Hollywood has produced a movie about it. There are hundreds of youtube videos insisting that it’s true. It is slowly becoming less a radical rumor and more of a common household topic. Where did all this come from? Why are we even listening? Is it real?

The source of this deadly claim is the ancient Mayan civilization. Their annual calendar ends in December 2012, when supposedly the entire human population will be wiped out by a tremendous, unprecedented, natural catastrophe. Some say that this is all ridiculous, and the Mayans ended their calendar then for a much more logical reason: maybe they just thought the calendar was long enough for the time being? Or maybe the Mayans (correctly) predicted that their civilization wouldn’t last this long anyway, and thus saw no reason to continue. However, the Mayans have been eerily correct in their various other predictions of the future. For example, they knew about the age of technology and the invention of the internet. I cannot imagine in my wildest dreams how people living thousands of years ago in a relatively primitive environment could possibly predict our technological-savvy, globally connected world. I am extremely critical of most outrageous claims myself, but this perfectly pinpointed prediction is hard to ignore.

And now, all of a sudden, we have so many natural disasters taking place at every corner of the earth. From the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami, to Hurricane Katrina in 2005 as well as a giant earthquake in Asia the same year, to the 2010 devastating earthquake in Haiti and the floods in Pakistan, the world has lost at least 553,600 people in the last six years from just these natural disasters. Not to mention the earthquakes in Chile and China, or the thousands of people rendered homeless and starving as a result of these catastrophes. These are some scary figures. Even though natural disasters have been occurring since the beginning of time, I feel like they’ve started clumping closer and closer together and erupting at much larger scales more frequently than they used to years ago. Is this related to the Mayan prediction? Well, they did clearly say a natural, unprecedented catastrophe would wipe out the planet… Are all these disasters just little acts leading up to the grand finale?

Honestly, we are not helping the effort. Technically, as humans, we are part of the animal kingdom on earth, so killing each other could also classify as a natural cause. In biological terms, perhaps it would be called competition for resources–which is exactly what we are doing when we fight for land or oil in wars. We simply use more sophisticated ways than the clawing and mangling of lions and tigers. Consider this:

In the last sixty-five years, many more than 65,000,000 people have been killed by human violence and warfare. Millions more have been displaced and lost virtually everything. At this rate, we will be our own murderers. We will destroy ourselves. We will make 2012 doomsday a reality.

And finally, what about the environment? We have destroyed most of the world’s lush jungles and forests, and thus wiped out thousands of species we had yet to discover. Did you know that we only know about 1% of all animal species that have ever lived on the earth? Most of the other 99% have already become extinct. If we continue with our reckless deforestation, hunting, and unnecessary industrializing, the mere 1% of our world’s biodiversity will also disappear–in fact, it’s already in deep danger.

So I have just combined an illogical, wild, ancient claim with crude and true facts. The two should never mix, and yet, maybe there is a connection. Maybe instead of predicting what Mother Earth was going to do thousands of years later, they were actually predicting what humankind would become. Selfish. Greedy. Ruthless. Ignorant. The Mayans might have been spectacular psychologists, not fantastical fortune tellers. Now that we are approaching the said doomsday, think about the real source of our earth’s destruction. Us. Utterly and completely us. Natural disasters kill a tiny fraction of the living creatures destroyed by our own actions.

So do I think 2012 is real? Even if it is, I definitely do not believe it is irreversible. The Mayans have given us something to think about and ponder by making such a giant claim, and they might have been on to something. Instead of dismissing it as too outrageous to be true, or panicking and hiding out underground awaiting the disaster, I think we should reflect on why the Mayans so strongly believed in this, for one thing is clear: sooner or later, if we do not mend our ways, we will face the consequences. It’s up to us to rewrite destiny.