Rome on a typical Wednesday.

In Rome they are terrified of some stupid earthquake prophecy that claims the whole city will be destroyed tomorrow. It’ll probably be another hot and uneventful day where the most newsworthy thing is Berlusconi actually NOT groping some woman or saying something offensive to a minority or ethnic group. My friends will finish up stressful tours of the Vatican and meet at Bar Mecca afterwards to complain about the crowds. There will be lots of scooters honking at each other. The pope will probably pick his nose when no one is looking. In short, it will be typical.

It really makes me wonder though why people are always looking for things to fear. As if there aren’t already legitimate, real-world threats right in front of us. No, we have to make a bunch of crap up about marauding ninja-koalas or machine-gun toting Tsetse flies or whatever other absurd thing generates the most hits on a site (I’m hoping that thousands of people are currently searching for “marauding ninja-koalas” so as to boost my readership).

Some of the deadliest killing machines known to man.

I think we are all just attracted to the most cinematic threats. Which is fine. Until it starts turning otherwise sane people into paranoid schizophrenics. People are already calling out of work, taking their kids out of school, and fleeing the city. Thousands of people panicking! Now they have yet another day where nothing will get done and anyone in the rest of the world that has to deal with the Romans on a business level will be massively inconvenienced. So pretty much what it is like the rest of the year, I guess.

I have to apologize to my Roman friends that might be reading this. I know there are a few. But seriously. There were over 200 public transportation strikes in 2010. You get a month’s vacation every year. Let’s not even bring up the siesta. Tourists find this charming and pin it to the “work-to-live” philosophy, rather than the American “live-to-work” philosophy. I think it is a bit naive to categorize either so simply, and personally I’d like to live somewhere in between. There are things I adjusted to and learned to love– like how on Sundays everything is closed and you are forced to relax for a day– but overall there seems to be a severe lack of discipline when it comes to operating businesses. However, I know Romans who work quite a lot as well, so maybe I should keep my big stupid mouth shut.

What I’m worried about is what is going to happen on December 21st, 2012. Not because I fear the end of the world. I fear how people are going to be acting. The atmosphere of fear and the obligatory pageantry that the rational of us will have to suffer through. I fear all the media coverage of stupid tear-jerking scenes of families fleeing their homes for some unknown place or hippies gathering in fields to witness the new dawn of humanity together. I fear the hype of pseudo-scientists placed on Fox News or MSNBC to talk about what could possibly happen. I fear the effect it will have on our economy.

If this earthquake is a prediction made only 30 years ago (and actually not even made then), what will happen to the world on the day of the Mayan prediction? An earthquake is something we all understand, at least. With the Mayan “end of the world” prediction, our imagination is allowed to run wild.

My prediction for the end of the world.

Of course, I could be wrong. Maybe I’ll wake up tomorrow and Rome will be wiped off the face of the earth and I’ll be out of a job and the vast majority of my friends and I’ll despair and start prepping for 2012. But it is unlikely.

-justin

Coming to Rome? Interested in touring the sites with a professional archaeologist, art historian, or history professor? Check out our options at Real Rome Tours.