M
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Guest
New York Times Magazine
July 1, 2007
The Final Days
By BENJAMIN ANASTAS
Steven from Arizona - a caller on "Coast to Coast AM" late one night
in February - had slipped into a future reality and caught a glimpse
of the devastation that was coming when the supervolcano under
Yellowstone erupted. James in Omaha, on the other hand, was worried
about the likelihood of a magnetic pole shift, while Rod from Edmonton
had recently spoken to a member of the Canadian Parliament about the
global-warming crisis and couldn't believe what he had heard.
"We're coming to an end time beyond anything that anybody has ever
imagined," Rod said with a trembling urgency. "The scientists right
now, they're not even studying the real causes. The Kyoto treaty and
CO2 have nothing to do with anything."
"Coast to Coast AM" is an overnight radio show devoted to what its
weekday host, George Noory, calls "the unusual mysteries of the world
and the universe." Broadcast out of Sherman Oaks, Calif., and carried
nationwide on more than 500 stations as well as the XM Radio satellite
network, "Coast to Coast AM" is by far the highest-rated radio program
in the country once the lights go out. The guest in the wee hours that
February morning was Lawrence E. Joseph, the author of "Apocalypse
2012" - billed as "a scientific investigation into civilization's end"
- and he came on the air to tell the story of how the ancient Maya
looked into the stars and predicted catastrophic changes to the earth,
all pegged to the end date of an historical cycle on one of their
calendars, Dec. 21, 2012.
"My motto tonight," Noory intoned at the beginning of the program, "is
be prepared, not scared." What followed was a graphic recitation of
disaster scenarios for 2012, including hurricanes, earthquakes and
volcanic eruptions caused by solar storms, cracks forming in the
earth's magnetic field and mass extinctions brought on by nuclear
winter. The only hopeful note of the night was struck when an unnamed
caller asked Joseph what he thought about recent Virgin Mary
apparitions in Bosnia.
"I love it," the author answered. "That's positive. You don't need to
be a devout Christian to admire the Virgin Mary. She's a blessing to
us all."
When I reached Noory by phone at his program's studio in California,
he told me, "I'm a staunch believer that we are in an earth cycle." As
2012 approaches, "Coast to Coast" has been devoting more and more
programming to prophecies of doom and the signs and wonders that are
thought to be harbingers of the coming end time: U.F.O. sightings,
crop-circle formations, disappearing honeybees and flocks of migratory
birds that fall from the sky. "There's no question the planet is
changing," Noory said. "And the fact that the Mayans had an end date
and their history talks of change, I find that fascinating."
But it isn't just on the lower frequencies, late at night, where
people are waiting on the Mayan apocalypse. Daniel Pinchbeck, author
of the alternative-culture best seller "2012: The Return of
Quetzalcoatl" - and a guest on "Coast to Coast AM" - has introduced a
young and savvy audience to the school of millenarian thinking that
has gathered around Mayan calendrics. To do so, he has employed viral
marketing and a tireless schedule of public appearances at bookstores,
art spaces, yoga studios and electronic-music festivals. When
Pinchbeck appeared on "The Colbert Report" last December to promote
his book, the host confronted him in front of a life-size manger
scene: "You have been called a new Timothy Leary. Why do we need
another one of those?"
Over breakfast at Cafe Gitane in Manhattan, Pinchbeck told me recently
that "there's a growing realization that materialism and the rational,
empirical worldview that comes with it has reached its expiration
date." A youthful 41, with long, drooping hair and heavy-framed
designer eyewear, Pinchbeck exudes a languid fervency that is equal
parts Jesuit and Jim Morrison. His BlackBerry sat face up on the
table, the screen dark, beside his bowl of organic fruit, yogurt and
granola. "Apocalypse literally means uncovering or revealing,"
Pinchbeck went on, "and I think the process is already under way.
We're on the verge of transitioning to a dispensation of consciousness
that's more intuitive, mystical and shamanic."
Far from its origins, divorced from its context and enlisted in a
prophetic project that it may never have been designed to fulfill, the
Mayan calendar is at the center of an escalating cultural phenomenon -
with New Age roots - that unites numinous dreams of societal
transformation with the darker tropes of biblical cataclysm. To some,
2012 will bring the end of time; to others, it carries the promise of
a new beginning; to still others, 2012 provides an explanation for
troubling new realities - environmental change, for example - that
seem beyond the control of our technology and impervious to reason.
Just in time for the final five-year countdown, the Mayan apocalypse
has come of age.
Light and darkness - heavenly forces and a corrupted earth - are the
twin engines of apocalyptic movements. For Christians awaiting rapture
or Shiites counting the days until the Twelfth Imam appears, the
trials and injustices of the known world are a prelude for the
paradise that we can imagine but can't yet achieve. Judging by the
sheer number of predicted end dates that have come and gone without
the trumpets blowing and angels rushing in, we are a people impatient
to see our world redeemed through catastrophe - and we are always
wrong. Gnostics predicted the imminent arrival of God's kingdom as
early as the first century; Christians in Europe attacked pagan
territories in the north to prepare for the end of the world at the
first millennium; the Shakers believed the world would end in 1792;
there was a "Great Disappointment" among followers of the Baptist
preacher William Miller when Jesus did not return to upstate New York
on Oct. 22, 1844. The Jehovah's Witnesses have been especially
prodigious with prophetic end dates: 1914, 1915, 1918, 1920, 1925,
1941, 1975 and 1994. Any religious movement with an end-time prophecy
is certain to attract followers, no matter how maniacal or fringy
(witness the Branch Davidians). For those who want to go online and
get the latest tally of bad news, there is a nuclear Doomsday Clock
and the Rapture Index. If you remember living through Y2K, that was
another millenarian moment - except our computer systems were redeemed
by the same code writers who corrupted them in the first place.
Who dreams of the apocalypse? Why do they dream of it? Polls indicate
that up to 50 percent of Americans believe that the Book of Revelation
is a true, prophetic document, meaning they fully expect the
predictions of "Rapture," "Tribulation" and "Armageddon" to be
fulfilled. There is a paradox built into end-time theologies in that
imminent catastrophe often brings comfort; according to Paul S. Boyer,
an authority on prophecy belief in American culture and an emeritus
professor of history at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, the
apocalypse is an appealing idea because it promises salvation to a
select group - all of whom share secret knowledge - and a world
redeemed and delivered from evil. "The Utopian dream is a big part of
the Western tradition," Boyer told me, "both the religious and secular
forms. But the wicked have to be destroyed and evil has to be overcome
for the era of righteousness to dawn." This is as true in the New Age
as much as in any other one. Rumors of global crisis, the distrust of
institutional authority, the ready availability of esoteric lore, the
existence of individuals drawn to abstruse numerical schemes, the urge
to assuage anxieties with dreams of social transformation - wherever
these elements exist, apocalyptic thinking is likely to flourish.
The year 2012 first entered the public consciousness two decades ago
this August with the Harmonic Convergence organized by Jos
July 1, 2007
The Final Days
By BENJAMIN ANASTAS
Steven from Arizona - a caller on "Coast to Coast AM" late one night
in February - had slipped into a future reality and caught a glimpse
of the devastation that was coming when the supervolcano under
Yellowstone erupted. James in Omaha, on the other hand, was worried
about the likelihood of a magnetic pole shift, while Rod from Edmonton
had recently spoken to a member of the Canadian Parliament about the
global-warming crisis and couldn't believe what he had heard.
"We're coming to an end time beyond anything that anybody has ever
imagined," Rod said with a trembling urgency. "The scientists right
now, they're not even studying the real causes. The Kyoto treaty and
CO2 have nothing to do with anything."
"Coast to Coast AM" is an overnight radio show devoted to what its
weekday host, George Noory, calls "the unusual mysteries of the world
and the universe." Broadcast out of Sherman Oaks, Calif., and carried
nationwide on more than 500 stations as well as the XM Radio satellite
network, "Coast to Coast AM" is by far the highest-rated radio program
in the country once the lights go out. The guest in the wee hours that
February morning was Lawrence E. Joseph, the author of "Apocalypse
2012" - billed as "a scientific investigation into civilization's end"
- and he came on the air to tell the story of how the ancient Maya
looked into the stars and predicted catastrophic changes to the earth,
all pegged to the end date of an historical cycle on one of their
calendars, Dec. 21, 2012.
"My motto tonight," Noory intoned at the beginning of the program, "is
be prepared, not scared." What followed was a graphic recitation of
disaster scenarios for 2012, including hurricanes, earthquakes and
volcanic eruptions caused by solar storms, cracks forming in the
earth's magnetic field and mass extinctions brought on by nuclear
winter. The only hopeful note of the night was struck when an unnamed
caller asked Joseph what he thought about recent Virgin Mary
apparitions in Bosnia.
"I love it," the author answered. "That's positive. You don't need to
be a devout Christian to admire the Virgin Mary. She's a blessing to
us all."
When I reached Noory by phone at his program's studio in California,
he told me, "I'm a staunch believer that we are in an earth cycle." As
2012 approaches, "Coast to Coast" has been devoting more and more
programming to prophecies of doom and the signs and wonders that are
thought to be harbingers of the coming end time: U.F.O. sightings,
crop-circle formations, disappearing honeybees and flocks of migratory
birds that fall from the sky. "There's no question the planet is
changing," Noory said. "And the fact that the Mayans had an end date
and their history talks of change, I find that fascinating."
But it isn't just on the lower frequencies, late at night, where
people are waiting on the Mayan apocalypse. Daniel Pinchbeck, author
of the alternative-culture best seller "2012: The Return of
Quetzalcoatl" - and a guest on "Coast to Coast AM" - has introduced a
young and savvy audience to the school of millenarian thinking that
has gathered around Mayan calendrics. To do so, he has employed viral
marketing and a tireless schedule of public appearances at bookstores,
art spaces, yoga studios and electronic-music festivals. When
Pinchbeck appeared on "The Colbert Report" last December to promote
his book, the host confronted him in front of a life-size manger
scene: "You have been called a new Timothy Leary. Why do we need
another one of those?"
Over breakfast at Cafe Gitane in Manhattan, Pinchbeck told me recently
that "there's a growing realization that materialism and the rational,
empirical worldview that comes with it has reached its expiration
date." A youthful 41, with long, drooping hair and heavy-framed
designer eyewear, Pinchbeck exudes a languid fervency that is equal
parts Jesuit and Jim Morrison. His BlackBerry sat face up on the
table, the screen dark, beside his bowl of organic fruit, yogurt and
granola. "Apocalypse literally means uncovering or revealing,"
Pinchbeck went on, "and I think the process is already under way.
We're on the verge of transitioning to a dispensation of consciousness
that's more intuitive, mystical and shamanic."
Far from its origins, divorced from its context and enlisted in a
prophetic project that it may never have been designed to fulfill, the
Mayan calendar is at the center of an escalating cultural phenomenon -
with New Age roots - that unites numinous dreams of societal
transformation with the darker tropes of biblical cataclysm. To some,
2012 will bring the end of time; to others, it carries the promise of
a new beginning; to still others, 2012 provides an explanation for
troubling new realities - environmental change, for example - that
seem beyond the control of our technology and impervious to reason.
Just in time for the final five-year countdown, the Mayan apocalypse
has come of age.
Light and darkness - heavenly forces and a corrupted earth - are the
twin engines of apocalyptic movements. For Christians awaiting rapture
or Shiites counting the days until the Twelfth Imam appears, the
trials and injustices of the known world are a prelude for the
paradise that we can imagine but can't yet achieve. Judging by the
sheer number of predicted end dates that have come and gone without
the trumpets blowing and angels rushing in, we are a people impatient
to see our world redeemed through catastrophe - and we are always
wrong. Gnostics predicted the imminent arrival of God's kingdom as
early as the first century; Christians in Europe attacked pagan
territories in the north to prepare for the end of the world at the
first millennium; the Shakers believed the world would end in 1792;
there was a "Great Disappointment" among followers of the Baptist
preacher William Miller when Jesus did not return to upstate New York
on Oct. 22, 1844. The Jehovah's Witnesses have been especially
prodigious with prophetic end dates: 1914, 1915, 1918, 1920, 1925,
1941, 1975 and 1994. Any religious movement with an end-time prophecy
is certain to attract followers, no matter how maniacal or fringy
(witness the Branch Davidians). For those who want to go online and
get the latest tally of bad news, there is a nuclear Doomsday Clock
and the Rapture Index. If you remember living through Y2K, that was
another millenarian moment - except our computer systems were redeemed
by the same code writers who corrupted them in the first place.
Who dreams of the apocalypse? Why do they dream of it? Polls indicate
that up to 50 percent of Americans believe that the Book of Revelation
is a true, prophetic document, meaning they fully expect the
predictions of "Rapture," "Tribulation" and "Armageddon" to be
fulfilled. There is a paradox built into end-time theologies in that
imminent catastrophe often brings comfort; according to Paul S. Boyer,
an authority on prophecy belief in American culture and an emeritus
professor of history at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, the
apocalypse is an appealing idea because it promises salvation to a
select group - all of whom share secret knowledge - and a world
redeemed and delivered from evil. "The Utopian dream is a big part of
the Western tradition," Boyer told me, "both the religious and secular
forms. But the wicked have to be destroyed and evil has to be overcome
for the era of righteousness to dawn." This is as true in the New Age
as much as in any other one. Rumors of global crisis, the distrust of
institutional authority, the ready availability of esoteric lore, the
existence of individuals drawn to abstruse numerical schemes, the urge
to assuage anxieties with dreams of social transformation - wherever
these elements exist, apocalyptic thinking is likely to flourish.
The year 2012 first entered the public consciousness two decades ago
this August with the Harmonic Convergence organized by Jos