Does it matter who the marketing groups are? The producers of 2012, writers who benefit from the publication of their books interpreting whatever, religions trying to drum up business, tabloids, tourism councils, insurance industries? Nobody buys a book with dire predictions in the year 7855, do they? If you want to make money, the "event" must be fairly close in order to seem relevant, but not so close that it can't be exploited.
My disbelief was cast aside as an assertion that I must think I'm smarter than "they" are. There were probably individuals within the Mayan civilization who had a better understanding of social trends and other cycles than I do. It just wishful thinking that anybody at that time would predict something several hundred years into the future with any statistical relevance.
But most of us know very little about the Mayans. Hence, they are mystic, mysterious, and therefore just the sort of people who could pull it off. As Carl Sagan demonstrated in Cosmos, people concluded that "there are aliens on Mars" because "we can't see a thing."
Bummer their civilization abruptly collapsed, which implies something about their predictive powers... |
