Christmas 2012: The End of The World

It is December 20 and the world is ending tomorrow. The Yellow Cab driver has PBS on the radio as we slide down the freeway towards SFO. Their science editor says he has been inundated with calls, tweets and emails from people actually concerned that the Mayan calendar might have gotten things right. He can't believe so many people are taking it seriously.

Why is this so? The commentator has lots of spurious reasons, people feel powerless to change the world as it is, people want to punish themselves, some people will believe anything, dumb people should not have babies, all of it. They are all missing the point.

Here's the reason.

Many years ago I was stuck in a long line at the West L.A. Federal Building. 100 people were on line to get a passport. Directly in front of me were a middle aged woman and her teen-aged daughter. They were Born-Agains. The mom kept talking about the upcoming End of Days, when only The Elect would be chosen to ascend into the Kingdom of Heaven.

By 'elect,' she meant people who went to her church and believed exactly as she did.

"But what will happen to everybody else?" her daughter asked.

"Well, Honey," the mom chortled, "their flesh will burn in Hell for eternity and their misery and suffering will never cease."

She laughed, then smiled with enormous joy. She had no idea how bizarre it was to cheer for the destruction of the universe. "They all had their chance," she huffed, putting a period on the discussion.

Then she turned around in line and happened to stare me right in the face. Her expression said: "Well?"

I shook my head and, with no sound issuing from my doomed heathen lips, mouthed these words: "Go. Fxxk. Yourself."

This is the sentiment of what I think is happening this year, as the world once again doesn't end, despite the ecstatic exhortations of a few live people and maybe half a dozen dead Mayas. People have become more egocentric than ever before. They think that they, not the sun (and not anyone else either) are at the epicenter of the universe's great plan and that they are entitled. They want the apocalypse to come now, on their watch. They figure they will be among The Elect, and if not, what the hell, we all have to die sometime, so why not now, while I can watch it?

If I can't last forever, nobody else should either. Or Goxj. Fxxkgzl. Xyoursgblves. In Maya.