yup, it's true, our local paper has been running a two part, FULL page article on y2k. it showed a huge picture of a man in cammy's, holding an ar-15. the headline screamed, "Y2K, ARE YOU READY?". I left it displayed prominently on the breakroom table at work, and observed the reactions of fellow employee's. there was absolutly no reaction whatsoever. they would say, "can i read the paper?, and I would hand it to them, and they would look at everything in that paper EXCEPT FOR THE Y2K ARTICLE! I even held it up, and said to one girl, have you given this any thought at all? she read the headline and said, "no, have you? not wanting to come off as a nut, I replied, "not really" this was no pollyanna article, either. it suggested you get oil lamps, alternate heating, money out of the bank, etc.

-- ed (edrider007@aol.com), November 11, 1998

Answers

Dr. Douglass Carmichael sheds light on this phenomenon:

"I believe people have come to rely on technology as an alternative world to the human: our bodies are much more a symbol added to technology and the underway around. The idea of that everything can be fixed is part of our deep belief. Conversation with a good friend clarified this for me. Our near total belief in things like money, gross national product, the sanctity of jobs, the free market, the invisible hand, can be seen, if we look at our society with the eye of an anthropologist, to be basically, fundamentally, profoundly religious. From this perspective we can say that we have been living in one of the great ages of faith in history. From our commuting, our coffee breaks, our mail-order catalogs, our insurance forms and the general pattern of daily live, we can say this is one of the most highly ritualized societies in history. To question all this by suggesting y2k makes a mess of it raises profound anxiety."

-- a (a@a.a), November 11, 1998.

Ed, It's too bad that you didn't answer honestly. It may have been an opportunity for one more person to 'get it'. My assistant asked me this week what I thought about all this Y2K panic - ha, ha. (And here I thought everyone in the whole company knew that I was concerned with TEOTWAWKI.) I said that I was busy making preparations. Her mouth dropped and she said, "You mean you are storing food and bought a generator?" "Yes," I replied. She then commented that she had better start preparing as well; would I please give her information regarding what she needed. I was happy to give her a start and answer whatever questions she had. While I agree that we do not want the hordes at our doors in Y2K, I still feel we have an obligation to "spread the seed on fertile ground".

-- Lois Knorr (knorr@attcanada.net), November 11, 1998.

a, I agree. Most likely, those employees Ed observed only glanced at the headline and dismissed it as some hype from the media as they usually do to get our attention, and whatever bits of truth is in there is not going to affect them, because "it can't, it's just too awful, and the government will fix it all". The human brain uses "defense mechanisms" to protect itself from extreme or too painful emotions and events. Denial, suppression, projection are a few of them. We all use those defense mechanisms to differing extent, some more than others depending on our mental abilities/makeup. If you know this, it is a bit less frustrating when trying to explain and convince someone of Y2K and the need to get prepared. Small doses at first, let them digest and get used to the idea/news. The seed is planted and they then conciously or unconsciously pay attention to anything Y2K related and the thinking process is off and running.

-- Chris (catsy@pond.com), November 11, 1998.

Today, after 9 months of being forbidden by management to speak about Y2K at work and not allowed to bring any printed information on it to company property, I came across 2 different groups of people tossing around the possibility of a threat and what they might do to prepare. It spoke volumes just to drag in nearly every morning last spring and summer casually mentioning "canned 10 more pounds of chicken breasts, or 20 jars of jam or 14 quarts of peaches last night" Believe me they shook their heads BUT THEY DID NOTICE. I simply made it a matter of whatch what I do not what I say.

-- Ann Fisher (zyax55b@prodigy.com), November 12, 1998.

Anne, why would management *forbid* you to speak about Y2K at work? And not *allow* you to bring any printed information on it to company property? A literal form of denial. If that happened to me, I would figure the company was too stupid and authoritarian to work for; I would quit on the spot. Idiots make dangerous company.

I decided to speak about Y2K to the company I work for. The owner looked at me like I was nuts; I showed her some Web pages. In a few days she "got it." She saw opportunity. She turned it into a $1.5 Million dollar investment bait to start a service business helping people prepare. Her marketing ppl did research and have been blown away. I just hope this really flies; I'm concentrating on getting us, myself & husband, prepared. Personally, I'm uncomfortable with big-bang start-ups -- having nervous investors riding on one's performance in an iffy enterprise. But at least my boss doesn't think I'm nuts anymore :)

-- Leska (allaha@earthlink.net), November 12, 1998.

Leska - see if you can get Steve's Y2K PowerPoint presentation to your manager/president - it will help them address things, save time, and consolidate information without introducing errors into your company's effrots..

-- Robert A. Cook, P.E. (Kennesaw, GA) (cook.r@csaatl.com), November 12, 1998.

Thank you, Robert, I will work on getting that. Like Diane, I use a Mac (are all great minds on the same wavelength?), so maybe will eMail her to see if the "conversion" went well. She won't need to convert me to "new-ageism," already there :), but maybe this will de-chicken me into installing Microshaft's Office 98 which is sitting here unopened. Oh, + BTW, did I mention that the FEMA cert training is free? :)
Leska xx

-- Leska (allaha@earthlink.net), November 12, 1998.

Our bodies shut down, go into shock, when they cannot handle an overload of physical stress. Likewise, our minds go into denial when faced with facts that produce an overload of mental stress. I see two levels of denial happening regarding Y2K. The first level involves refusal to look at the end of Western civilization, what I call simply the end of electricity. The second level of denial involves inability to face the level of violence that will ensue.

The survivors will be not only smart, but strong.

-- David Hammer (davidone@worldnet.att.net), November 17, 1998.