Speaking the language of emotions …

I’ve been thinking — or more honestly, feeling — a great deal about this weekend’s purported Judgment Day, when there will supposedly be huge, planet-wide earthquakes, a rapture into heaven for 200 million true believers, and the beginning of the end of the world. The Apocalypse, Armageddon, Judgment Day.

Of course, none of that will happen. It never happens. Hundreds and thousands of Judgment Days, Armageddons, cataclysms, end times, and planet-wide disasters have been prophesied for centuries, but none of them has ever come to pass. For instance, just two months ago, an astrologer predicted that worldwide catastrophes would be set in motion by the Supermoon, and of course, that didn’t happen. And come Sunday morning, we’ll add yet another failed Judgment Day to this endless list.

Yet there’s something much more important than just another failed prophecy — and that’s the people who believe in it. Right now, these people are praying hard — for themselves, certainly, but also for you and me. They’re worried about us, and most of them don’t want us to suffer.

But come Sunday morning, we’ll have yet another devastated group of people who were promised an end to their suffering, a victorious place in the afterlife, and a reward for their faith and diligence. These people are what interest me (far more than failed prophecies do), because I care about their welfare — and because I can empathize with them.

Preparing for the cataclysm

I grew up as an agnostic atheist, but when I was ten years old, my mom discovered a group that believed in all sorts of fascinating paranormal things like reincarnation, spirit guides, magical healing diets, karma, positive affirmations that could bring you whatever you wanted, and psychic powers. It was a blast at first, and I really enjoyed the things I learned in that group.

However, many of the group members also believed in a New Age prophecy about a worldwide cataclysm, where — due primarily to the imbalances caused by human greed, callousness, and a lack of spirituality — the poles of the Earth would shift, massive earthquakes and volcanoes would be activated, and many land masses would be destroyed or deluged with water. In essence, the Earth was going to shake us humans off her back.

It was going to be the end of the world as we knew it, and it was supposed to happen at the end of the Mayan calendar, first in the late 1970s, and when that didn’t happen, in 2003 or 2004, depending on whom you asked. Most notably, California (where our group was based) was supposed to crack off and sink into the ocean.

I’m not sure why, but the cataclysm never felt plausible to me. It just seemed preposterous somehow, and I sort of ignored it. I remember joking that if it did happen, I would be on a small floating piece of destroyed California, which would contain a fully-stocked Nordstrom’s department store (this was my idea of luxury at the time. I mean, come on — a grand piano in the lobby of a department store? That’s mad swanky.) People in the group thought I was too young and too silly to understand the importance of the cataclysm. Perhaps they were right.

I remember some people in the group who left their beloved California for many years, because they were afraid of the cataclysm. Of course, the cataclysm never happened, but those people who left California — I think about them a great deal. How do they feel now, looking back? Do they understand more about the world and the way these prophecies hook powerfully into very specific psychosocial and emotional needs, or are they now preparing for the updated 2012 version of their cataclysm?

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