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The End?

Having completed another trip around the sun, we arrive again at the beginning of the calendar, only this year the very concept of calendars may be our undoing – or will it?

Some folks believe that the world will end before we complete another lap. The “2012 Phenomenon”, as it has come to be called, comprises a range of beliefs calling for certain cataclysmic events to occur on December 21, 2012. This is supposedly the end-date of a 5,125-year-long cycle in the “Mesoamerican Long Count Calendar”.1 No one knows what the final stroke will be, but some have predicted the arrival of large destructive solar flares and Earth's collision with black holes, passing asteroids, or even a planet called "Nibiru".2

The Phenomenon has produced hundreds of books and launched hundreds of thousands of websites. Since 2007, a NASA public outreach website called "Ask an Astrobiologist" has received over 5,000 questions from the public on the subject. Lest you think the subject is trivial, some inquirers have asked whether they should kill themselves, their children or their pets.3

Even some contemporary works identify December 21 as the day of a cataclysmic event. Dan Brown wrote a bestselling book in 2009 called “The Lost Symbol”4 and a disaster film was also inspired by this prediction. Advance promotion for the film “2012” included a stealth marketing campaign in which TV spots and websites from a fictional "Institute for Human Continuity" called on people to prepare for the end of the world. As these promotions did not mention the film itself, some viewers believed them to be real and contacted astronomers in a panic. Although the campaign was heavily criticized, the film became one of the most successful of 2009, grossing nearly $166 million worldwide.5

I surely don’t know who is right in this kerfuffle but I have to admit I have some difficulty with this whole predictions business. For example: just the other day our own National Weather Service predicted two to four inches of snow would fall overnight in Western New York. The next day we got a little rain and some light flurries. No one was surprised that an organization with billions of dollars’ worth of technology and scientific expertise could not accurately forecast the weather just 12 hours in advance. And yet folks all over the world are getting panicky over something some guy supposedly chiseled into a rock five thousand years ago?

Perhaps life is simply more interesting with monsters in it. And the power of the media cannot be overstated either. We all know that no miracle hair creams that cure baldness exist, but still over 6.3 million web pages are dedicated to the subject. Need to lose weight? No problem: you have 369 million web pages to choose from. I am sure a few of those pages tout diet and exercise tips that might actually work but there are also millions of others which push an entirely different agenda. How did we become so predisposed to believe the ridiculous and to doubt verifiable facts?

The constant bombardment of mass media messages takes its toll, I’m afraid. Think about it: almost everyone in the work force now grew up following events on television, radio, and now the internet. And who among us can’t sing old McDonalds or Burger King jingles from twenty years ago? Catchy jingles repeated often enough just plain work.

Okay, by now you may be wondering how Frank is going to connect the “2012 Phenomenon”, modern media and structured settlements. Well, here you go: my own clever teenagers now delight in dancing around their father singing “Call 877 Cash Now!!” Knowing how much I despise the companies who fund those ads, they just can’t resist tweaking me with endless repetitions of those awful lyrics.

The ads may be funny but what they stand for is not. Even here, in my own little specialized world, gruesome distortion can still trump verifiable fact. Structured settlements are a highly beneficial tool that has elegantly supported the needs of personal injury victims for decades. And yet most of the general public now thinks structured settlements are something that fat guys in Viking suits sing about on city buses. I could almost admit that the ads are funny if the factoring companies funding those ads didn’t take such horrible advantage of the people I work so hard to help.

Creating a secure financial future for seriously injured people is no laughing matter. Their future financial needs are as real as their injuries. None of my injured claimants can afford to buy into nonsense like the “2012 Phenomenon.” Heck, if the world were really coming to an end tomorrow, they could just drop their claims and not sweat the whole claims resolution process.

But I haven’t met one yet willing to do that. These folks know that the most likely scenario is that they will need money to meet future medical costs, money to live on in retirement, and/or money to fund their children’s education. Thank goodness most of them immediately recognize the value of a guaranteed, non-taxable future income stream.

If you happen to be working on a claim for someone who does not buy into the whole “World is ending” schtick, you may want to mention structured settlements. And if you need help explaining how they work, call Frank C. Kilcoyne, CSSC at 800-544-5533,
I am here to help.

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1Sitler, Robert K. "The 2012 Phenomenon." Nova Religio: The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions 9.3 (2006):
2ibid
3David Morrison: “Surviving 2012 and Other Cosmic Disasters”, FORA.tv, 4/24/2010
4"Best-Selling Books of 2009." MarketingCharts: Charts & Data for Marketers in Online, Excel and PowerPoint Formats. Web. 12 Jan. 2012. <http://www.marketingcharts.com/print/top-books-of-2009-11540/>.
5"2009 Yearly Box Office Results." Box Office Mojo. Web. 12 Jan. 2012. <http://boxofficemojo.com/ yearly/ chart/?yr=2009>.