Originally posted by Mr Green
There seems to be an increase in people claiming to be one of the following... Are these people just normal humans awakening like the rest of
us?
I think it's a fairly common occurrence of
mass hysteria, the like of which we see on a regular basis anytime humanity faces one of its
self-imposed "deadlines"... For example, in the year 999 AD, European Catholics became convinced that the turn of the First Millennium would be
the end of the world, that Christ would return in the year 1000 AD to gather up the faithful, and that all human endeavors thereafter would be
meaningless.
So they
stopped farming in 999 AD.
In that year, far too many European Catholics turned to purely spiritual contemplation, a "spiritual awakening." I mean, since the world was
ending, why go on with mundane human activities, right? It was time to "get right with God" before the Messiah returned. So they
stopped
farming.
Well, unfortunately for them,
it wasn't the end of the world, Christ
didn't return in 1000 AD, but there was
famine in Europe
as a result of this mass hysteria. Lots of people starved to death. Kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy, in a way, but the world didn't end.
In the late 19th Century, people the world over had a "spiritual awakening" with the approach of the 20th Century — they all knew it was going to
be a
hell of a century, a
technological century, full of new science and all sorts of unknowns. In unison, millions of folks worldwide
turned to
Spiritualism and all sorts of hokey supernatural claptrap — seances, trance mediums, teleportation, you name it. It was a good
time to make money in all things
paranormal, and it lasted from the late 1800s to about the 1920s, when interest began to wane.
Once again,
mass hysteria and
spiritual awakening had ushered in a new century, but the truly remarkable moments of the 20th Century
were
far from spiritual in nature. In fact, the astonishing scientific advances of the 20th Century kind of
blew away even the best
paranormal and spiritual stories.
With the turn of the Second Millennium, there was plenty of "spiritual awakening" and absurd prophecy, as usual, but it was sort of overshadowed by
scientific hysteria — specifically, the ridiculous
Y2K Bug that was going to bring our technological civilization to its knees. Heh.
Which only proves that Science is
at least as flawed as Spirituality, in that they are both inventions of the flawed human mind, and the human
mind has this annoying tendency of
FREAKING OUT when you place a meaningless deadline before it.
Wasn't 2005 supposed to be some sort deadline for some sort of prophecy? Like, May 5th of 2005 was supposed to be....? Eh, doesn't matter, it
didn't happen anyway.
Now it's on to 2012, another non-deadline, but another reason for "spiritual awakening"... It's just another human cycle. Way back in
prehistory, we used to watch the moon and planets and stars gyrating around in the night sky and we'd sacrifice goats when the sun cast a certain
kind of shadow once a year, and then we'd feel more secure about our crops or something.
We've been hooked on supernatural deadlines ever since.
More and more people are coming out with this
spiritual awakening and
light being business because
it's what we do when you give
us a prophetic deadline. We
turn inward, we become introspective, we assess our self-worth in the face of doomsday or whatever, and we have
these mini-epiphanies, these minor
spiritual awakenings.
The more enterprising souls out there take advantage of this purely human phenomenon called
mass hysteria and can actually turn it into money
— metaphysical junk is a billion-dollar-a-year industry. Just like the Y2K Bug turned into a multi-billion-dollar industry.
Where there is no need,
create a need, and
then fill that need.
The less scrupulous use
mass hysteria to drive their political agendas, creating fear, promising security, promising
change.
Where there is no need,
create a need, and
then fill that need.
— Doc Velocity