At Eyethu Cinema in the Soweto of the 70s and early 80s, film endings would be announced with the projection of the words “The End” on the screen. At that time, the film-end soundtrack would commence in full voice as we filed out of the cinema in our usual disorderly and noisy manner. It always struck me as a bit daft this announcement of the end. Surely the best way to announce the end is to simply end. In any case, we always disregarded such official endings. For us the real film not only continued from where it ended, it often started where it ended, as we re-imagined, re-narrated and re-enacted it to one another and to friends yet to see the film. This was the best part about going to the cinema, not the one to two hours of enforced silence in the dark and smelly cinema.
Recently, there has been much talk about another form of ending; the ultimate form of ending, the end of the world. These are the so-called predictions of TEOTWAWKI (the end of the world as we know it). Suddenly talk of the end of the year has been superseded by talk of the year of the end.
One day in the next ten years we will all wake up to a red and blurry morning. Up in the sky, will be the words, “The End” written in giant shiny crimson font. The end-of-the-world soundtrack will blast out from giant speakers in the sky. Will it be Johnny Clegg singing “Ubaba u ngi lahlile zulu nga sala obala” (my father has abandoned me and now I am exposed)? Or Bob Marley’s reggae voice singing, “think you are in heaven but you are living in hell”? Slowly the flag on which the end is written will recede until it breaks out of the sphere of gravity to dance effortlessly between the moon and the sun. At that point the world main switch will trip. We will be plunged into darkness. The end will be upon us.
Some say this will happen in 2010. I hope they launch the end of the world one day after the Fifa 2010 World Cup finals. Others predict 2011 to be the year of the end. That would sort out our local elections, levelling the political playing fields once and for all. There are those who say it will all come to a screeching halt in 2012. Indeed the majority of TEOTWAWKI predictions suggest 2012 as the year of the end. But do these prophets of doom know that that is the year in which the world’s oldest liberation movement — the African National Congress — celebrates its centenary? They should not deprive us of one last picture of a smiling Madiba aboard a makeshift stage in one of our revamped 2010 stadiums awash with ANC flags, caps, doeks, T-shirts and other freedom colours. Please don’t you deprive us of what might be Zuma’s last presidential Zulu dance on national television. Others suggest 2014, 2016 and 2017. But hey, I personally have extensive plans up to 2060 when I will be a hundred years old, so I do not want my boat to be rocked, not until then at least.
What are we to make of the myriad of TEOTWAWKI predictions that are already raining on us in this new decade?
Beliefs and conceptions of the end of the world — whether based on science or religion — are as old as humanity. It is important that we distinguish between the basic belief and the attempts to arrest, banalise and codify it into a specific year, date and time. The former is tolerable and in most instances welcome. But the latter is often proof of an unhealthy and unhelpful way of believing in the end of the world. Yes, there are infantile and mature ways of believing in the end. Unhelpful ways include beliefs in the end of the world that suggest the end only and totally as originating from outside of the world and outside of human agency. When human agency is invoked, it is often suggested that the end will be brought about because humans are only bad and mainly evil. The end is then conceptualised as a form of punishment and a form of violent cleansing after which nothing remains.
It is my view that we are in danger of losing the original function of believing in a world that can or will end. Most religions and most sciences which hold onto that belief do so for very good reasons. The idea is not to focus and fixate humanity on some end day, end year or end event. The idea was never to demobilise humanity into powerless, ineffectual objects in the hands of mischievous and cruel gods (whether they be the gods of science or religion) who have already designed and proclaimed an inevitable end. I think that the belief in the possible end of the world was meant to reorientate our attitudes and our regard not just for fellow humans but for all of creation. It was meant to mobilise us to become more responsible towards self, fellow humans, animals, plants and the entire environment. Once we know that the world as we know it, its contents and its resources are finite, then we should conduct our lives in all spheres as if the world could end tomorrow. The question is therefore not whether the world will end in 2010 or in 2012; the question is whether we realise that the end of the world has begun and is ongoing now!
Why did the governments of the world converge in Copenhagen last December? To confront the reality of an ending world. Every day, every hour, every minute and every second, the world is ending. Can you hear the soundtrack? Can you see the signs? Open you ears. Open your eyes and you will see that the end has already begun. What will you do about it? That’s the question.
Fatalistic nonsense. The earth will only end in a few billion years when the sun swells to a red giant and first grills, then swallows earth.
The calendar cycle of the Great Year of the Constellations ends in December of 2012. It is not so different from the monthly calendar used daily now by all people that it should appear so impossible to understand for so many.
Perhaps it is because of fear and denial that this cycle cannot be controlled or stopped that the average people are refusing to see what is right in front of their eyes as the clearly marked astronomical event used as the end and beginning point for the Great Year approaches.
This calendar was meant to be used so that people could prepare for the Great Winter, ice age, of the Great Year just as they use the monthly calendar to prepare in advance for the yearly season of winter.
It is a travesty that in this age of world wide technological communication the simple, silent calendar of the Great Year is either totally being ignored or totally being dismissed as something that was created out of no real importance.
Some of those weird sub-titled European art-movies would end with the word FINIS. Made all us plebs think someone simply couldn’t spell properly.
Very good article and something that needs to be heeded. We need to recognised evil and foolishness and not be ‘politically correct’ about it. Most countries look on as evil is allowed to grow and say “Its none of our business”. But it is our business, we are part of a global family and one rotten egg ruins the whole basket.
If there is a word that describes peoples’ mind-sets today, it is the word tolerance. The thought behind tolerance is that right and wrong varies from situation to situation, in other words it’s all relative. What’s wrong for me may be right for you and vice versa. Tolerance teaches that all views are equally valid and there are no absolutes. The only absolute is that there are no absolutes. We tolerate everything except intolerance. As a result, we are killing truth and values have no value.
We now tolerate all that is intolerable to the detriment of us all.
We need to wake up and fight the fight together, not allow it here and object to it there. If its bad – kill it no matter where it is. We sit back and watch as the decay continues and we have many many examples of that, Global warming, Darfur, North Korea, Zimbabwe, Somalia, the Middle East and and and.
By the way, the end of the world as prophesied in so many writings applies to living things on the earth, not the earth itself.
The planet will end when the sun swells and swallows it – as you rightly point out. But our world, the world we live in every day, will end long before that.
I returned to my native country after four score years of absense and found that the world I left had ended. Gone were familiar landmarks and where there were forests and meadows and stilness there was now concrete and more concrete. In the clear skies I saw vapour trails instead of pretty cloud formations. I searched for old acquaintances and many of them, too, had gone.
But change is not the end, you can after you turned the last page of nail-biting thriller always open a new book and start the process of leave turning all over again. While there is time we can always begin over again. It is time which is running out as in an hourglass: as a child I was fascinated by the steady stream until the last grain fell through the tiny hole. Nobody knows how many grains are left: its anybody’s guess. I guess.
I believe in the end-of-the-world according to biblical scripts; i.e. no-one knows when it will end and only the Father knows the hour. The analogy being you need to uphold good ethical and moral values through out your life; these include caring for the environment. So that, when that hour comes you will qualify to be accepted into the new world (Kingdom of the Lord). The destruction began when Adam and Eve revoluted against God’s instructions, they were banished from the Garden of Eden. Since then, men has been destroying nature like it is going out of function. Copenhagen resolutions are not going to work, because men (capitalist or not) are greedy and live for today’s pleasure.
Jesus Christ came to redeem us from the initial sin. If we believe and follow his teachings, the end of the world should mean joy for all his followers. Also, fair resolutions from another Copenhagen clowns’ summit.
We die and thus ends our world..Finito.
Everyone always gives the impression that the world will end in a flash.
Logically, we’ll all fry from global warming long before the world topples off its axis or stops twirling (I was taught at school that if the world stopped turning, we’d all fall off. I still visualise us all careering around space. I guess the further out we get, the more we’d float, like spacemen.)
Point is, if the world ends, we’ll no longer be alive to bother.
Unfortunately, mankind will not listen. We will continue in our foolish ways, because I don’t think we can turn around anymore. I believe there will be a massive cleansing. This has happened throughout the history of the planet, even before mankind. Everything moves in cycles.