11th
Deconstructing “11/11/11”—A Short Rant
Today, the 11th of November, 2011, has garnered a great deal of worldwide acknowledgment—including millions, if not hundreds of millions, of social networking posts—and has involved, amongst other bizarre markings of the occasion, notable spikes in c-sections and Vegas weddings. However, these domestically-oriented behaviors fall nowhere near the more extreme end of the behavioral spectrum; according to the Associated Press, Egypt has closed the Great Pyramid for the remainder of 11/11/11 because of rumors of groups attempting to enact rituals to “take advantage of mysterious powers coming from the pyramid on the rare date.”
Are you fucking kidding me? This is what happens when blatantly ridiculous beliefs based on completely human-built, arbitrary systems degenerate to their most fundamental tenets. There is no “special meaning” to this date; numbers, like most of the things in which people put common, pragmatic belief, are just an arbitrary representation of the concept of “time” which, much like the numbers themselves, holds relevance to humanity alone. In considering the creation of these systems, ones that have finite, anticipated results, it is totally illogical to superimpose meaning other than that which was originally intended in their creation. To impose further meaning—be it religious, superstitious, or anything based in areas unverified by factual evidence; be it on an extreme level, the likes of those listed above, or merely “wishing on 11:11” —is a projection, unwarranted by rationality. It’s like making a wish every time “t” appears in the alphabet: you know, by the conditions inherent of the system, that the letter “t” is in the alphabet and has to appear before it’s end; the same rationale applies in the case of our calendar system. Arguably, one can extrapolate this rationale into a broader statement regarding the giving of undue credence to other arbitrary systems of belief but I’ll leave it here, for now: from a rational perspective, those who are marking today’s date by acknowledging that it is anything other than a normal, ordinary day look just a bit absurd.
