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The Cyber Underworld of The Mayan Calendar
Nine cycles characterize the Mayan Calendar – What has the 8th of these, the Galactic Underworld, really been about? First, it has been built upon the mature foundation of the 7th, the Planetary Underworld, which Dr. Carl J. Calleman has identified as the internet beginning in 1992. {Solving the Greatest Mystery of Our Time: The Mayan Calendar pg.158-59} Second, it reflects qualities of the right brain half such as community, connectedness, non-linearity, imagination, gestalt and the transcending of chronos (linear time). Being a dualistic Underworld, the Galactic must be contrasted with its opposite…and finally, developed in the time period from 1999 to 2011.
A new cyber reality has manifested and grown in the past decade: social networks such as Facebook and online virtual worlds like Second Life are hijacking the IT revolution. As the National Underworld developed nations, so the Galactic is creating virtual civilizations. Time will seem to disappear as we approach the end of the Mayan Calendar because of an increased frequency. Indeed virtual cities can be built and populated in a day; cyberspace runs on cybertime which runs 24/7. Burn out is not so much the result of this speed up in time as is addiction, quaintly alluded to in the nicknamed cell phone CRACKberry.
The Galactic Underworld is a dualistic one and therefore must contrast these synthetic realities with what else BUT material reality. As the Cyber world has grown, the real world has been exaggerated through the medium of reality TV beginning in 1999 with “Big Brother” and in 2000 with “Survivor” debuting in the USA (the other ripe fruit of the Planetary Underworld {Solving pg.160-62}). In fact DAY 1 of the Galactic Underworld focused highly on surviving the loss of Planetary Underworld technology by the threat of the Y2K bug.
The granddaddy of the reality TV genre, portraying unscripted situations, is Candid Camera in 1948 (preceded by a radio show Candid Microphone in 1947). Students of the Mayan Calendar will recognize these dates as the start of the first pre-Galactic Underworld. It’s curious to note that the scripted vs. spontaneous dynamic of Candid Camera highlights left verses right brain hemisphere capabilities. For the first time authentic reactions became Hollywood entertainment. In less than a decade reality TV has muscled out sitcoms as the ruling category.
The development of virtual realities leads naturally to simulated realities where the lines blur in easily distinguishing the real world from a created synthetic one. The quintessential simulated reality movie “The Matrix” hit the box office on March 31, 1999 less than three months after the beginning of the Galactic Underworld. Though not without precedent, this thriller tickled the imagination with the notion that what we think we know as reality could very well be an induced delusion.
Shortly after the midpoint of the 5th DAY of the Galactic Underworld in July 2007 Gaiaonline.com offered Gaia Cash purchased using real money to acquire virtual products in virtual stores. This has been repeated at other sites establishing a very real cyber-economy that is growing exponentially. An 80+ year old grandmother came to her family distraught over her impounded dog…her virtual dog that is…in Farmville, an online world found on Facebook. Resolving the matter involved a 60 mile drive to Target to buy a $30 Farm card in order to presumably pay the fine and free the dog. Additionally, virtual relationships where only avatar meets/interacts with avatar have generated identical grief upon breakup. And dare I mention the heart wrenching anguish of one’s virtual plants dying. Lest incredulity cause you to dismiss these documented happenings as Urban Legend, students of the Mayan Calendar should be reminded that with the left brain hemisphere stimulation and spread of literacy during the National Underworld, humans also lost their minds initially and the addictive quality of the new brain tonic fed on itself. {see The Alphabet Versus the Goddess by Leonard Shlain}
A curious collapse of multiple generation gaps is occurring. If initially cell phones and internet surfing collared the younger crowd, social networks with their games and virtual worlds are vacuuming in a wide swath of all ages reminiscent of Carl Calleman’s speculation that schools during the Galactic Underworld would no longer be “distinct places to keep younger people.” {Solving pg. 167} It turned out that education in the New Age has transcended schools altogether. It goes beyond age – All personal, material descriptors have become irrelevant: a cyber presence need not reflect one’s race, sex, nationality, disability, age, intelligence, personality, or physical location.
Only one limit remains to be discarded, that being, the rules of the operating system itself which is usually owned and controlled by one company. For example, Second Life unilaterally banned gambling in 2007 causing the immediate collapse of half of its cyber economy after a run on one of its privately owned virtual banks. When participants finally insist on democratic decision-making, cyber worlds will evolve more closely into pure dream worlds where anything is possible, time will cease to exist and the virtual industrial output will be infinite. The first such company, if it is a company, to offer a real sense of cyber-freedom will be mobbed by users fed up with the arbitrary dictates from on high.
Virtual worlds have gone mobile with the explosion of “apps” available for one’s cell phone, i-pad or laptop using the latest innovations in cloud computing. Instead of a kiosk to gather information wherever you go, there are a few monster kiosks in relatively fixed locations that one’s personal portable interface taps into. The data and software are always up-to-date and the virtual goods hawked are endless and cheaper by the day as the supply skyrockets to infinity…enough to satisfy a global brain.
In June 2010 computer security experts detected the cyber worm Stuxnet, now considered the most sophisticated malware ever, which subsequent reverse engineering revealed an ability to independently attack specific real world targets, in this case industrial machinery. Unlike past malicious software designed to steal or manipulate data, this cyber weapon is devoted 100% to sabotage and able to cross from the digital realm to the physical world causing catastrophic material damage. The apparent target is the Iranian nuclear power plant Bushehr built by a Russian contractor, and considering its complexity, it is highly likely that the author of Stuxnet is a Western nation state. If true, this attack parallels [in the Galactic Underworld] events during the Cold War temporally located in the latter half of DAY 6 and NIGHT 6 of the Planetary Underworld (1961 Berlin Wall – 1991 collapse of the USSR). It should be noted that a precursor worm has been discovered going back to June 2009 which corresponds to the midpoint of DAY 6 of the Galactic Underworld. The Planetary Underworld was non-dualistic so thankfully the Cold War never turned Hot, but not so with the current Galactic one whose 7th and final DAY begins November 3, 2010. This shot across the bow might presage a near future wherein people with the funds might buy a cyber attack on the black market. A Stuxnet-like worm retaliation against the West would fulfill the expectation that during the Galactic Underworld the East will accrue power at the expense of the West as predicted by Dr. Calleman over 15 years ago. {Solving pg.183}
Things have come full circle – a cyber civilization, seemingly fragile in 1999 because of a minor programming oversight of a 2-digit year, now perches on the edge of holding real life hostage using the very technology upon which our modern world depends. Could the Universal Underworld (the 9th and final) be the resolution of the distinction between the real, material world and synthetic, cyber existence? Perhaps on October 28, 2011 we will all simply awaken to the realization that we have always inhabited a simulated reality. The Mayan Calendar has shown that our time is synthetically structured, why would our space not be also.
Sharon Jorgenson
8 Chicchan
Sept. 28, 2010
