Flee For Your Love

I guess this may be the last entry for this blog...if the Mayans are right.

12-21-12 is the World's Last Day. 'Bye.

Oh. Still here? Me too. (But where are the Mayans?)

It's curious that so many people put at least semi-serious stock into the possibility that the Mayans may have been right, and that their cosmological model accurately predicted the demise of...well, everything.

And if it had been the Fulani, or the Ainu, or the Huk, we would have equally pricked up our ears and taken notice.

For everyone, except us. It's the assumption that somehow these folks know better, know something that's hidden to us,  because they're not like us.

Why is that? Why would we discount the words of, say, the Greeks, Romans, or for that matter the Israelites, and then pay attention to peoples with whom we share virtually no common background?

Is it that mystery is seductive, and the mere fact that we can't really ask a Mayan what was meant makes our hearts give credence?

Or does familiarity breed contempt, and we assume that 'we' can't really do anything right?

The latter argument's pretty plausible. A lot of 'us' don't want to be us. Many, many people would give a lot to be able to prove that they have Native American blood, or that some great-grandparent was a slave, preferably working for Thomas Jefferson?

We've been conditioned to feel guilty, and, literally, to begin to hate ourselves. So, if we can escape into the arms of a minority group (particularly one whom our forebears oppressed)...

We can learn to love ourselves, this synthetic new 'we', once more.