WE'RE ALL GONNA... um, live?

An article from Archeology magazine about the Mayan calender hysteria. It's pretty good up to this point:

There is also something about the Y12 hysteria that is particular to the English-speaking world--especially the United States. The idea that the world will end in cataclysm was firmly planted in Puritan New England. Evangelical and apocalyptic forms of worship were prominent in the colonies as early as the 1640s, when confessors openly proclaimed themselves ready for God to descend from the sky and pluck them up for judgment. Two centuries later, hundreds of Millerites (who would become the Seventh-day Adventists) anxiously awaited the "Blessed Hope," based on their leader William Miller's biblical calculations pinpointing the return of Christ on October 22, 1844. People climbed to their roofs to wait--and wait--for the Second Coming.

Today, American anticipation of a celestially signaled end of time has gone mainstream secular. Many of us remember Comet Kohoutek, the iceball sent to destroy the world in 1973, or the millennial cosmic reclamation project that attended Comet Hale-Bopp in 1997--an "alien mothership" that brought the suicides of 39 members of the Heaven's Gate cult in California. The celebrated cosmic convergence of Aztec calendar cycles in 1987 is another example of the American desire to get beamed with revelations from beyond.

Sorry prof, but I don't buy the idea that apocalyptic prediction of impending cataclysm is particular to English-speaking societies. The idea that the gods will destroy and remake the world for their Chosen People is common to many religions and cultures. I'll grant that it's somewhat less common in the Orient, but unchecked superstition and pantheism still run rampant in the East, especially China and India. If you really look at the concept of Nirvana, it's essentially the ultimate cataclysm posing as Heaven.

Your statement smells of emotional bias and a personal dislike for Western religious tradition -- which is not surprising, as it is the mortar which binds together modern American academia. The rest of the article was quite informative; it's too bad you couldn't resist getting in your leftist jabs.

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Hat-tip to Vizigoth