[Update: The ongoing and developing Occupy Movement is the seedling of what I mean by a Planetary Culture. As we progress toward the Solar maximum of 2012-13 we will continue to see an intensification in all areas of our experience. We are witnessing what the Legend of 2012 is all about.]

Those of you familiar with my work know that I study Maya-Meso-American Calendrics (MMAC). The MMAC system is not what we in the Western world understand as a calendar.

Only the most superficial details about MMAC have been popularized as the now infamous Mayan Calendar and its cycle renewal date of Dec. 21, 2012.

The poorly informed and opportunistic have attributed many erroneous meanings to the “end of the Mayan calendar” cycle.

The general and popular misconception is one of spectacular natural catastrophe.

From my vantage point the catastrophe is upon us and it’s called Western Civilization version 1.0 gasping for its last few breaths as it strives to maintain the status quo at all costs.

What more calamity do we need in order to recognize that the world as a whole is in the grips of a serious and unprecedented socio-environmental crisis?

You might ask how is the world crisis, the sunspot cycle, 2012 and the Maya-Meso-American Calendrical system (MMAC) related.

The Theme

In short MMAC calendrics is about the tracking and study of subtle and overt  natural cycles… and their accompanying themes.

Recurring themes that happen at every scale of the energy-matter spectrum. For example, cell division is the thematic equivalence of a woman giving birth, a couple separating or a business opening another branch.

Those examples are acute transitional stages in the process of life’s unfolding and they are characterized by hyper-activity and some distress. There are many other themes, but the theme particular to the present time is crisis. Crisis implies the search for resolution and relief. Transformation, birth, rebirth, emergence (emergency) and transition are themes closely related to crisis and resolution.

Critical Junctures

December 21, 2012 is the day a Mayan time cycle of 5125.26 years resets to day 0.  But what does that mean to us? The Ancient Maya realized that an earth year is useful only to track our orbit around the sun.

The Maya or some proto-Maya group discovered a mysterious and poorly understood 260 day cycle known as the Tzolkin Cycle. The Tzolkin is the very core of the entire Maya-Meso-American calendrical system. The Long Count cycle that comes to a close on December 21, 2012 is known as the 13 baktun cycle.

This article is not a deep explication of the MMAC system, but rather a brief look into what I call critical junctures.

For those interested I am thoroughly addressing the nature of the 260 day cycle in a series entitled The Tzolkin Cycle-Code and the Art and Science of Synchronicity.

Critical junctures (CJs) occur at the point when a system reaches maximum instability and must then reset or reorganize itself in order to re-stabilize.

CJs occur at every level of the energy-matter continuum.

Examples of CJs are the point at which avalanches occur, wars break out, babies are born, atoms decay, cells divide, stock markets fall, earthquakes occur, revolutions ignite, volcanoes erupt or when you have to relieve yourself. It is the point at which the dam breaks or when the “proverbial camel’s back is broken”.

Tipping point is the popular term of the moment to describe critical junctures. A critical juncture alludes to the dynamic convergence of the requisite factors inducing the tipping point.

For more in depth information on the nature of tipping points, critical junctures and singularities please see Road to the Great Awakening? The Timewave, the Webbot and the Massive Tipping Point of November 2010

The Birth, Rebirth Development Cycle

Properly understood the MMAC system can be used to track a host of different phenomena and the critical junctures at which events of any kind are apt to occur.

The average gestational period of a human being is 266 days. From a critical junctures perspective that means that the Tzolkin cycle is closely correlated with one of the most dramatic stages of human growth –our intrauterine development and birth or entry into our next stage of development.

That the most complex cyclical system (Tzolkin Cycle) known to us is related to the developmental period of life’s most complex organism is not a random coincidence. I will delve into the relationship between the Tzolkin Cycle and the human gestational period in the later chapters of the Art and Science of Synchronicity.

The theme implied by cycle renewal is birth and/or rebirth. Birth and rebirth may be understood as the fractal expansion of a system as it grows and develops over time. According to the MMAC system the most notable junctures of growth occur at increments of 260 days or its fractal equivalents–multiples of 260 days.

The Galactic Birth Cycle

Western astronomy offers no consensus on the precessional cycle and one will find a range of 24,000 to 26,000 years for what is commonly known as a Platonic Great year, the Equinoctial cycle or the precession of the zodiac. Wikipedia pegs the precessional cycle at 25,765years.

We do know for fact that the sun is traversing the galactic equator at this very moment. December, 21, 2012 marks the date on which the sun enters the last 4 years of its 36 year journey across the galactic equator.

The galactic equator is assigned a one degree width and it takes the sun 36 years to enter and exit the one degree wide galactic equator. The Maya depicted the December 21, 2012 date as the culmination of a “birthing event”.

It is a mytho-symbolic way of describing astronomically what was to take place at the conclusion of what is known as the Long Count cycle. It takes 5 Long Count cycles of 5125.26 years to complete a Maya precessional cycle of 26,000 tun.

Two hundred and sixty is the number of days in the core MMAC calendrical cycle known as the Tzolkin. 260 days is a fractal of 26,000 tun. Much like cell division is a fractal of a woman giving birth.

By my optimistic estimation, birth or the emergence of a Planetary Culture is the theme implied by the convergence of a renewing 26,000 tun cycle with humanity poised on such a critical and hyper-dynamic stage.

Cell division and human birth are critical and hyper-dynamic states respectively of micro-systems and macro-systems. Humanity as a whole is a mega-system in the grips of some potentially transformative state. For more information on this subject please see Transitioning to a Planetary Culture: Trend Convergence & the Case for Social Transformation

A Cooperative Planetary Culture or a Murderous Military Culture: You get to choose.

In other words humanity stands at a crossroads of unprecedented magnitude—planetary scaled breakthroughs and breakdowns. Breakdown is necessary to transformation, but to what degree are we going to allow our leadership agencies to continue trashing the Planet.

Either we will breakthrough and begin to establish a global village of increasing cooperation or we continue business as usual and can then expect to see increasing examples of breakdown in the form social degeneration, widespread warfare and collapsing ecosystems.

Humanity as it stands is a fragmented and incoherent system dominated by the dysfunctional ideologies of what I collectively refer to as the Judeo-Christian Culture Complex aka the Western Civilizational process.

Most of you reading this article know that the present and dominating world order is stomping the life out of the planet.

Millions around the planet including most scientists recognize that the current world order must be transformed in order to accord with the carrying capacity  of the planet and the good will of the Earth’s majority.  The only other alternative is a cascade of increasingly catastrophic scenarios. The sociopaths leading us are a small, but extremely deranged and powerful minority.

The tension and various pressures we are all feeling are in some way related to the essential struggle between the demise, dysfunctions and gasps of the current world system and the emergence of sustainable and sane modes of collective human conduct.

The former is bound and determined to maintain the status quo at all costs and the latter is compelled by a sense of justice and righteous urgency to transform the current world order.

The needed changes are so at odds with the current world order that only very large scale collective actions will suffice to say “enough is enough” to the marauders trampling everyone and everything under the iron boot of the “Western Way”.

The only way out from the perennial nightmare of Western culture is a Planetary culture based on egalitarianism, eco-sensitivity, gender balance and non-violence.

I am not predicting that we will transition entirely from one state to another during the next few years.

But I am saying that the essential tension and struggle felt on planet earth is between the old world order of predatory domination and a desiring to emerge new world order founded on ecological and egalitarian principles.

We can’t have both. It’s either more of the former or growth of the latter. One grows at the expense of the other. The only difference is that we all win if ecology and egalitarianism prevail.

We have but two options–either utter breakdown into a hellish fight for the dominance of a dying planet or breakthrough in which the people reclaim control of their respective governments and insist upon a solution oriented and ecosocio sensitive economic system.

Solar Max on the Way

We know for certain that solar cycle maximum periods (solar max) are accompanied by heightened degrees of social unrest, the outbreak of war and recessionary periods. We are entering solar max as you read this article and it is expected to peak sometime near the end of 2012 and the start of 2013.

My study of the MMAC system, the solar sunspot cycle, the Timewave and general trend tracking enables me to approximate windows of time when large scale and/or a cascade of high profile events are likely to happen. As we approach the nexus of December 21, 2012 the many pressures we are all feeling in various ways will continue to increase.

It is likely that we may not experience a collective sense of relief until some time after the subsidence of the current solar max around 2014 to 2015.  Any collective sense of relief is dependent upon significant socio-cultural gains on the part of the emergent culture.

Between now and late 2012 we will begin to see increasingly dramatic events unfold as the current world system strives to hold on to power via the same mechanisms that have sustained it for thousands of years. And that is waging war and social exploitation by those in power.

Western History is the History of Organized Warfare for the Sake of Empire.

It must be understood that Western Civilization as we know it is a 4500 year old history of empire building and demise.  The building and maintenance of empire necessitates the plundering of others resources, excessive taxation, social oppression and economic exploitation. Empire building has also brought us to the point of irreversible ecological catastrophe.

We are at a critical juncture in the most all encompassing sense of the word and the scale is planetary.  The US is not reducing its already bloated military budget and it has plans for what is known as the Long War. Therefore we should expect more war mongering by the United States as the militaristic beast demands it be fed.

The 11.3 year sunspot cycle from1880-to-2009 Please note the coincidence with the economic panics of 1893 1907, the great depression of 1929 the begining and ending of WWl 1914-1918 WWll-1939; the Korean war 1950, the Vietnam war 1959, gulf war of 1991, 9-11 and Afghan-Iraq wars with peak sunspot activity.

There is a direct correlation between  solar maximums and the outbreak of wars, recessions and political uprisings. There are hints and rumors of a looming attack on Iran.

It is all very reminiscent of the rhetoric just before the war on Iraq. The wars against Iraq and Afghanistan were both launched during the last solar maximum of early 2000. The 1st Gulf War was started during the solar max of the early ’90s.

The Vietnam war was launched in 1959 during the solar max of the late ’50s and early ’60s. As we know the 1960′s also saw unprecedented political uprisings in the US.

Many economists say that we have yet to hit the bottom of the ongoing recession. The world’s people are becoming increasingly aware that their respective GovCorp is to blame for our dire socio-economic and environmental situation.

The democratization of information and communication systems will continue to fuel the growth of a better informed public.

An increasingly informed public is at odds with empire building. Confrontations looms— it is inevitable. The question is when? The ongoing solar max coupled with ongoing macro-trends should bring us some of the most momentous and definitive events in the history of humanity thus far.  Whether or not those near future events are significant enough to course correct from our present and perilous path awaits to be seen.

“Knowledge will forever govern ignorance; and a people who mean to be their own Governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.”– James Madison 4th US President

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• GLOBAL CRISIS BRIEF: Some Silver Linings and The Osama Bin Laden Caper
• The Matrix Unmasked: The Matrix Movie is a Symbolic Masking of the Human Condition.
• THE GREAT OCCUPY MOVEMENT: The Intensifying Apocalypse And Your Two Choices
• A Wonderful New Global Culture is Taking Shape !
• STATE OF THE WORLD REPORT 1st Qtr 2012: World on The Brink of The ENDGAME?
• A Citizens Assembly: From Occupy Movement to a Permanent Political Force
• Chris Hedges and the Occupy Movement Put Govcorp on Notice !
• World Macro-Trends Report for August 2011: The 5th Alarm Approaches

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