the male/female divide.
Naturally, anything I might offer is as a layman only (no pun intended) because I am totally untrained in sociology. Well, not totally. I am, after all, a social animal, a senior citizen, and one who has lived a perhaps unusually active and varied life to this point. So I do have some little insight, most of it learned in the school of hard knocks and personal experience. The experiences have been of the beautiful type and of the cruelly painful type, with a few other types along the way. But all have been instructive and therefore, over the course of six decades, positive. And the marvel of the Internet allows me to be quite frank, even blunt, and not constrained by anyone's disdain for my lack of letters.
So my approach here will be to introduce my take on the rattle of the sexes topic by expostulating on some point, then allowing my views to be informed and perhaps altered by any comments that might be engendered. Then I plan to continue filling out the topic, in hit-and-miss fashion, by addressing related issues in future posts. So feel free and welcome to be one of those who informs my view!
Jumping right in with alacrity, let's consider a sensitive area of conflict that may exist between mates after years of marriage: sexuality. My experience, as well as what I hear in talks with many others, tells me that libidos and sexual interests do fluctuate for all of us as we age and seldom do they change in concert. The common term we hear when a couple is separating is that the two people have "grown apart." This surely involves a wide variety of ways in which the apartness manifests itself, but I am confident in my assertion that a high percentage of that grown apart state involves the sex drive and the sexuality field in general.
And it isn't merely the drive (or lack of drive) to participate in sex that changes as we grow older; it is the fact that many other variables come into play, and these also rarely match up between mates. For example, fantasies. I still chuckle when I recall a little joke I heard decades ago, involving an elderly couple who made the commitment one night to try sex again following a few weeks without. After unconvincing fondling of one another for a while with no apparent excitement developing for either, the man finally sighed and asked, "You couldn't think of anybody either, huh?"
At least these two understood each other. For many sex partners, the concept of fantasizing is a closely kept secret. How many people utilize a fantasy now and then during sex in order to achieve orgasm which may not arrive or may take far longer to achieve with just the action of the moment? Do ALL humans fantasize? My baseless guess is that more than 95% do, and probably absolutely everyone has once or twice. [Here I will admit to lots of guessing. Were I as capable as a Dr. Kinsey, I would document a basis for my percentages. On the other hand, though Kinsey went about it using a scientific methodology, I don't believe he used a polygraph when he questioned his survey participants. Knowing the human capacity for deception - including self-deception - I will guess his numbers were off by a wide margin.] How many people would you suppose will admit to using fantasy during sex? Another wild guess of mine would be less than half of those who do so will admit it. How many would admit to it if actually asked by a mate during the sex act? I'd say maybe 5% (being generous) would be honest at that moment. No harsh criticism intended here; it may not be only self-protection or embarrassment that would cause a person to lie about this point. Truly caring for a mate might cause any of us to make a judgment call at the moment to protect him/her from the pain of inadequacy one might feel if it were known that the partner is fantasizing.
Do men and women engage in fantasy in essentially equal numbers? I'm guessing, yes. Will men admit it as often as do women? Very doubtful. Do males and females have similar fantasies? Probably never - or very seldom. Do partners openly discuss the whole fantasy matter with each other? Rarely.
The giant arena of fantasizing during sex is basically an unmentionable in human intimacy. Yet it plays an enormous role in the sexual relationship of mates, and it can be quite literally the single largest factor when two people grow apart. Their secretly held fantasies change in different ways; the fantasizers change also.
Good or bad - keeping fantasies as secretive as they have always been? Tough call. It seems to me that when mates, even those who proclaim that their bond is so complete that they have no secrets from each other - soulmates - come to the subject of sexual fantasies, they will shut down. Something about fantasizing strikes fear into the hearts of sex partners. One painful experience I will share dealt directly with this vague no-man's-land of fantasy. My excitement over reading something my partner had written involving an intense fantasy of desire between two women, caused me to believe our personal sexual activity would advance into sharing another female in our sex play. How wrong was that notion! How quickly were we over!
Personally, I think this whole thing of sexual fantasy and its impact on our intimate encounters has been completely bungled. Many have heard me voice this view along with my strong advocacy of the need to share our fantasies openly. If one partner in a loving relationship is unwilling to share his or her fantasies with that one special mate, then how can the two go forward in a syncronous harmony for very long? It seems they set themselves up for a fall.
Earlier, I alluded to my doubts that males and females ever fantasize in the same way. Perhaps this discovery between mates, at an early attempt at minimal sharing of their personal fantasies, causes them to cease trying to do so further. And maybe this is the beginning of their separate directions in sexual comfort zones. When a woman hears that her guy, who loves her so much, harbors fantasies of threesomes (as I admitted to a partner and to you here), how does she take this news? Can she ever feel that she is "enough" for him after that admission? And a man who finds that his little woman is prone to visualize a prince or a knight on a white steed coming to rescue her, and this aids in her orgasm, how does he feel? Does he not begin to wonder about why she needs a rescue? Why she wants something he could never be?
Of course, the above is generalizing and gross over-simplification. But admit it; a man's fantasy is most likely going to include nudity, "base" lustful and lurid scenarios, and often with more than one lusty female. It's why men are typically branded as simple. [And if there are any straight males who have not fantasized about sex with two women at once, I do not know these men.] Females who discuss their fantasies typically don't cite those bare-chested models from paperback romance novel covers as their fantasy subjects, but rather they think of impressive, wealthy, royal, strikingly handsome or super-strong males. Males who are seldom naked!
The rattle of the sexes begins not in words but in thoughts, most of which are subliminal for many years. We apparently have some basic big differences in these subliminal thoughts beginning when the developing fetus takes on the role of either gender. Then from the moment we breathe the outside air and begin the long developmental slog through learning about life, we are aided(!) by societal stereotyping in assuring we as males and females will never be alike in any way, especially in our fantasies.
I submit that when two young people are first married (probably slightly before the wedding would be much better), they should calmly and openly discuss fantasies and share a large laugh over the major differences in the fundamental thinking of the sexes. Then from that point, plan to keep each other updated by allowing new fantasies to be discussed without judgment as their lives progress. This could become a whole new area of sharing that would further bind two people in love, and often each would benefit from the other's nuances on the subject of fantasizing. If the opposite were to occur and they eventually were to grow apart anyway, at least their sharing of individual fantasies might provide a heads-up for them both and give a hint as to what simmering thought might be about to rear its newly assertive head and bite them.
Much, much more can be said about the subject; I will probably say more myself. But now it's time to see whether others may have something to say. Perhaps I will learn a great deal; perhaps some sharing here can be healthy and helpful to a few of us. Perhaps I will hear nothing from anyone and will have to wonder whether I have stepped into a no-no zone instead of my neutral zone. Oh, well, I hope someone gets something out of my ramblings. And you might enjoy visiting this no-no zone if you're not too timid.
Please remember that many great contributions have been made over centuries from that wise and prolific writer, Anonymous. If you are one of his descendants, I'm always glad to hear from you. Or consider creating a private user name. This keeps you completely unidentifiable but allows you to comment often and develop a thread. Any approach is a good one. How often can that be said?!
Sunday, November 27, 2011
Tuesday, November 15, 2011
Aliens - of the Close Kind
Another forwarded article has drifted my way, as forwards often do because of well-intentioned efforts of thoughtful folks in my circle of contacts. This one dealt rather harshly with the ever-present Illegal Aliens among us. Unfortunately, not space aliens. (Surprisingly, none of my friends can claim to have direct contact with these as yet!) If I understood the message properly, the particular aliens in question in this case were the Hispanic border-crossing hordes(!).
Often do I ponder the wonders of dumb luck. Of pure chance. WE [humans] have nothing whatsoever to say about where WE are born. And WE who happened to be born in the USA are so pleased to fly OUR flag and snuggle up to the concept of WE - the People. The people of a particular country. WE who are fortunate to be born on a piece of our planet that might lie just across a river, or across an invisible line called a border, from folks born in another, perhaps poorer, division of the planet, somehow can become attached to OUR little plot and feel a ferocious possessiveness about it. Hardly ever is there a big thing made of being part of the WE of North America. Or the WE of the whole Western Hemisphere. More likely the fiercest of OUR personal loyalties are broken down to individual states due to "friendly" competitions such as in college and professional sports. Texans who have never played a sport can be heard to say that WE have a better team than THEY do - the THEY being maybe Oklahoma or Arkansas. And those in Kansas might say "WE are better than Nebraska." The same kind of exclusivism is big in politics, commerce and other institutions within our society.
Of course WE (as individuals) are at times entirely put out by other members of the WE who don't see things the way WE do. I am taken aback often by the way in which I am expected to be a loyal part of a WE group in which I am a total misfit.
As an agent for real estate sales, I am actually expected at times by a few members of MY small community to be true to OUR type and do my best to avoid selling property to THEM. And it's not always clear which part of the THEM is most undesirable to US, but I am supposed to understand and help keep some kind of purity in OUR neighborhood. Keeping US protected from those of another race, I believe is what's being hinted at by MY fellow lily-white Anglos. Some have the gall to assume that I would surely want only folks just like themselves to become MY new neighbors. Truth be told, many of the people I find myself having to deal with simply because of our proximity, I would gladly replace with nicer people. Maybe that's the kind of red-lining I could unethically practice - refusing to sell property to anyone who isn't nice!
Typically I detest being thought of as one of US. Especially to join against THEM.
Remember the scene in The Sound of Music film when the infatuated eldest daughter confronted the good guy she had seen at least once (and shared a spirited duet of Sixteen Going on Seventeen), in the courtyard of the church? He was hunting down her escaping family because he was now part of the Hitler Youth, working his way into the Nazi military. She thought she was appealing to his good guy inner core by saying "You'll never be one of THEM." And he blew the whistle. He so wanted to be one of THEM. And we know from history, Hitler so wanted the likes of him and other blond, blue-eyed Aryans who could help him establish the master race and rid the world of all the OTHERS - those who simply weren't pure enough to live among the master race.
Are WE, the accidental citizens of the USA, part of a master race? Oh, wait, WE are already made up of many races, thanks to all the aliens who arrived here over generations, so what kind of master-GROUP are we now considering ourselves? And are WE too good to have to endure aliens?
The forwarded message I mentioned at the beginning was pointing out all the waste of OUR dollars in caring for the hordes of illegals crossing OUR borders. The question being asked was, why should WE have to feel responsible to spend OUR hard-earned money helping THEM? It was an exemplary effort made to study the amounts of money spent on health care for THEM and in losses of jobs that WE could have had if THEY weren't allowed to stay in OUR country. Then the article brought up the concern that a bunch of stinking Liberals will try to take the heat off those budget-draining aliens by saying that it's the stupid wars in which we are embroiled that should be ended so money could be saved in that way. The point being made by the writer, it seems, is that the wars are fine; if WE could just quit spending so much on THEM, the illegal aliens who dare to sneak into OUR country, then WE could go on spending money where it needs to be spent - killing enemies.
The writer's fairly transparent attitude was that instead of spending OUR money on aliens, it might be better to stand them up in rows and mow them down with bullets.
First of all, even if his huge figures (spent on aid) were factual, they are still a pittance when compared to what has been spent in the wars we have [mis]managed over the last decade. But here's the rub to a devout Humanist and progressive idealist such as I: ANY amount spent on war is TOO MUCH. Any amount spent to assist human beings, inside or outside any border, is money well spent. When considering the two choices of helping people on the one hand and killing people on the other, I choose to be on the side of helping humans live.
Often do I ponder the wonders of dumb luck. Of pure chance. WE [humans] have nothing whatsoever to say about where WE are born. And WE who happened to be born in the USA are so pleased to fly OUR flag and snuggle up to the concept of WE - the People. The people of a particular country. WE who are fortunate to be born on a piece of our planet that might lie just across a river, or across an invisible line called a border, from folks born in another, perhaps poorer, division of the planet, somehow can become attached to OUR little plot and feel a ferocious possessiveness about it. Hardly ever is there a big thing made of being part of the WE of North America. Or the WE of the whole Western Hemisphere. More likely the fiercest of OUR personal loyalties are broken down to individual states due to "friendly" competitions such as in college and professional sports. Texans who have never played a sport can be heard to say that WE have a better team than THEY do - the THEY being maybe Oklahoma or Arkansas. And those in Kansas might say "WE are better than Nebraska." The same kind of exclusivism is big in politics, commerce and other institutions within our society.
Of course WE (as individuals) are at times entirely put out by other members of the WE who don't see things the way WE do. I am taken aback often by the way in which I am expected to be a loyal part of a WE group in which I am a total misfit.
As an agent for real estate sales, I am actually expected at times by a few members of MY small community to be true to OUR type and do my best to avoid selling property to THEM. And it's not always clear which part of the THEM is most undesirable to US, but I am supposed to understand and help keep some kind of purity in OUR neighborhood. Keeping US protected from those of another race, I believe is what's being hinted at by MY fellow lily-white Anglos. Some have the gall to assume that I would surely want only folks just like themselves to become MY new neighbors. Truth be told, many of the people I find myself having to deal with simply because of our proximity, I would gladly replace with nicer people. Maybe that's the kind of red-lining I could unethically practice - refusing to sell property to anyone who isn't nice!
Typically I detest being thought of as one of US. Especially to join against THEM.
Remember the scene in The Sound of Music film when the infatuated eldest daughter confronted the good guy she had seen at least once (and shared a spirited duet of Sixteen Going on Seventeen), in the courtyard of the church? He was hunting down her escaping family because he was now part of the Hitler Youth, working his way into the Nazi military. She thought she was appealing to his good guy inner core by saying "You'll never be one of THEM." And he blew the whistle. He so wanted to be one of THEM. And we know from history, Hitler so wanted the likes of him and other blond, blue-eyed Aryans who could help him establish the master race and rid the world of all the OTHERS - those who simply weren't pure enough to live among the master race.
Are WE, the accidental citizens of the USA, part of a master race? Oh, wait, WE are already made up of many races, thanks to all the aliens who arrived here over generations, so what kind of master-GROUP are we now considering ourselves? And are WE too good to have to endure aliens?
The forwarded message I mentioned at the beginning was pointing out all the waste of OUR dollars in caring for the hordes of illegals crossing OUR borders. The question being asked was, why should WE have to feel responsible to spend OUR hard-earned money helping THEM? It was an exemplary effort made to study the amounts of money spent on health care for THEM and in losses of jobs that WE could have had if THEY weren't allowed to stay in OUR country. Then the article brought up the concern that a bunch of stinking Liberals will try to take the heat off those budget-draining aliens by saying that it's the stupid wars in which we are embroiled that should be ended so money could be saved in that way. The point being made by the writer, it seems, is that the wars are fine; if WE could just quit spending so much on THEM, the illegal aliens who dare to sneak into OUR country, then WE could go on spending money where it needs to be spent - killing enemies.
The writer's fairly transparent attitude was that instead of spending OUR money on aliens, it might be better to stand them up in rows and mow them down with bullets.
First of all, even if his huge figures (spent on aid) were factual, they are still a pittance when compared to what has been spent in the wars we have [mis]managed over the last decade. But here's the rub to a devout Humanist and progressive idealist such as I: ANY amount spent on war is TOO MUCH. Any amount spent to assist human beings, inside or outside any border, is money well spent. When considering the two choices of helping people on the one hand and killing people on the other, I choose to be on the side of helping humans live.
Thursday, November 3, 2011
Mayan Mystery
Setting aside a few other topics I have been wanting to address, I will attempt to do justice to a matter that is perhaps more urgent: the END of the WORLD - - again.
Not wanting to make this a simple tirade, for which I seem to be known, I will treat this with some dignity. After all, from the perspective of some, it is of the utmost importance. The calendar produced by the Mayans is showing full stop in about thirteen months. And people are concerned over this. Even people I care about intensely are concerned about this end-of-the-world scenario. Therefore it behooves me to give it the time as well as a sincere effort to understand so that I am not just offensive but perhaps persuasive.
Why am I not shivering in dread over the coming event to end all events? Why did I toss off glib comments and make a golf date for the day pin-pointed as EW-Day? (EW for End of the World in this case) Why would I dismiss the whole concept as laughable in front of someone dear to me who first brought it to my attention?
The last question is the easiest to answer, actually. I wanted very much for him to recognize instantly that I was probably right to be dismissive and to go about living as always with no continuing thought for the whole Mayan mystery. But again, there's that thing called perspective that trips me up. My perspective on a good many things, because I'm now an old fart, is going to often be vastly different from that of someone more youthful, more vibrant, more concerned with long-term planning. But in this Mayan matter, apparently anything more than a year out is considered too long a term to plan. So for some, this is a very big hurdle to clear. Personally, I expect to be here plugging along in my off-beat way and getting in as much golf as my aging knees, feet, back and the rest of the old rack of aching bones will bear, for maybe another thirty years. A friend of mine who was ninety-eight still played a pretty good game of golf until last fall when one fine day he finished a game and went home to sit down and fall into his final nap. I aspire to this great accomplishment myself.
Naturally, I will be really ticked if this whole thing ends in only thirteen months instead of allowing time for my personal plan to play out! So I need to look at how others might feel, people who may have thoughts of fifty, seventy-five or more years perhaps to enjoy this life.
The key here, in my humble opinion, is to enjoy! One thing my view from an older stance has given me is the ability to be more philosophical about it all. I figure there's no way to control any of our ultimate futures, length of life, avoidance of accidents or destructive diseases, so each day we live is really to be cherished and appreciated for all it's worth. My own son, wise in his youth, re-stated a beautiful axiom to me just recently. Paraphrasing it here from memory: Yesterday is history, tomorrow is mystery; all we have is today which is a gift - the reason it's called the present. I think this sums up a great deal of all the various reasons we need to focus on enjoying each day for itself alone.
Now to the Mayan calendar matter.
My wife, upon hearing of the gravity some folks are giving to this subject, asked me if maybe they think the Maya were the oldest society on Earth. I told her I didn't think anyone believed that, but even that possibility still wouldn't do it for me. So what if they were the very first civilized people? Would that mean they had special knowledge of how everything would end? Everyone basically believes that the ancient Egyptians were the first advanced society, but does that drive me to want to learn how to read their hieroglyphics in order to reach some conclusions as to the end of the world? Not at all. They had not nearly as much knowledge in any way as do today's scientists and other dedicated students of life, and I would not give any credence to one of today's learned individuals who turns interesting conjecture into absolutism about the future and falls prey to total confidence in his/her own prognostications. All of these people have the same gift of living today as we all possess. And I submit that even the most capable and respectable student of life has no more insight than anyone else has into some end-of-it-all coming event. The Maya included.
In all this discussion we should also understand that even though we respect the studies into antiquity, there is no certifiable proof that the facts we think we know about the Maya and their famous calendar are very trustworthy. What if we read into their final chiseled symbols the idea that "Here life ends" when what they wrote was "Here we end our work." Might even have been a typo, carved in stone! There could be no possible proof that their ending of the calendar was their dire prediction that all the world would end. Actually, being brutally frank, the world as Mayans knew it ended many centuries ago. What might today be read back into the old clever symbology carved on stones in Peru is quite meaningless as a plan for my life.
My personal opinion as to why their calendar comes to an end is that they simply stopped work on it. They had to stop it at some point! How could they continue to project future years following their own demise? After all, their society became an interesting study in history because of their sudden demise. Who would have been left to continue carving on their famous project, which apparently already reached more than a millennium beyond themselves? That very idea, that these intelligent people would bother to project their calendar out so far beyond their own day, probably is what captures the imaginations of so many and gives the Maya something of a godship status.
The only possibility I might see here would be to accept Von Daniken's concept of early human societies, especially Egyptian and Mayan, having been visited, influenced and guided by highly advanced extraterrestrial beings. This could explain many things, including why all societies on Earth have wildly divergent yet eerily similar ideas about a supreme being. To believe the hype about the Mayan calendar's meaning to us, I would need to accept carte-blanche the whole extraterrestrial thing, which by the way, is somewhat less of a stretch than are the multitude of "god" concepts.
To address all the thousands (quite literally) of other dates that have been set by other believers in doomsday events would be totally impossible for me and not any more clarifying really. If some idea grabs a person and makes him/her delve into it with the zeal of a new convert, there is no reasoning that will make someone wake up to the zaniness anyway. Back in May of this year, there were no doubt a few fringe Christians who waited expectantly when some loony pastor gave his pick for a last-day-on-Earth. When that day came and went, a few of the folks bought into his new pick of a day in October, now about two weeks past. I am absolutely sure that a few still hold on to the old pastor's newer prophesies (he simply has to have some), but his particular silliness has at last been dropped from national newsworthiness.
What is actually worthy of our consideration is the more studiously considered and scientific approach to the big questions of life. The scientific method of seeking proof of any thing's substance is still not widely followed by the common man because the mysterious has always held humans in thrall. Explaining something by believing in it is somehow acceptable to most people. Not for me. Believing in something completely un-provable is what makes most people tick. That doesn't do it for me. Give me the eyes to see and I can choose to do what I will with the scene before me. If the scene is beautiful, I can adore it and gaze upon it; if it's ugly, I can try cleaning it up or walk away from it. I can place my reverence in the cosmos which is awesome, knowable, still mysterious in its vastness but not hidden from view. Anyone truly interested in substantial reading that can inspire without the use of fear should try grasping Worldview Eyelemica. The title sounds erudite and some of the words in the text are not heard every day, but the content has so much more meaning than all the studies into all the myths to which man has given his time and devotion.
I believe in the human capacity. Not to predict a day to end life but to live a better life each day.
Not wanting to make this a simple tirade, for which I seem to be known, I will treat this with some dignity. After all, from the perspective of some, it is of the utmost importance. The calendar produced by the Mayans is showing full stop in about thirteen months. And people are concerned over this. Even people I care about intensely are concerned about this end-of-the-world scenario. Therefore it behooves me to give it the time as well as a sincere effort to understand so that I am not just offensive but perhaps persuasive.
Why am I not shivering in dread over the coming event to end all events? Why did I toss off glib comments and make a golf date for the day pin-pointed as EW-Day? (EW for End of the World in this case) Why would I dismiss the whole concept as laughable in front of someone dear to me who first brought it to my attention?
The last question is the easiest to answer, actually. I wanted very much for him to recognize instantly that I was probably right to be dismissive and to go about living as always with no continuing thought for the whole Mayan mystery. But again, there's that thing called perspective that trips me up. My perspective on a good many things, because I'm now an old fart, is going to often be vastly different from that of someone more youthful, more vibrant, more concerned with long-term planning. But in this Mayan matter, apparently anything more than a year out is considered too long a term to plan. So for some, this is a very big hurdle to clear. Personally, I expect to be here plugging along in my off-beat way and getting in as much golf as my aging knees, feet, back and the rest of the old rack of aching bones will bear, for maybe another thirty years. A friend of mine who was ninety-eight still played a pretty good game of golf until last fall when one fine day he finished a game and went home to sit down and fall into his final nap. I aspire to this great accomplishment myself.
Naturally, I will be really ticked if this whole thing ends in only thirteen months instead of allowing time for my personal plan to play out! So I need to look at how others might feel, people who may have thoughts of fifty, seventy-five or more years perhaps to enjoy this life.
The key here, in my humble opinion, is to enjoy! One thing my view from an older stance has given me is the ability to be more philosophical about it all. I figure there's no way to control any of our ultimate futures, length of life, avoidance of accidents or destructive diseases, so each day we live is really to be cherished and appreciated for all it's worth. My own son, wise in his youth, re-stated a beautiful axiom to me just recently. Paraphrasing it here from memory: Yesterday is history, tomorrow is mystery; all we have is today which is a gift - the reason it's called the present. I think this sums up a great deal of all the various reasons we need to focus on enjoying each day for itself alone.
Now to the Mayan calendar matter.
My wife, upon hearing of the gravity some folks are giving to this subject, asked me if maybe they think the Maya were the oldest society on Earth. I told her I didn't think anyone believed that, but even that possibility still wouldn't do it for me. So what if they were the very first civilized people? Would that mean they had special knowledge of how everything would end? Everyone basically believes that the ancient Egyptians were the first advanced society, but does that drive me to want to learn how to read their hieroglyphics in order to reach some conclusions as to the end of the world? Not at all. They had not nearly as much knowledge in any way as do today's scientists and other dedicated students of life, and I would not give any credence to one of today's learned individuals who turns interesting conjecture into absolutism about the future and falls prey to total confidence in his/her own prognostications. All of these people have the same gift of living today as we all possess. And I submit that even the most capable and respectable student of life has no more insight than anyone else has into some end-of-it-all coming event. The Maya included.
In all this discussion we should also understand that even though we respect the studies into antiquity, there is no certifiable proof that the facts we think we know about the Maya and their famous calendar are very trustworthy. What if we read into their final chiseled symbols the idea that "Here life ends" when what they wrote was "Here we end our work." Might even have been a typo, carved in stone! There could be no possible proof that their ending of the calendar was their dire prediction that all the world would end. Actually, being brutally frank, the world as Mayans knew it ended many centuries ago. What might today be read back into the old clever symbology carved on stones in Peru is quite meaningless as a plan for my life.
My personal opinion as to why their calendar comes to an end is that they simply stopped work on it. They had to stop it at some point! How could they continue to project future years following their own demise? After all, their society became an interesting study in history because of their sudden demise. Who would have been left to continue carving on their famous project, which apparently already reached more than a millennium beyond themselves? That very idea, that these intelligent people would bother to project their calendar out so far beyond their own day, probably is what captures the imaginations of so many and gives the Maya something of a godship status.
The only possibility I might see here would be to accept Von Daniken's concept of early human societies, especially Egyptian and Mayan, having been visited, influenced and guided by highly advanced extraterrestrial beings. This could explain many things, including why all societies on Earth have wildly divergent yet eerily similar ideas about a supreme being. To believe the hype about the Mayan calendar's meaning to us, I would need to accept carte-blanche the whole extraterrestrial thing, which by the way, is somewhat less of a stretch than are the multitude of "god" concepts.
To address all the thousands (quite literally) of other dates that have been set by other believers in doomsday events would be totally impossible for me and not any more clarifying really. If some idea grabs a person and makes him/her delve into it with the zeal of a new convert, there is no reasoning that will make someone wake up to the zaniness anyway. Back in May of this year, there were no doubt a few fringe Christians who waited expectantly when some loony pastor gave his pick for a last-day-on-Earth. When that day came and went, a few of the folks bought into his new pick of a day in October, now about two weeks past. I am absolutely sure that a few still hold on to the old pastor's newer prophesies (he simply has to have some), but his particular silliness has at last been dropped from national newsworthiness.
What is actually worthy of our consideration is the more studiously considered and scientific approach to the big questions of life. The scientific method of seeking proof of any thing's substance is still not widely followed by the common man because the mysterious has always held humans in thrall. Explaining something by believing in it is somehow acceptable to most people. Not for me. Believing in something completely un-provable is what makes most people tick. That doesn't do it for me. Give me the eyes to see and I can choose to do what I will with the scene before me. If the scene is beautiful, I can adore it and gaze upon it; if it's ugly, I can try cleaning it up or walk away from it. I can place my reverence in the cosmos which is awesome, knowable, still mysterious in its vastness but not hidden from view. Anyone truly interested in substantial reading that can inspire without the use of fear should try grasping Worldview Eyelemica. The title sounds erudite and some of the words in the text are not heard every day, but the content has so much more meaning than all the studies into all the myths to which man has given his time and devotion.
I believe in the human capacity. Not to predict a day to end life but to live a better life each day.
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