LONDON — One of the most alarming things to have emerged from the hullabaloo over the so-called Mayan doomsday prophecy is how many people in the world actually believed it.
A poll earlier this year indicated 1 in 10 people feared the world would end on Friday. That included 1 in 5 Chinese and 1 in 8 Americans.
And we skeptical, rational Europeans have no reason to smirk. The Ipsos survey, carried out in March on behalf of Reuters, showed every 14th Briton and every 25th German also expected to disappear into the fiery furnace on Dec. 21.
Michael J. A. Wohil cited the poll in a Sunday Review column last weekend to examine the concept of “collective angst” and its powerful impact on group psychology.
Many concerned citizens have this week been on the phone to NASA, which took hundreds of calls from around the world from people said to be worried about the predictions and skeptical of science.
J.D. Harrington, a spokesman for the space agency, told the Houston Chronicle, “There are so many scenarios out there, we are trying to wrangle them all in and get the truth out.”
In Russia, as Ellen Barry reported at the start of the month, outbreaks of collective psychosis and panic buying linked to doomsday fears prompted authorities to issue official assurances that the world was not about to end.
Don’t the doomsday believers have enough real problems to worry about without stressing over the prospect that humanity might disappear in a hail of fire and brimstone?
It was a point made by Juan Cole, a history professor at the University of Michigan, who lamented on Friday the persistence of anti-intellectualism and hysteria.
“What amazes me is that you can get people excited about dangers to their world by twisting some text from an ancient civilization,” he wrote on his blog. “But you can’t get them worried about an actual set of threats that really do have the potential to threaten human existence.”
He said the real threats to the world included nuclear war, climate change, viral contagions and the energy crisis. The only remote extra-terrestrial threat was from a collision with an asteroid or comet.
Maybe someone would like to commission a poll to tell us how many people who do believe in the Apocalypse do not believe in climate change. Now, that would be revealing.
Who will put their hands up to admit a sneaking fear that the so-called prophecy might be true? Or do you agree with Professor Cole that we should be doing more to combat real threats? Please send us your comments — assuming we will still be around to read them.
IHT Rendezvous: How Was Your Doomsday?
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IHT Rendezvous: How Was Your Doomsday?
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IHT Rendezvous: How Was Your Doomsday?
