2012 -- What do you think? Are we in the actual dawning of the Age of Aquarius?

. . . so to speak, anyway.

This is a subject that comes up often in our house. Mr. Vagabond jokes that everything illegal and bad for him that he's given up, he will imbibe in with reckless abandon during the entire month of December 2012. He jokes that if the world's gonna end anyway, why not go out with a bang?

But then we also talk about the what ifs. What if it's the end of the world, but only "as we know it", (to quote REM)? What if January of 2013 finds us on a new path toward enlightenment, peace, harmony and all the things that make a hippie like me all warm and fuzzy? What if it's nothing but a gigantic reset button? Or what if it's nothing more than midnight on December 31 of 2000? Lots of folks were praying, meditating, wondering, worrying and then at 12:01, it was the same old same old. There wasn't even a ruffle in the atmosphere.

If we are closing in on what could be an awakening of minds, senses, etc, what if that also means everything we depend on every day is gone? (Just a hypothetical--no scientific basis, just sharing one of the conversations Mr. Vagabond and I often have) Would you happily give up all your technology if the rest of the world gave theirs up too? I think I would. I wouldn't want to be the only person in the world without AW and Facebook, but if all of it were gone and we were back to being pioneers, would you love it? Would you hate it? Would you embrace it? Would you be one of those working like mad to reinstate everything that had been lost in that worldwide "Do Over"?

Do tell!

Bravo! I like that you are sensible (not that you needed my approval!). It's darn near impossible to engage anyone I know in this kind of discussion without extremism.

I'm absolutely exhausted with technology these days. Seriously, how many times do I actually need to check to see if someone has updated his or her status on Facebook?! It's ridiculous. But to live completely without it, I dunno. I think what I meant by the idea that I would embrace giving it all up was giving up the constant need for connection to the outer reaches of the world with the touch of a button. I also rather enjoy indoor flushing toilets. I miss the eighties. With the obvious exceptions of our clothes and hair! And Aqua Net! But we had deodorant. We had showers. We had microwaves. We had MTV (and they still played music! *Gasp*). But I think I really do miss not having cell phones and computers. Sure, there have been emergencies that cell phones really helped out with. But for typical everyday life? I could actually call my husband from work to see if he needed me to pick something up from the store on the way home. I could write letters instead of emails. What a concept.

But back to 2012, you actually knew people who taught their children not to read so they could communicate with their minds?! Um, wow. I do believe communication with the mind is possible, but really--why give up talking and reading? Were their hands (for writing and turning pages) and mouths (for speaking) to become unusable? I don't get it. That reminds me of a Twilight Zone episode where this little girl named Ilsa had been raised somewhere, can't remember where, in a community that only communicated with their minds. The teacher had apparently been raised the same way, and she taught the girl to speak by having the children say the girl's name in their minds and kinda going from there.

There are so many things on TV these days about 2012. So many things appear to be lining up in this great cataclysmic KABOOM, it just makes a person wonder. Being raised Southern Baptist, I hear all the time from Mom that "We'll not be here much longer, so you'd better get yourself in church! I want to be with my children in Heaven". Not my favorite monologue. But honestly, I know hymns written in the 1800s that talk about "We're not going to be here long". How long is long?

So you are, I take it, among those who think this is just another of many predictions and that on January 1, 2013, everything will be just the same. I kinda hope that's how it pans out. But that doesn't keep me from also wishing, like you, that technology wouldn't remove humanity and manners.

I can't get my husband to give me a straight answer about what he believes. One day he'll talk about sitting on the patio by a fire watching everything go to Hell in a Handbasket, and the next day he'll say, "It's going to be just like 2000. A great big nothing.

Who knows? I have heard lots of folks talk about how each generation can't accept that the world will survive their death. Each generation, especially among faiths that believe "it" will all end with an event, believes that it will happen in their lifetime.

A real job. I'd settle for a fake job! Oh wait. That's what I have now!

There have been end times predictions throughout my entire life. Every generation has them, and different faiths have them for different reasons. I remember in high school, some little old lady in the church where several classmates went told everyone that the world would end on such and such date. That date came, and all the kids who went to that church were absent from school because they were at church. That date went, and they were all back in school the next day.

That's kinda neat. That's what Mr. Vagabond and I keep saying. We're gonna celebrate, if anything!