We have all been ruminating on Y2K and GI vs DGI etc for a long time. Something occurred to me that might explain what is taking place right now. If we examine the world from a big picture perspective, we could say that due to the tremendous pollution and ozone thinning and levels of extinction taking place, its just a matter of time before things collapse. Yet, the stock market continues, trade continues, manufacturing continues. It all continues right up until the last moment, until its forced to stop.

Y2K is just a reflection of this very human mentality. And like any mentality, be it environmentalists etc, there will always be a minority who do something about. In this case, it happens to be us. Why, because we have an obvious deadline, something that noone else really has. That, IMO, is why most people don't get it. To not get it is human nature.

-- timemachine (con@tin.uum), December 10, 1999

Answers

"...due to the tremendous pollution and ozone thinning and levels of extinction taking place, its just a matter of time before things collapse."

Yeah, maybe... Except that things were supposed to collapse a long time ago. Like back in the 70's, we were all supposed to be starving, up to our necks in garbage. Didn't happen, at least not in the west.

Doom & gloom predictions have been proven incorrect, repeatedly, for many years. That's why no one listens to them anymore. Too bad.

-- yeah but (we're@still.here), December 10, 1999.

Well, you just make my point. "yeah, maybe". That's my point. We're all "yeah maybe" when we don't have a deadline. GI?

-- timemachine (con@tin.uum), December 10, 1999.

Never say 'deadline' to an older person (or for y2k to a DGI/DWGI).

-- Humor (TheUniversal@Solvent.com), December 10, 1999.

From: Y2K, ` la Carte by Dancr (pic), near Monterey, California

Here are a few perhaps disconnected thoughts evoked by the reminder that we may be digging ourselves into a deep hole in any case.

I'm not the first person to comment that even if Y2K ends up being worse than doomiest 2% of us expect, it still might be better than what may be in store for us if we continue along the path we're now going. I don't mean to sound self righteous in this, or pretend to be living a virtuous lifestyle. I say this as someone who is guilty of not doing all I can to minimize my own footprint. I do eat meat. I notice my several pairs of Birkenstocks have a considerable amount of leather on them.

Knowing where we're headed (within our lifetimes, perhaps), we have all the more reason to be as prepared as possible now, maintain our stockpiles, and continue working as diligently as possible toward full self-sufficiency and community co-operation.

I recognize that there's a danger in saying something like this that one may be perceived as someone who would, either consciously or subconsciously, work to help a Y2K disaster to happen. That would presume that we were pretty sure Y2K wasn't going to be an extinction level event [ELE], which it well could be even without "assistance."

It sure would have been nice if we had managed to colonize other planets before destroying our home. There doesn't seem to be much hope of convincing folks to scale back. I know I haven't really managed to convince myself to scale back, so that makes it difficult to try to preach to others about that.

-- Dancr (addy.available@my.webpage), December 10, 1999.

Way to go!

-- ceemeister (ceemeister@hotmail.com), April 11, 2001.