2012: Psychology of the Apocalypse (Part 1)

(June 10) -- We are now fewer than 1,000 days from our utter and complete doom.

Mark your calendar for Dec. 21, 2012, a date that shouldn't be confused with the last date of our utter and complete doom in May 2003. And that date seven years ago should definitely not be confused with the utter and complete doom that was supposed to wipe all of us off Earth at the end of the millennium.

Again, nothing happened as breathless hype failed to trigger world-ending events, depriving us of the cathartic apocalypse predicted.

With the latest doomsday now forecast at the end of the Mayan long count calendar, the voices of apocalypse are wailing again with the fashionable doom scenarios: pole shift, killer asteroid, Planet X/Nibiru, earthquakes, war, famine and pestilence.

Whether because of a real perceived emergency or anticipating the ability to make a profit on panic, hundreds of websites proclaiming 2012 as the latest apocalypse have emerged to sound the alarm. It's become so prevalent that even NASA has had to put up a website to debunk it.

Still, even with so many clamoring for Armageddon again, the tone isn't quite as shrill this time around. After the recent failed millennium prophecies of 2000 and the lack of an Earth-changing pole shift in 2003, fewer are pointing toward physical cataclysm.

Daniel Pinchbeck, author of "Breaking Open the Head" and "2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl," insists that 2012 has nothing to do with the end of the world, but rather how the Maya saw this as the end of one Great Cycle and the beginning of the next.

"If you read the 'Popol Vuh,' their creation myth, these cycle endings are both destructive and creative. It could be a transition from one type of human consciousness and civilization to a different one."

Pinchbeck says his best hypothesis is in his "2012" book, where he supports the idea that the indigenous Maya culture possessed some knowledge that our current culture lacks.

"It is interesting this is now being supported by science predictions as NASA's documenting of changes in the sun, the heliosphere, the surrounding planets and the electromagnetic fields of the Earth," Pinchbeck says. "The physicist Dr. Alexey Dmitriev argues [that] our entire solar system is undergoing a high energy transition, with more plasma entering the Earth's atmosphere, potentially leading to an acceleration of our psychic capacities."

He argues that we are seeing an acceleration of economic and ecological collapse, and stresses the need to change our way of thinking to accommodate the psychic aspects of reality so we can create a fully sustainable scientific approach to remaking global society.

In preparation for the upcoming 2012 date, Pinchbeck launched Evolver.net, a social networking site committed to conscious collaboration for like-minded individuals to find, share and disseminate ideas and resources to improve lives and change the world.

He's working with dozens of groups that explore everything from shamanism and consciousness research to more practical concerns, like alternative energy and self-sustaining communities.

"We have created a self-organizing structure so that more communities can get involved," Pinchbeck says. "If money, for instance, becomes worthless, what is going to determine your ability to thrive will be your network of relationships, as well as your direct access to arable land, food and water sources."

Others are not taking any chances.

Robert Vicino is an entrepreneur who has mixed the time-share concept with the nuclear bunker to produce Vivos, allowing people to purchase a unit in a secured underground living facility designed to withstand earthquakes, floods, radiation and biological weapons.

His organization is planning 20 of the "fractional villas" around the United States, with his website asking, "Where would you go with three days' notice?"

After other prophecies have come and gone unfulfilled, it's a wonder that so many still have credence.

The Book of Revelation and the quatrains of Nostradamus are perhaps vague enough to warrant multiple interpretations over the centuries, but the visions of Armageddon with dates attached invariably fall short.

So the question isn't why people have glommed onto 2012 as a doomsday date, but a broader question: Why does it happen at all? What is the trigger that causes us to latch onto a doomsday scenario in the first place and give it enough credibility to affect our lives?

Come back tomorrow for Part 2.