[Aztlan] 2012 Conference Trailer

[Hoopes, John W]

John MJ,
 
For what it's worth, and with all due respect, coincidence is quite often a valid explanation that conforms well to Occam's Razor.  Just because it doesn't suit you doesn't mean others aren't perfectly comfortable with it.
 
The sociological phenomenon of 2012 is fascinating in itself.  The resurgence of the New Age worldview takes me back to about 1973, when Carlos Castaneda made the cover of TIME and Comet Kohoutek inspired its own cliques of end-of-times speculation (Marshall Applewhite and David Berg both come to mind).  One of the things that time had in common with now was that the White House had lost all credibility (in the throes of the Watergate scandal).  I suspect that the loss of credibility of centralized authority contributes to the increased credibility of alternative authorities, regardless of how bizarre they might be.  (This may be a hypothesis worth examining in ancient Maya contexts as well.)  1973 was a heady time for New Agers.  However, it was also the year of the First Palenque Round Table--a major turning point in Maya studies.
 
There is plenty within academic Pre-Columbian scholarship to excite the public if it's marketed well.  It would be wonderful to take advantage of growing interest in things Maya to educate the public about what really is known and what leading scholars are doing, not just about the Maya but the rest of the Pre-Columbian world as well.  I think Bob Benfer's 2200 BC temple with astronomical alignments at Buena Vista in Peru is pretty darn amazing, but it's still well known to a fairly small circle.
 
http://rcp.missouri.edu/bobbenfer/index.html
 
There are hundreds of videos on YouTube about 2012, but I can't find a single one on San Bartolo (pirated or not).  That says a lot.
 
John Hoopes

________________________________

From: John Major Jenkins [mailto:kahib at ix.netcom.com]
Sent: Thu 1/24/2008 10:26 PM
To: Hoopes, John W
Cc: Aztlan at lists.famsi.org
Subject: RE: [Aztlan] 2012 Conference Trailer



John H. and others interested in this thread,

This all sounds oh so clique-ish. I'll take the high road and simply
offer an observation. Up until very recently the professional scholars
have dismissed 2012 as a non-topic, an irrelevant calculational accident
of Long Count math. The possibility that the 13-Baktun cycle end-date
might have had some meaning for the creators of the Long Count has been
unanimously dismissed by every professional scholar I've communicated
with since 1991, despite the fact that the best correlation candidate
places the 13-baktun cycle's end-date on December 21, an accurate winter
solstice. That this unusual occurrence might be an invitation for closer
rational scrutiny regarding whether or nor some intentionality is
present in the 2012 date has been ignored and disregarded by scholars,
invoking "coincidence" as the only explanation.

Now that we have the un-lettered folk wondering about and speculating
upon what it might mean, the avenue of academic scrutiny presents itself
- let's examine the sociological phenomenon of end-time hysteria,
apocalypse delusions, and the onerous stench of spiritual materialism in
the modern American empire. Surely an examination of the sociological
phenomenon of end-time hysteria is a valid topic for educated
assessment, and it has a precedent - year 1000 for example. This
response of scholars is quite predictable; in fact it's a kundebuffer
response - a predictable counter-response - to the New Age frenzy over
2012. However, the scholars aren't really doing their job. I submit that
scholars are continuing to neglect examining the 2012 artifact itself;
e.g., how a big cycle ending in the Maya Long Count might have been
involved in Maya eschatology, the World Age doctrine, Maya beliefs and
spiritual teachings related to cycle endings, big and small. Scholars
are being distracted by the 2012 glitz just as much as the New Age
fantasts are; and both sides are neglecting to look at the
thing-in-itself rationally, as an authentic artifact of Maya calendrics
and time philosophy. Just some food for thought,

John Major Jenkins
http://alignment2012.com <http://alignment2012.com/> 

"A giant kundebuffer is being set up (in unconscious cooperation) by two
groups: The ungrounded cheerleaders of 2012 and the scholarly debunkers.
There is the potential to create a Y2K fiasco for serious research by
setting up 2012 for inflated expectations which (because inflated
expectations are almost impossible to realize) can be a great triumph
for the debunkers."

---Jonathan Zap