Prophesies and Predictions - the End of the World

Have you ever been to visit a psychic? A spiritualist? Have you ever had a "reading"? If so, did the predictions come true? If you've never been, then why not? Is it because you don't believe that it could be true? Couldn't it still be fun though? If you don't feel threatened by it, then why couldn't you try it just for fun? Or is there some fear about what you might find out?

I know friends of my mother who, when they have a party, will occasionally have a spiritualist come over and set up a private reading space in one of the rooms, and then the ladies take turns going in to get their readings. When they come out, they all compare results and talk about how close they were, or what the spiritualist got wrong. You have people trying to trick the spiritualist, but it rarely works - it sounds like great fun. It always makes for an exciting and interesting party that people will be talking about for months - sometimes years afterwards.

That's fun for parties and personal interest, but what about those people who, over the centuries, have made predictions about world events, that seem to have come true? Naturally, we've all heard of Nostradamus, and we all know about the predictions of the end of the world in the Revelations section of the Bible, but have been others, as well. Merlin, a Welsh druid from the 5th century was one who was later made famous in stories about Legendary King Arthur.

In the western hemisphere, there were the Mayans who built an advanced civilization in Central America beginning in around 3000 BC. The Mayans were fanatical about timekeeping. They had a very complex, but incredible accurate clock that allowed them to predict not only things like solstices, and equinoxes, but solar eclipses thousands of years into the future. It is a truly remarkable mystery of our time to guess how they could have devised such an accurate mechanism for predicting future events.

The Mayans long calendar shows that we are in a Galactic Day which is 25,625 years long, and is divided into 5 cycles of 5,125 years each. We are now very near the end of the 5th and last cycle of the entire current Galactic Day. The calendar says that this era will end on the winter solstice, December 21st, 2012. That is just under 5 years from now.

Many people interpret this as meaning the end of the world. But the Mayans see the ends as also beginnings. The New Age begins that day. Scientists have confirmed that a very unusual event DOES happen on that day. That is the day when the Earth is directly between the Sun and the central core of our Milky Way galaxy. They are not sure what will happen, but it seems that many things are possible (all of them bad). By the way, these scientists have done the math - this event happens every 25,625 years. Just as the Mayan Calendar predicted. How could they have known this?

In a recent special on the History Channel, they showed the Mayan Calendar, and explained how so many other predictions from different ages and different people and different places around the world have also pointed to December 21, 2012 as being the end of the world.

The Mayans described a special 'spark' that is pulled out from the sun far into space, by the black hole at the center of the galaxy, on this date. Well, a massive solar flare can certainly do a lot of damage, there's no question there. There is also a description of how this could possibly switch our poles around and the Earth suddenly shifts orientation. The massive weather changes, freezing, thawing, tidal waves, tsunamis, earthquakes that can result from this would certainly qualify as a major change.

Here is an interesting article on the Mayan view of what happens in the 'end-times': http://www.adishakti.org/mayan_end_times_prophecy_12-21-2012.htm

Here is a website dedicated to the whole concept of that date being the end of times, and the beginning of a new era. http://www.december212012.com/

Some people look at the date as the day they will die and so it is horrible and frightening. Others look at the day with anticipation as the beginning of a new golden age of higher purpose and understanding. Edgar Cayce said that we are currently living out a karmic debt for out selfishness in the past cycle, and when 1221 2012 comes, we will be given another chance to regain what we lost. Still others think that it's all nonsense and that people are fooling themselves and reading too much into the meaning of the fact that the Mayan calendar ends on that day. These people refuse to believe that the world will end on that day or any other day, and everything will just continue along the next day just as it did before.

What are your thoughts on this?

High School Dropouts

The newest rates for dropouts from high school are out and the news is not pretty. In the nations largest cities there are lot of entire school districts that have a graduation rate of less than 60%. Many are even well below 50% Here are some of the worst:

Austin: 55.1% students graduated high school
New Orleans: 51.3%
Chicago: 52.2%
Albuquerque: 52.0%
Nashville: 50.4%
Houston: 48.9%
Ft. Worth: 48.9%
Memphis: 48.5%
Denver: 46.8%
Dallas: 46.3%
Miami: 45.3%
Los Angeles: 44.2%
Cleveland: 43.8%
Milwaukee: 43.1%
New York City: 38.9%
Baltimore: 38.5%
Detroit: 21.7% (almost an 80% drop out rate! )

Remember, these are not just a few bad schools singled out. These are the overall average ratings for the entire school districts in all the largest cities in this country. There were a lot more, but I just pulled out a few examples that were typical. Here is an article with more cities and more details: http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2006-06-20-dropout-rates_x.htm#grad

What is happening here? How are we ever going to survive in this ever more competitive world with all the new up and coming sharp kids learning all the new technologies from the best schools in all these other countries around the world, if more than half of our kids can't even finish high school? What's worse is that by all accounts, our high schools are teaching material at a much lower level than all other modern industrialized countries. In maths and sciences among high school graduates, we are now ranked 30th in the world. Well below average for the world.

In some recent examples where high school students in Brussels were given an American 10th grade test, they thought it was some kind of a joke. For them, it seemed to be a middle school test. So even though our hoops are closer to the ground and larger than everybody else's, our kids STILL can't sink the basket. And now, more than half of them won't even bother to suit up to play in the game at all.

If you are an average person shopping for a car, are you excited about buying a car that is manufactured in a city where almost 80% of the people couldn't even finish high school? And it's an EASY high school compared to all the other countries....

What do you think is causing this? Is it the schools themselves? Or is it some other factor? And how can we fix it? We know it's not that schools are underfunded because we spend more than any other country on the planet in education. It's just that other countries are getting much better results with their students for much lower budgets.

So far, immigration is filling in the gap. We are importing the product of the better education systems elsewhere, so those people can work for American companies and continue to produce competitive products. But is that the best long-term solution? Frankly, although we still have backlogs in immigration, the US is losing it's attractiveness to foreign workers. The backlogs are more due to inefficient processing rather than large numbers of applicants. Less people are interested in coming here now. Many feel that southeast Asia, and Dubai, and Europe are the places to be now. If the trend continues, we will lose our ability to function as equals in the world. We need to find a way to fix this.

Who are Canadians?

A friend of mine just forwarded the following note to me. Recently, I wrote about what 'they' are saying about Canada. But I was talking about what the American Neocons, and also what an American military man were saying. This time it's Australia's turn.

~~~
An Australian's Definition of a Canadian - written by an Australian Dentist:

You probably missed it in the local news, but there was a report that someone in Pakistan had advertised in a newspaper an offer of a reward to anyone who killed a Canadian – any Canadian. An Australian dentist wrote the following editorial to help define what a Canadian is, so they would know one when they found one. A Canadian can be English, or French, or Italian, Irish, German, Spanish, Polish, Russian or Greek. A Canadian can be Mexican, African, Indian, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Australian, Iranian, Asian, Arab, Pakistani or Afghan. A Canadian may also be a Cree, Métis, Mohawk, Blackfoot, Sioux, or one of the many other tribes known as native Canadians. A Canadian's religious beliefs range from Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, Muslim, Hindu or none. In fact, there are more Muslims in Canada than in Afghanistan.

The key difference is that in Canada they are free to worship as each of them chooses. Whether they have a religion or no religion, each Canadian ultimately answers only to God, not to the government, or to armed thugs claiming to speak for the government and for God.

A Canadian lives in one of the most prosperous lands in the history of the world. The root of that prosperity can be found in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms which recognize the right of each person to the pursuit of happiness. A Canadian is generous and Canadians have helped out just about every other nation in the world in their time of need, never asking a thing in return.

Canadians welcome the best of everything, the best products, the best books, the best music, the best food, the best services and the best minds. But they also welcome the least - the oppressed, the outcast and the rejected. These are the people who built Canada. You can try to kill a Canadian if you must as other blood-thirsty tyrants in the world have tried but in doing so you could just be killing a relative or a neighbour. This is because Canadians are not a particular people from a particular place. They are the embodiment of the human spirit of freedom. Everyone who holds to that spirit, everywhere, can be a Canadian.

~~~

Noble words, well said. I am grateful and thank this man for his very nice comments.

First, it strikes me that this is the kind of thing they used to say about Americans and the USA. It wasn't that long ago, either. But now, this is not at all how the world sees Americans. I wonder what happened.

As for the complete truth of what is said above, well, yes, I'd say that these things are true, but there is also another side to it.

This does mention that Canada is a collection of all kinds of people from all kinds of ethnic, racial, and religious backgrounds. That's true. But that's both good and bad. For example, here in the US, immigrants are encouraged to join the so-called 'melting pot'. This is the approach where people are supposed to surrender their original ethnic languages, culture, customs, etc. and become an American and adopt the American language, culture, etc.. They should 'blend in', in other words.

But Canada does not have the 'melting pot' approach. It has the so-called "cultural mosaic" approach where immigrants are encouraged to retain their original culture, language, etc.. It is somehow felt that the country is stronger because it is a mix of so many things. Theoretically, like the whole of biological life on the planet, its diversity is its strength.

Also, Canada historically has always had a small population despite the large geography because it's so cold there compared to other countries. Fewer people leaving other, warmer countries, wanted to go where is was so cold for 4 months of the year. But more people were needed in order to boost the economy and build the economies of scale needed to compete with other countries. So immigration was encouraged broadly, and the cultural mosaic approach was a way to encourage people to come there. The message going out to the world was "Keep your language. Keep your religion. Keep all your traditions, just change your geography. Work over here in Canada instead of there where you are. Enjoy our wealth of natural resources and modern lifestyle."

But no plan is perfect. What I've found living there most of my life, was that having so many people speaking so many different languages and maintaining so many cultures makes for cool and interesting restaurants, but it makes some other things difficult. Often, when I would sit in a restaurant, all the conversations at all the tables around me were in some other language I didn't understand. Chinese here, Italian there, Greek over there, Russian over here. It was the same thing standing in line to see a movie. It tends to make you feel isolated and detached from the humanity around you. You feel like you are are not in Canada, but that you are just in "the world" somewhere.

Without a common language and common cultural touchpoints, shared rules, shared understandings and values, it's difficult to get together with people and to know what they are thinking and to know how they will respond in a given situation.

For example, let's say you are eating your dinner in a restaurant and while your mouth is full, the waiter comes to ask how your meal is. You can't speak, but you don't want to be rude and make him wait, so you give him the "ok" symbol with your fingers. Well, depending on what nationality and culture he is from, he might interpret that as an "ok", or he might see it as you calling him an 'anal orifice'. The same finger gesture/symbol is used for different things by different groups. You have to know what neighborhood you're in, and you need to be aware of their cultural idiosyncrasies (Let's see now, I'm at Pape and Danforth and so this is a Greek area here. What does this gesture mean to Greeks again....?) It leads to many unfortunate misunderstandings.

Also, when people retain their original culture, they also retain their original prejudices and hatreds brought along with them from 'the old country'. So when the Serbs come and settle in a neighborhood, and the Croatians come and settle in another neighborhood nearby, they still dislike each other, and their kids fight each other, and the parents aren't always so well-behaved either. So you can picture this with Arabs and Jews, and with different African tribes. Long-seated cultural hatreds are part of what is preserved when you preserve the cultures.

Imagine if 200 countries were to send colonists to a brand new planet and each group from each country made their own little settlement right next to each other. Each one was a perfect replica of their home country, but it was only 1 street away from the next perfect replica of some other country. THAT is what Toronto has become(and many other places in Canada now. The Toronto effect of immigration has spread to many other cities by this time.)

But of course they DIDN'T just land on another planet. They landed in a country that already HAD a culture of it's own. It wasn't vacant. So, of course, we have to look at the issue of the Canadians who were there before the others came, and how it has affected them. The First Nations people (natives) were more or less pushed onto reserves by the English and French that settled Canada. (Mostly English.) Then, the white, English-speaking mild-mannered Canadians (like me and my ilk) that were Canada for the past 300 years, are now being overrun and pushed out by all the people coming from China, India, Pakistan, Russia, and other places, especially in the last 25 years or so as immigration has accelerated. So the Canada that was, is being lost in the cultural shift. Now, tellingly, people want to join the Mounties but they demand that they be allowed to wear a turban instead of a traditional RCMP hat. So Canadian culture suffers and loses out and becomes diluted with this form of immigration.

Frankly, one of the reasons I moved from Canada to the U.S. was because I wanted to be around people who spoke English again. It's not a prejudice or anti-immigrant sentiment. It's just that I wanted to be able to understand and join in conversations with the people around me again. I didn't want to always feel like I was walking along a corridor in the UN building. I didn't want to feel so isolated and disenfranchised anymore. Especially in my own country. I wanted to fit in somewhere, and yet somewhere along the way, I lost my sense of "Home" where I was. So I moved. My home country is not just another place - it's now another place at another time in the past. That place, the Canada that I knew growing up, is now gone.

Of course, I am not criticizing any one group or anything. It's just that there are positives and negatives to the Canadian approach of respecting all the different source cultures, but maintaining them. I hope I was fair here.