The End of the World or the End of Consumerism As We Know It?

We love finding new soulful quotations which pay direct respect to considering our planet. We recently came across this one:

“Humanity must shift from living on the earth to living with her” – Tiokasin Ghosthorse

Another picture of a hand holding a baby earth. Nevertheless ... the earth is still in our hands.

It’s a profound and eloquent statement which befits our current consumerist culture in the developed countries.

We are less than 9 months away from, according to the people of one of the greatest cultures in the world, the Maya, the end-date of a 5,125-year-long cycle.

According to the Maya December 21, 2012 marks the end of the fourth cycle known as the Mesoamerican Long Count calendar – a non-repeating calendar used by several Pre-Columbian Mesoamerican cultures, most notably the Maya.

Hollywood has cashed in on the mystery surrounding this date, with its over-the-top apocalyptic doomsday disaster movie 2012 which screened in cinemas three years ago. Other theories range from mass alien contact to galactic alignments.

So have you had a dinner party conversation about what you think will happen on that date? We encourage you to do just that!

Established themes found in 2012 literature include "suspicion towards mainstream Western culture" and the possibility of leading the world into the New Age by individual example or by a group's joined consciousness.

A New Age interpretation of this transition is that this date marks the start of time in which Earth and its inhabitants may undergo a positive physical or spiritual transformation, and that 2012 may mark the beginning of a new era.

In 2006, author Daniel Pinchbeck popularized New Age concepts about this date in his book 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl, linking December 21, 2012 to beliefs in crop circles, alien abduction, and personal revelations based on the use of hallucinogenic drugs and mediumship.

Pinchbeck claims to discern a "growing realization that materialism and the rational, empirical worldview that comes with it has reached its expiration date ... we're on the verge of transitioning to a dispensation of consciousness that's more intuitive, mystical and shamanic."

All hallucinogenic drugs and mediumships aside … :) … we’re going to stake our claims that this concept is most likely to be the most possible.

One merely must look around to see that the seasons change things - and just like father time brings forth the red in Autumn leaves - so to does he bring about a change in the consciousness of men and women.

Although it’s easy to see Autumn come and go - it is currently much harder to see that humanity is likely to move into a new era of thinking about how they treat their planet and the things they buy to respect it too.

For us this concept of some sort of new era or awakening means consumerism, as we in the Western World know it today, must die an eventual death.

While a wonderful experience with much to teach us, it cannot go on forever and Mother Earth at some point in her degeneration needs to be heard. As we are living here only because of her thriving nature – the great majority of people must answer her call.

With its current appetite for materialism, its high natural resource consumption and its refusal to continue to buy goods which go to landfill mankind's disposable lifestyle means the planet will most definitely become exhausted within 100 years, especially when you consider the developing nation's of the world now want that lifestyle too.

The beginning of this revolution begins only when we realize that each of us the power to change the world with our decisions and we can do it now and not put it off until tomorrow or next week.

We like to think that our future loved ones are right now looking at us from a moment of time in the future and are grateful that we considered what we bought instead of what is today going the easier option. That we were aware and awake to the precarious balance the world was in as 2012 rolled on.

We hope that it will be a quiet revolution built on common sense and empowered by intelligent action, but that it will be enough for Mother Nature and Father Time to create a sustainable balance for everyone’s future loved ones.