Well, purportedly, it's an astronomical/mathematical prediction of doom from natural causes, made by a society with very advanced math and astronomy.
Whereas their own society was brought down by sociological/biological causes, which we have no reason to expect they would be particularly adept at dealing with.
Not that I believe a word of the 2012 nonsense. But logically your critique doesn't hold much weight for me, despite sounding truthy.
Peak oil... religious fanatics... pollution... nuclear war... an out of control climate... gigantic tsunamis... nuclear fallout... disease... rising sea levels....
Sorry if I left something out. I feel like one of those comedians saying as many slurs possible.
Needless to say, we're plunging into some interesting years. 2012 just feels so... pivotal.
Peak oil... religious fanatics... pollution... nuclear war... an out of control climate... gigantic tsunamis... nuclear fallout... disease... rising sea levels....
Peak Oil would be the end of the world in the same way that the cod crisis destroyed Canada. Pollution has been around for centuries and hasn't offed us yet. The threat of nuclear war is pretty much the only thing that stops real wars from happening between great powers. An out-of-control climate isn't something you talk about in the present tense, and won't be seen for twenty or thirty years if it happens at all. Tsunamis have been around as long as the oceans. Nuclear fallout at a civilization-threatening scale could only result from a nuclear war, which I just dealt with. Disease has been around for billions of years and medicine is getting better, not worse, at keeping people alive until they're in their mid-eighties or so. Rising sea levels will mostly inconvenience third-world island nations, if they become a problem at all.
My prediction is that 2012 will be a hilarious year, because so many people will be so worked up about it.
"Our simulation gets turned off" can be tacked on too, but I was trying to think of things that are real, current, problems. Or more probable in the near future.
My main point is that 2012 onward will be interesting without mystical interpretations of the celestial.
Actually the 2012 is not always discussed as the end of the world. If you look at the article it also proposes the possibility of a major change in society. The completion of cycle in the mayan calendar, I think, indicates just that. End of the cycle of one society.
My bet, maybe robots will do all our work and we would become all spiritual, some people may say the time frame is too short for this but it doesn't have to be abrupt. 2012 may mark the start in some way. May be the first positronic brain will be completed on that day. sigh... hopes
