Waking up in Middle Time with its bleak reports of natural disasters, terrorism, general irrationality of human behavior, and the human inability to change quickly enough and so adopt to the crisis it is now fully plunged into, you might rub your eyes and wonder about this rainbow vision at the end of the cycle.

Today, there are many prognostications concerning 2012. The number of web sites about 2012 proliferate, and a growing sense of curiosity, questioning and even alarm begins to seep into the mass consciousness regarding this now dramatically impending date. In America, cracks in the facade widen. The catastrophic Katrina demonstrated that the government cannot be relied upon in case of emergency. New Orleans stagnates, slowly becoming a monument to global warming. At the same time, as the disasters of the last year have set off some kind of alarm clock whose hands point to 2012, the mindset of the planet is generally gripped by complacency, fear, lethargy and often anger.

The yoke of 12:60 materialism grows ever tighter as the edges of its world erode with every Earth change. Consumerism – and its complementary factor, exhaustion of natural resources – continues unabated. Cars pour off the Chinese assembly lines at the rate of 112,000 per day! The Amazon continues to wither in an unprecedented drought, killing fish and drying up lagoons, while forest fires rage. And in the Himalayan foothills of Kashmir and Pakistan, 3.3 million earthquake refugees slowly succumb to a bitter winter. Against this backdrop, the Pentagon made a request for another 100 billion dollars for war, including a new stealth bomber. If granted that would boost the Pentagon’s war budget to one half trillion dollars. It may be asked, if there are 100 billion more dollars available for war, why aren’t there 100 billion dollars available for world poverty and disaster relief?

A country like Japan, the only Asian member of the original G-7, enjoys a new prosperity and a mood of smug complacency. Despite a season of intense typhoons, the Japanese continue to roll along stylishly as if the world will never end. It has been over ten years now since the terrorist nerve gas attack in a Tokyo subway station set off panic and alarm – and indelibly marked the psyche of postmodern Japan. Since the attack was attributed to a religious sect, the Japanese, fearful of another cult, have shied away from religion and spiritual matters in general. This is only to the benefit of their consumerism, a deepening of their materialism, and a general closing down of their mind. Following the Gregorian calendar program has ensured that the Japanese remain ever more ensnared in the pageantry of materialism, buttressed by negative fear programming.

For instance, though few Japanese are Christian, because Japan is hooked on the Gregorian calendar, Christmas is a main event, not only for consumers but for urban and commercial designers and decorators as well. But the symbols have no meaning. It is all for show – and for money. Though Toyota and Honda are turning out hybrid cars among their many lines these days, it doesn't make crossing Tokyo during midday any easier. The Japanese are very well-defended, well-dressed and well-insulated in their island culture, and as a consequence, they seem quite immune to criticism. As with all nationalities, their television programs only reinforce their national ego, while their cell phones keep them removed from themselves, so how can they – or any people so caught in the cybersphere – really change? Where will it end?

In Russia we are now witnessing what we call capitalization of the whole country. Unfortunately, almost nothing is left of the best achievements of socialism: healthcare, education and science are in a sad state considering low social level and under financing. For example, Russia’s healthcare is on the 97th place in the world. The lowest wages of workers in these areas lead to many scientists leaving the country and only true devotees left in science. More than half the country's research institutes are closed. In the state education and healthcare those who stay are of pensionable age, no young men willing to work there. Number of commercial healthcare and education organizations has grown, but these are only affordable to highly paid employees or state officers. And Universities welcome mostly children of well-off parents. Alas, number of suicides among young men has grown. Television is garbaged with crazy ads and films of terror, sex and violence. Alas! Today Russia is considered by experts of global economy forum as one of most corrupted countries. A lot of mafia organizations appeared, and drug mafia increasingly comes to the country – structures that in Soviet times were all outside the “iron barrier”. In general the agony of 12:60 frequency fully manifests in Russia too, accompanied by planetary cataclysm, terrorist attacks and tragic events. Well, just recently our government took a decision to increase funding medicine and healthcare thanks to some economic growth. But we realize that while these decisions will pass through bureaucrats, real benefits will reach common people not soon.

Everybody sees the handwriting on the wall, but nobody wants to give up what they have and actually change – their lifestyle, their mind, their perception of reality. The problem is that, whether in consumer driven Japan, or “catching up with the West” Russia, virtually everyone is now thoroughly trapped in the materialist end game. There appears to be no escape. Sustainable development is the catchword for wanting to change but not wanting to give up what you’ve got. That is a hard act to pull off. According to the best analysis, we’ve got 'til 2035 before the oil runs out. You just have to contemplate that in 1939 with 2.3 billion humans there were 47 million motor vehicles. Today with 6.3 billion humans (three times as many) there are about 775 million motor vehicles – that’s a sixteen-fold increase. The propagation of the machine far exceeds that of the humans. And to make the point, consider the computer. In 1975 there were but 50,000 – today there are almost one billion. That growth has paced the information revolution which now is the final factor alienating the human species from itself and nature.

While the Chinese are fully on the globalization-consumer bandwagon, the United States keeps trying to round up the Islamic world so it too can experience what Russia is experiencing. But the clash of civilizations may be just too overwhelming for that. Witness what has just occurred in France, another member of the G-7, and also of the P-5 – one of five permanent members of the UN Security Council because it has the Bomb. Incapable of assimilating two generations of Muslim and African immigrants, the country exploded in the mindless violence of the dispossessed. Can you really remain a true Muslim and become globalized? The contradiction may prove to be too great.

Caught in these various snares of social-cultural karmic whirlpools, planetary humanity is experiencing a vertical exponential surge of population, machines, information, and pollution – and the temperature just keeps rising. What goes up must come down. The sheer weight of all of these factors at vertical thrust will reach a breaking point, more than likely before 2012. Are we prepared for 2012? Hardly, it would seem. The fact is that every day the world mind continues in the unconscious grip of the materialist 12:60 Gregorian program it goes deeper into a gridlock of the will, where voluntary change, a shifting of gears becomes virtually impossible.

This is what we see when we look out the window. Let us take another look and see what is inside the view from the Law of Time.