Richard Smoley's blog

It's instructive to see how the 2012 prophecies have been ma­nipulated by mass culture. Nearly all of the 2012 visionaries see the date as a harbinger of a new and enlightened consciousness for humanity, but the wizards of televi­sion have transmogrified this vision into something that looks very much like a fundamentalist's Last Judgment.

What is accounted as real must, among other things, accord with our preconceptions. Nonetheless, the content of our preconceptions may differ wildly according to time and place. Many cultures give far more credence than we do to ghosts, spirits, good and evil, possession, and witchcraft. So did Western civilization five hundred years ago.

My friend, you cannot escape doing it wrong. And of course, being, like you, a part of American culture, neither can I. There is an Ogallala aquifer of guilt sitting a few inches below the surface of the American psyche.

At this point in American history, the interests of the few have vastly outstripped not only those of the many, but those of the common good. There is an imbalance, and it is going to be corrected.

Zen golf, Zen gardens in a box, Zen stuffed animals -- How do ideas that are originally mystical or esoteric make their way into mass culture, and what do such ostensibly terrible things as commercialization and vulgarization have to do with this process?

Romantic, unrequited, codependent or familial – it's all love. But why do we believe one thing about love with one corner of the mind and something very different with another?

Apocalyptic writings – those purporting to reveal the secrets of the end of time – got their start in Judea in the second century B.C. Since then, predictions of the end of time have become as consistent and reliable as the calendar.