I made a brief mention of this burgeoning apocalyptic movement a few weeks ago. It came as quite a shock to me to see this billboard in the west end of Toronto, Canada. It’s not like we’re in the midst of the bible belt up here.

Also recall my observation and experience a few years ago with the whole “06/06/06” date thing, where people went into a near hysteria over the flimsiest correlations, I have been warning of people to brace for near epic 2012 panic as it draws closer. But these May 21, 2011 folks are jumping the gun on even that, calling for the real honest-to-God Rapture this May 21, 2011. Talk about ballsy.

With the megaquake in Japan and the entire Mid-East breaking out into revolution and civil war, I can certainly see how this all looks vaguely End Time-ish. The May 21st-ers must be pretty smug right about now, gleefully thinking “We are correct” and soon, we will all die.

Somehow, since the financial meltdown of 2008, even with the absolute wrong response of governments worldwide to pretty near everything, I have somehow become more optimistic about it all. There was a time I believed we truly were headed toward a type of Mad-Max scenario, with the wheels having firmly come off, civilization careening off the rails, and whoever’s left fighting in the street with sticks over tins of dogfood.

I just don’t see it anymore.

As far back as 2005 I was getting tired of the Doom and Gloom crowd and coined the “Law of the Unexpected Expected”, which basically states that whatever calamity is being predicted is the one event which simply cannot occur. Douglas Adams encapsulated this in his concept of the “recipriversexcluson”: a number whose value can be anything but itself. It was a joke in his book, but I’ve found it has real-world applications.

Then when the whole “wikileaks” thing hit my company late in 2010, and the media were blindly, ignorantly tripping over their own dicks, dribbling like half-wits and seemed utterly incapable of uttering anything basically accurate about the entire situation, especially as it related to the relatively lightweight technology concept around the underlying DNS system and the wikileaks.org domain name, I semi-ranted here in this space:

Then whenever something really big does happen, it’s as a rule, out of the blue, unprecedented and the media just run around like complete idiots blathering “this is what we know right now, this is what we know right now……(NOTHING!)”

So it comes to no surprise to me that most of what we’re hearing in the media today around the nuclear emergency in Japan, is just pretty useless information and doesn’t really convey the important facts. An extremely fascinating analysis of the media #fail around this is here and I highly recommend reading it.

The Revolution(s) and strife in the Middle East are too big to give adequate coverage here. And Japan, what can one say, it’s just unimaginable what the people there must be going through (and let’s not forget, people in New Zealand, Chile are still going through their own trials, and Haiti is in a category for suffering all on its own).

It just boggles the mind when one tries to parse it all.

I have been working on a “book” in my copious spare time, the basic premise of which is that successful investors, whether they realize it or not, do NOT achieve success by predicting the future, that the future is inherently unpredictable. I think the only thing that can be safely predicted is that most predictions won’t come to pass.

So despite the Apocalyptic tone of what’s going on these days, and accepting the possibility that the world could literally end next tuesday, (any next tuesday), around noon-ish, I can practically guarantee you two days when it most assuredly will NOT:

• May 21, 2011
• December 21, 2012

Beyond that, “There is No Such Thing As a Future Fact”, says Jason Voss in his excellent work The Intuitive Investor, another highly recommended read.

In the meanwhile, take some time and help out those in need. Japan, elsewhere, anywhere. It may take events like this to make one realize that now is always a good time to reach out a hand to our fellow travelers.

http://www.redcross.ca
http://www.redcross.org