A really bad way to prove a point…

Almost every TV station and documentary suffers from this disease. But it is not really a disease, is it? Not when it is carefully planned and implemented so that the maximum revenue is obtained. What is this disease? Oops, sorry it is not a disease, but a technique.

Here is how it works. Someone has a crazy idea but has no proof. So what do you do? Simple, you invent a “mystery”, then ask some questions about it to make it sound like a fantastic revelation then you sell it to FOX or the History channel and make money. The point, and this is true for many so-called “documentaries”, is that you lead the audience to where you want to go by asking loaded questions, then you supply an answer before one has a chance to think about it.

I watched a brief YouTube excerpt from the History channel about the end of the world as viewed from the Mayan perspective. The show features John Major Jenkins speaking about Mayan prophecies aired March 2006, I think. I went to his web site and found out he “is an independent researcher who has devoted himself to reconstructing ancient Mayan cosmology and philosophy.” Now, an “Independent Researcher” label is good to use if you have no real credentials to show. The web site goes on saying he has gone to Mexico and Central America 7 times since 1986, has helped build a school and so on. So what? Does that make him an expert? I have been to Mexico too.

Here is a quote from his web site:

“John’s careful scholarship and cutting-edge insights into why the Maya chose 2012 to end a great World Age cycle have been endorsed by the most progressive thinkers of our day.”

What progressive thinkers? What careful scholarship? Where are these endorsements? What cutting edge insights? Am I supposed to be impressed just because of his personal associations? I have already commented on the “appeal to authority” error in my previous post.

The documentary claimed that the world would end Dec. 21, 2012 which is the end of the Mayan Calendar. At that time the sun would be aligned with the center of the galaxy, implying destruction or at the very least great upheaval. Now think about that for a minute. Do you think that the sun is aligned with the center of the galaxy right now? What about Alpha Centauri? What about a star 12,000 lights years from us? Do you think they are aligned with the center of the galaxy? A true researcher would have defined what is meant by the galactic center.

Which particle in a cluster of objects, is not aligned with the center of the cluster? Can you draw a line from any one of those objects which passes through the center? Or do you have to wait until 2012?

So the author(s) of this ridiculous documentary, throw out an absurd statement which is meaningless but suggestive. Blink and you miss it, just like any other TV show. Why do you think many shows, newscasts, and commercials are composed of tiny sound and visual bites? No sooner are you presented with a stimulus than the glitter machine rolls onwards to a new topic. They do not want to give you time to think about what you have just seen and heard because if you did, you would recognize it for the bullshit it really is. It would be frightening indeed if this mind control was deliberately planned by some sort of power, but I like to think it just evolved by chance. Television is deliberate mind control, but hopefully it just evolved that way because of marketing initiatives, and not through evil intent. Nevertheless, it is definitely mind control. But I digress…

The documentary goes on to talk about the ancient Mayan game where a ball is put through a tiny hole in order to score, and the loser (or winner, we are not sure) is beheaded. It explains how the ball may represent the sun and the hole represents the center of the galaxy where the sun is thrown and this is the meaning of the year 2012. I am greatly abbreviating here.

Quote:

“How the Maya could predict cosmic events 26,000 years into the future remains unknown despite the ongoing work of experts.”

The above quote from the documentary is so misleading. It sets up a “mystery” by claiming that the Maya have predicted the future 26,000 years ahead. Then it implies that the experts are looking carefully into this and they are still baffled by this amazing ability of the Maya. This is so similar to the straw man fallacy. They are deliberately misleading the audience to believe that scientists first of all agree that the Maya predicted the future, and that they actually care about this fictional problem. Then they imply that they are baffled as to how the Mayans have achieved this.

They then prime the audience with a planted question designed to lead the audience to support the theory: “More than an athletic contest, was the ball game a symbolic representation of the galactic events of 2012 and the end of days? Some say ‘yes’.” Then they cut to this guy who basically repeats the whole stupid theory. This is a really bad way to prove a point. There are no facts here, merely speculation based on very little.

They are leading the audience to be exactly where they want them to be. That is, not thinking. That is why they ask the question for you, then give you the answer before you have time to think about it.

Gee, could the ball represent a…ummm…ball? And could the hole in the stone ring represent a…errr…a goal? Nah!

A lot of people have a lot of crazy ideas, but that just means they have good imaginations. This so-called “galactic alignment” becomes now no longer a simple aligning of the sun with the center of the galaxy, but becomes something where the sun passes through the galactic plane. The galactic plane is an imaginary plane bisecting the galaxy. The galaxy is sort of flat like a pancake so it would be like cutting the pancake in half the hard way. The sun (and the solar system it carries along with it) orbits the nucleus of the galaxy once every 225 to 250 million years. In the time it takes for this one orbit, the sun moves up and down across the galactic plane about 2.7 times. So it crosses the galactic plane about 3 times per orbit. Divide 250 million years by three, and you get 83.333 millions years. That is a far cry from 26,000 years. But maybe I don’t quite understand this alignment thing, so if any of you read this and can educate me on this “alignment” in 2012, I would appreciate it.

You also have to remember that the mass of the galaxy is always moving, and we don’t know how much unseen dark matter there is though I am sure that astronomers have suggested/calculated a number. And the galactic plane is just an arbitrary frame of reference. The plane itself “bisects” the plane of the milky way, and perpendicular to that plane is a “vertical” axis through the center of the galactic core. The axis is marked by the north galactic pole, which currently lies in Coma Berenices near the star Arcturus and the south galactic pole is marked by the constellation Sculptor. These reference points are all made up. They have no basis in anything mysterious. And stuff is continually moving so the coordinates will always be changing no matter what kind of reference frame we invent. So if a little more mass moves up and across to the other side of the galactic plane, does that not mean we have to move the plane itself up a little to compensate, otherwise the plane would no longer be in the center of the pancake?

I hope I have made a point about not believing everything you are led to believe. Have I used a really bad way to make MY point?

You be the judge.