If you read my most recent past post you know that I have little enthusiasm for New Year’s resolutions. Hope is another matter. I do have two hopes for the new year.

At the very least, hope makes us feel better when we’ve got a headache (hope in pharmaceuticals), when we’ve lost our wallet (hope in fate, or in the goodness of humanity), or when we’re sinking neck-deep in quicksand (hope for survival even after having been hopelessly clumsy).

If you believe that we have something to do with creating our own reality, then you are a good candidate for hope. Rather than piddling around with little hopes like getting a car or a soul mate or winning the lottery, you might as well hope big.

We’ll get my bigger hope out of the way first.

Let’s hope the world doesn’t end in 2012. While we’re at it, let’s also hope that the world doesn’t end in any short-term subsequent millennium. If the world must end then let’s hope that it will occur far enough down the progeny chain so that the unfortunates who might perish in twenty-five thousand years or so wouldn’t know you from Adam. They might think you were Adam, or Eve. They might think we all lived under rocks in the swamp.

Even if the end comes as predicted, on December 21, 2012, most of us can look forward to (hope for) almost one full year more, which isn’t a lot but it’s better than nothing.

Terence McKenna's 'novelty wave' over a 25–year period. Higher points on the vertical axis represent instances of habitual trends in universal phenomena, or did you already recognize that? Image courtesy of Wikipedia.

My understanding is that Terence McKenna, about whom I know very little except that he was an idea guy who had quite a close relationship with hallucinogenic drugs, was one of those who set the December date.

The argument that the world cannot possibly be coming to an end because it can’t possibly be coming to an end is based on the idea that a considerable number of people in the past have predicted the end of the world and they were always wrong. In predicting things, such as the end of the world, somebody, or some people (the Mayans), or some calendar, only has to be right once. That’s it. Zap. Any other argument is Ad Stupidinem.

If the world ends in 2012, we might as well not bother with any other hopes, except the hope that eternal life in the Great Beyond isn’t a fiction.

Mayan calendar. This would look good on my living room wall along with my Mayan hubcap collection. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

My second hope is that in 2012 people will learn to stop choosing up sides and fighting. We are one cantankerous species compared to, say, deer who only fight when they’re wanting an intimate relationship with a doe. That’s the males. The does don’t fight at all.

We humans fight wars, fight for our rights, fight our own battles (our parents often tell us to this when we’re children), fight for What’s Right, fight in rings, fight in mobs, fight in court, fight illness, fight crime, poverty, weeds, drugs (including weeds), fight the Good Fight, and elect politicians who say they will fight for us.

This fighting would, I believe, end if we could learn to be guided by spirit rather than by the lizard brain that lies at the top of our spinal column.

Hopes like this last one might seem to be impossibly huge but that’s what hope is all about. Hope big because if your hopes come true it’s wonderful and to not have them come true isn’t necessarily the end of the world unless, of course, the doomsayers are right.

Happy New Year!!