So You Think 2012 is the End of the World?

Greetings faithful readers!

Ok, I doubt many of you actually think 2012 is the end of the world.  However, the media sure is having a field day over the subject.  And what they are popularizing as the “2012 prophecy”, in fact, has absolutely nothing to do with what is actually happening .

Yes, I said “actually happening.”  There is something happening this year – and in fact has been happening for quite some time.  If you are one of the very few who actually understand McKenna’s Timewave Theory, then you know what I’m talking about.  If you have no idea what the hell “Timewave Theory” means, or who Terrance McKenna is, then believe me when I tell you that you know nothing about 2012 – regardless of what you’ve seen on T.V. or in movies.

So, I want to take this oportunity, as my very first post of 2012, to bring you folks into the inner circle of the 2012 prophecy and the Timewave Theory.

This whole hub-bub originated with Terrance McKenna.  I won’t go much into where he came from, since you can Google him just as easily.  Suffice it to say that he was one of the big movers and shakers back in the heyday of the 60s drug culture.  (Back when drugs like LSD were being studied in earnest by university psychologists and scientists.  The same culture that gave rise to folks like Tim Leary and Robert Anton Wilson.)

Terrance is something of a genius who has no problem combining modern scientific and psychological knowlege with ancient mystical wisdom.  For example: he studies the I Ching, he studies ancient cultures – like the Mayans- and he also does a lot of thinking about the future.  And that is the mind that created the Timewave Theory.  Now this subject can be rather complex – especially when the mathematics get involved – but I can give you a simplified explanation of the Timewave Theory here:

It all began with a rather simple observation.  Every once in a while, we invent something so huge, so revolutionary, that it utterly changes the way human beings live on this planet.  We’re talking about BIG stuff here, like the taming of fire.  Or the invention of the wheel.  Or the creation of farming.  Not just day-to-day conveniences, but things that literally make the humans who lived before the invention a completely alien civilization when compared to the humans who came after the invention.

McKenna looked back over the course of human history, and noticed a specific pattern in our progress:  It seems that each new revolutionary invention comes along in about half the time as the previous one.  So, let’s say it took us 10,000 years to tame fire.  Then the wheel would have come along 5,000 later.  The next major innovation would have come 2500 years later, etc, etc.

So McKenna decided to create a mathematical equation to chart this exponential rate of human progress.  This is where it can become complex – but don’t worry I’m not gonig down that road.  If you want to know more about the timewave equation, you can Google that too.  For now, let’s just take a look at a simplified graph to illustrate the idea:

Now, let me make it clear that the above chart is in no way scientific or even close to an accurate view of human history.  I just threw it together with a few example inventions to illustrate the point.

As you can see above, as time progresses, humans come up with new revolutionary inventions in half the time as the previous revolutionary invention.  This causes the Timewave itself to curve higher and higher – until it finally goes vertical.  That vertical line means that we are inventing world-changing new technology each and every second of each and every day.

And that’s impossible, isn’t it?  Everything you buy will be obsolete – and seriously so, like an 8-Track tape would be today – before you could even get to the check-out counter to purchase it.  Cities would have to be re-designed over and over again every day in order to keep up with new advances.  Your day-to-day life would change as drastically each day as it has changed over the last 50 years.  Future shock would be at an all-time high, meaning more and more people would develop psychological problems akin to post-traumatic stress disorder.

And there is real reason to be concerned about that kind of thing.  Even now, our technology advances tremendously every few weeks.  Before long, it will be every few days.  Then every few hours.  Then every few minutes.  Then every few seconds.  And then? – well McKenna’s graph goes entirely vertical at the winter solstice of 2012.  I call that point the “crash of the Timewave.”

So what can we imagine might happen after the timewave has crashed?   MnKenna himself admited that he didn’t know.  I can’t personally predict a thing past 2012, and I’ve encountered other futurists who say the same. 

If “time” is measured as the progress of humanity, then “time” ends at the end of this year.  And that is why McKenna referred to the year 2012 as “the end of human history.”  And, perhaps you can guess why our media jumped on that comment and ran with it – assuming it meant earthquakes and volcanoes and the four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.  (Sheeeesh.)

McKenna has made a few suggestions of what we might expect, as have others – but they all admit they are purely speculating.  Just tossing out ideas on what could possibly come after 2012. 

One is that, perhaps, we’ll finally invent time travel.  Yes, that is far-fetched – but it would invalidate the entire graph above, allowing us to move anywhere on the timeline we wish.

Another idea: perhaps aliens will finally reach Earth this year.  It’s a bit less far-fetched than time travel.  And the influx of new alien technology would also invalidate the above graph, starting a whole new technological age (and thus re-booting the Timewave chart at zero).

Another possibility – one the media salivates over – is that our technological civilization will collapse for some reason, sending us back to, perhaps, the 17th century or so and forcing us to pick the Timewave up from there.  (Of course that says nothing about what happens when the chart goes vertical again – which it would do in even less time than the first time around.)

I think the most level-headed theory is that 2012 will simply mark the end of an age, and 2013 will launch a new one.  The chart reboots to zero, and we begin the path of progress anew.  And/Or, perhaps we will simply hit a technological plateau where little to nothing comes along that might be called revolutionary.

Whatever is going to happen, it is fast approaching.  It has been happening for all of human history, but today we are getting to see its culmination.  Have you noticed the social upheaval and mass uprisings of the past decade – and especially over the last year?  Have you noticed that every single thing that has ever been popular is, currently, popular somewhere right now? 

Groups of people are going out into the woods to live like cavemen and see what it was like.  Others are playing the ancient sport of bull-leaping.  Others are swing dancing.  There are people out there attending Victorian parties and filling out damce cards, while others indulge in futuristic virtual realities.  (More often than you might think, those virtual realties are recreations of ancient cities and past cultures.)

All forms of music and art from throughout history are being performed and enojyed somewhere by someone.  Every single decade’s pop culture, from every single century, is currently back “in fashion” somewhere.   I’ve even heard of entirely extinct languages being revived by modern descendants of lost civilizations.  I like to call this time we live in the “dumping ground of history.”

Truly this is the culmination of human history.  It’s all happening Right Here, Right Now.  Maybe it will reach critical mass this December – or maybe it’ll happen sometime later.  (This isn’t hard science, folks.)  It is hardly the end of the world – but it is certainly exciting to witness!

I urge you to share this blog post on your Facebook, Google+, blogs, etc.  The popular misconception of 2012 as the “end of the world” is selling us all short.  We are poised to witness the most intense moment in human history, but the T.V. has you all looking the wrong way.

In LVX

Aaron