This may only make sense to older people, but does anyone else believe they have experienced fundamental shifts in reality they could observe in the external world?

I believe we can study history and in retrospect point to earth altering events that 'changed everything' like the 1969 Moon Walk (real or not). And I feel like a similar shift in thinking happened around the late 80's (between 87 and 89). It could be ascribed to any number of things from the Harmonic Convergence of the Universe to the Fall of the Berlin Wall, but I 'felt' like suddenly everyone and everything was different. Art, music, fashion even TV and Movies were somehow better, but something was 'off' center (if that makes sense).

I also feel it now. Things are changing fast. Could it be this just happens every decade or so? Did I not notice it around 1980?

What seems strange to me is all during the 90's I felt almost as if things were too good to be true (like an engineered timeline was occuring, but I LIKED IT!).

Now I feel dread. Very real dread. Yet somehow it feels right??? Huh? Maybe nevermind.

For the believers what do you think will happen 12/21/2012?

2012, are you guys overshooting on purpose?

Overshooting?

The date has two sources I know of (besides X-Files):

1) An elaborate theory called Timewave Zero. McKenna argued that time was a fractal wave of "novelty" (the introduction of new ideas and change-producing events), which is in the process of collapsing to a zero point. McKenna extracted a formula for calculating this wave from the 64 hexes of the I-Ching, the ancient Chinese divination tool which is structured around time-related issues. The Time Wave was a graph that, in theory, corresponded to the introduction of new ideas and dramatic change throughout history. When the graph dipped, more novelty entered the world. McKenna lined up his graph against human history, and somehow determined that the Zero Point, the Eschaton, was scheduled for Dec. 21, 2012...

2) ...which also coincidentally happened to be the end of the 10,000 year calendar used by the Mayans.

I think a lot of the changes we perceive are a result of getting older and having a more mature look at the world. Every generation complains about the terrible state of the world, the corrupt politicians, the disrespectful youth, etc. I'm sure people in the year 999 (or the 60s, for that matter) felt like the world was about to collapse on their heads.

What I find interesting is the possibility there are changes we can't perceive, because our references are skewed as well.

The French mathematician Jules Poincare had an interesting idea: what if, while you were sleeping, everything in the universe got 10,000 times bigger? You would have no way of knowing, since everything that could be used for comparison is changed as well - atoms, molecules, all forms of measurement, etc.

No experiment could reveal the change, he argued.

Very interesting and creepy. This was a precursor to Einstein's relativity theory. Instead of length or size, what about time or energy states? Good stuff.

Originally posted by logiclock

What I find interesting is the possibility there are changes we can't perceive, because our references are skewed as well.

I've heard that early man found lemons sweet and would more than likey die from our common cold.

Sadly, out of the box thinking is a myth. We're trapped.

Originally posted by RANT

I've heard that early man found lemons sweet and would more than likey die from our common cold.

Sadly, out of the box thinking is a myth. We're trapped.

Hmm. I wonder how they knew the part about the lemons. What about limes? I'd envy the fun they must have had drinking tequila.

As far as the thinking goes, the very fact that we're able to come up with such a theory is our saving grace: as long as we can imagine it, we're not trapped.

I think it's all about the culture we're in and what others deem appropriate for us to learn. For example, the concept of angular architecture is a completely foreign idea to some native cultures - perfect 90 degree angles and straight lines are almost non-existent in nature. You know that test where they have the two lines, one has an arrow end and the other has an inverted arrow end? "Modern" culture says one is longer than the other. The native culture says, correctly, that both lines are of equal length. So I guess they're the ones thinking outside the box - unencumbered by convention.

Originally posted by RANT
Yet somehow it feels right??? Huh? Maybe nevermind.

Interesting. In what way?

The changing palate theory stems from our ever increasing consumption of fats and sugar (another McKenna point, ironically).

Forget cavemen, imagine someone just a few hundred years ago tasting Big Macs, Cheescake and Coffee for the first time. We have major sugar, fat and caffeine addictions our ancestors didn't. Some say we're changing as a species, or our brains are from our processed diet.

And what the heck are anti-depressants about? Imagine Einstein on Paxil? Just another fat dropout.

Originally posted by logiclock

Originally posted by RANT
Yet somehow it feels right??? Huh? Maybe nevermind.

Interesting. In what way?

__________
Probably just my own over analysis. I feel guilty when things go well. Doom is reassuring. Life is suffering. yadda, yadda.

Originally posted by RANT
And what the heck are anti-depressants about? Imagine Einstein on Paxil? Just another fat dropout.

Good point. I didn't think of the nutritional angle. A while ago I was researching the frequency of diagnosed depression. Some people think that the massive reporting of depression caught on after the first anti-depressants were manufactured, but not so. Instances of depression exploded almost exponentially at the turn of the century and in the early nineteen-hundreds - before the drugs. What, I wondered, was the cause? I doubted if our brains just mysteriously changed at the turn of the century. My bet was either on societal forces or diet.

Societal forces... Society is the main cause of depression.

Originally posted by TheBandit795
Societal forces... Society is the main cause of depression.

Yes, but what specifically?

Originally posted by logiclock

Originally posted by RANT
And what the heck are anti-depressants about? Imagine Einstein on Paxil? Just another fat dropout.

Good point. I didn't think of the nutritional angle. A while ago I was researching the frequency of diagnosed depression. Some people think that the massive reporting of depression caught on after the first anti-depressants were manufactured, but not so. Instances of depression exploded almost exponentially at the turn of the century and in the early nineteen-hundreds - before the drugs. What, I wondered, was the cause? I doubted if our brains just mysteriously changed at the turn of the century. My bet was either on societal forces or diet.

I'm not positive, but it sounds like the timeline for the advent of modern psychology. Kind of hard to diagnose depression without the discipline.

Did your research mention cases of 'Possession' prior to Psychology diminishing after Freud & Co? Joan of Arc could be cured of those voices in her head now too. Maybe even Jesus. I hear he had a messiah complex.

The pressures of everyday life, the stuff society keeps forcing down our throats since birth:

After high school or college (depending on what part of society you grew up in) get a 9-5 job, working for some boss in a company whose agenda is more important than your own and who has more rights to your life than yourself or your family. And don't you dare think other than the "normal and accepted" way of living etc... etc... And only after you've retired after working your whole life for someone else can you live your dream and do the things you've really wanted to do, if you could remember what they were at that age...

In other words, obey the infallible society and don't ever question it or have your own dream, or else a reality check is going to come tugging at your leg.

i really think the end prophecies are there so fewer people will join the fight against evil, if people think the world is gonna end anyways why not just do what ya feel like instead of trying to fix the world.

the 2012 date may also coincide with the Sothic cycle which the egyptians were supposed to have centered their calendar around. Nobody really knows the last time one started so i'm just taking a guess that it could coincide, anyone have any evidence of this?

The date has two sources I know of (besides X-Files):

Actually, it's said that the steps in the Great pyramid's main staircase, are a calendar of the ages, and the last step would be 2012... This was on one of the Discovery specials (I've seen so many...I can't recall the exact one...it was the last time they did a big egypt week kind of thing...)

It's all about perception. You can definitely co-exist with the "mainstream" way of life & have "non-mainstream" ideas. The 2 are both separable & inseparable. Non-mainstream becomes mainstream & mainstream becomes non-mainstream.

Life is everchanging. You just have to widen the scope of your view. Keep it narrow & everything then appears monotonous & nonchanging.

I know the date I missed: 1977.

Elvis died, and the Sex Pistols were chart toppers.

Counter Culture and Mainstream flipped.

1969, 1977, 1989, 2001, 2012??? Just a theory.

Originally posted by Questor
It's all about perception. You can definitely co-exist with the "mainstream" way of life & have "non-mainstream" ideas. The 2 are both separable & inseparable. Non-mainstream becomes mainstream & mainstream becomes non-mainstream.

Life is everchanging. You just have to widen the scope of your view. Keep it narrow & everything then appears monotonous & nonchanging.

Agreed... It's just that the mainstream flips me of sometimes... Especially on for example msn.com home page that they mention as essentials, celebrity fashion and/or who is britney or christina dissing at the moment.

RANT: Can generational (new generations) changes together with the "everything changing" events explain the sudden shifts in ways and habits of thinking?
Throw in the hundreth monkey principle and you have a whole new theory for this whole thread.