I am still with you. Business forced a few travel/meeting days, but I am happy to check in from a lovely coastline during a pleasant, albeit brief holiday. I began this entry by refuting all the psychotic, baseless, and paranoid assumptions apparently derived from the relatively little anyone can possibly know about me; then I realised who would be reading this and the futility of such an exercise became obvious...

I have considered authoring a book on the subject, and will devote part of the remaining holiday to some study of this proposition. It could center on the over-reactions of people who were obviously misinformed and chose to act on any information that supported their claims and hopes about Y2K. The working title I have now is "ShowDown @ the Y2K Corral: a study in 'cybernoia'." What do you think? I'm also thinking of donating a portion of the proceeds to either Microsoft, Bill Gates (personally), Apple Computer, Steve Jobs (personally), or to charities supported by Gates or Jobs....but it's just a thought at this juncture...

If I do not pop in to respond every day, it is merely because this issue (and non-event) is demanding less and less of my time as the facts of the matter become ever-clear. Most of the rest of the planet is engaged in other activities, as well. And so, after the Y2K- ers are marginalised by their sensational claims, I suppose they will form some sort of social bond, and continue to meet and converse online after the non-event; predicting yet future disasters....but I should save such comments for the book...

Regards, Andy Ray

-- Andy Ray (andyman633@hotmail.com), July 01, 1999

Answers

I suggest "Thinking outside of the Box"

http://www.y2knewswire.com/19990629cv.htm

_______________________________

Welcome to part two of the "Y2K Disconnect." To read part one, click here.

No recent issue has divided Americans more than Y2K. Even as more evidence of the Y2K problem rolls in (Washington D.C. admitting they won't make it, the raw sewage spill in L.A., the increased food orders by Y2K programmers), the two camps -- those who believe Y2K has been solved and those who don't -- appear to be hardening their positions.

What can it be, then, that makes intelligent, everyday people look at this information and reach the conclusion that Y2K has already been solved?

ORIGINS OF THE Y2K DISCONNECT It is, of course, the Y2K Disconnect -- a twist on a well-documented pattern of denial in human history. When events challenge a person's investments (both financial and emotional), that person tends to disregard real world events in favor of his own version of reality.

This is well documented in investment circles (especially in commodities). When a commodities investor is, for example, long on corn, the whole world looks like it supports the rise in corn prices. But at the same time, another investor may be short on corn. To him, every event seems to confirm the soon-to-occur fall in corn prices.

And today, the American people are neck-deep in stocks -- more now than at any other time in history. Because Y2K threatens stock profits, it is easily filtered out of the day's events. People don't realize they are part of a centuries-long phenomenon of "selective attention" when it comes to events vs. investments.

But what is it, exactly, that allows this to happen? And how did people end up with such poor information about Y2K in the first place?

Non-Internet users, for one thing, have little or no access to investigative Y2K reporting. The majority of mainstream journalists are not investigating anything, they are reporting things. Press releases, mostly: today company X announced 97.56% compliance, and isn't that grand?

Too often in the mainstream press, a claim by an industry spokesperson becomes the headline for the story. For example, when the head of the American Bankers' Association says, "Banks will be ready," the headline for the newspaper story blares, "Banks to be ready for Y2K" The readers frequently mistake conclusions drawn by the publication for investigative conclusions. In fact, it is not usually the job of the newspaper (or magazine or TV news stations) to draw such conclusions; that is the job of the reader.

One responsibility of the news desk, historically, was to play Devil's Advocate with the organization making the claim. Skepticism, not appeasement, was the core attribute of any successful investigative journalist. Today, however, skepticism has been re-named "radical" by the Conformists: fit in or else. Go with the flow, don't rock the boat, don't question what we say if you do, you just might cause a panic, because you know Y2K isn't a computer problem, don't you? It's a people problem. (This, the position now advocated by the banking industry, the pharmaceutical industry, and the Year 2000 Council.)

Unfortunately, the vast majority of Americans have chosen to go along with appeasement rather than skepticism. They have surrendered their responsibility to draw conclusions, handing it over to journalists who kicked it upstairs to the media owners. And those owners happen to be -- guess who? -- the very same companies that would be harmed by admitting to Y2K problems. Then, observing this journalistic incest, people continue to claim, "See? Y2K is solved. The media said so."

This is part of the origin of the Y2K Disconnect.

THE Y2K DISCONNECT IS

the conscious (or unconscious) ability to zoom in so close that the big picture isn't just missed; it is beyond the periphery. It is the ability to ignore interconnectedness in all its forms: between a news outlet and its owners, between a manufacturer and its parts suppliers, between a government-run benefits program and its beneficiaries. It is also the unwillingness to question mainstream news reports.

Essentially, it is a lack of cause / effect reasoning. Any person with a good sense of logic can easily see through the "Y2K is solved" fallacy. It doesn't take much effort, frankly, to dispel most of the myths.

But again, what led us to this situation? Why is a good portion of the American population unable to follow cause / effect logic?

SHORT-TERM, NOT LONG-TERM For one thing, the people have been encouraged (by education, by government, by media) to think about the short-term while ignoring the long-term. This trains people to disregard the "effect" of any "cause." This is evident in the negative savings rate of the American population: give me the short-term entertainment of spending while I ignore the long-term pain of having to pay it back.

Same thing with government: with a national debt that is still in the trillions of dollars -- and not getting any smaller -- most of the "leaders" in Washington pretend there is some kind of surplus. Again: the long-term effect is all but forgotten. The short-term is all that matters: "Make sure those Social Security checks go out! That's a lot of voters!" But the national debt? Forget it, it's not important.

You see it in business: companies make decisions for the next quarter, not the next decade. In fact, this is the entire Y2K problem in a nutshell.

You see it in medicine: give me the drug to solve my short-term problem while ignoring the root cause -- the long-term -- of the problem. How many patients with a swollen, torn muscle are told to take aspirin? It is recommended a thousand times a day by doctors, oblivious to the fact that aspirin, by reducing the swelling, actually interferes with the long-term healing of the torn muscle. The next time around, the muscle is already susceptible to injury. (This, however, certainly creates repeat business for the medical profession)

You see it in the press, of course. Just this week, a TechWeek story that reveals only 8% of large companies have finished Y2K remediation (and almost half are behind schedule) leads off with this headline, "Overreacting to Y2K could cause more harm." Short-term thinking: what will the Y2K-concerned people do? Ignored, the long-term thinking: what on Earth will all the employees of these companies do when they no longer have jobs?

You especially see it in investing: the stock market currently has no discount for Y2K. That means investors aren't taking Y2K into account in any serious way. People want to profit from the next short-term wave while ignoring the long-term risk of taking such a position. Investment advisors continue to tell people, "Invest for the long-term," but what they really mean is don't take your money out in the short-term, or you might miss the ride.

In all, the long-term is largely ignored (often because it takes more effort to see). The short-term is easy to spot: it's right in front of you. It's easy to say, for example, that this new government program created 50,000 new jobs. People can see that. But what's left unsaid is the fallacy of it all: government-paid jobs are not jobs at all -- they are a burden on the real economy, funded by private-sector taxpayers. They add nothing to the GDP of a nation, and in fact, they steal funds from taxpayers that could have been used in private-sector investment to create real jobs. Those are the long-term impacts of the short-term creation of these 50,000 jobs. Once again, the long-term is ignored.

THE SECOND CAUSE OF THE Y2K DISCONNECT The Y2K Disconnect has another parent: conformity. To think intelligently -- and differently -- is to invite ridicule by your neighbors, your coworkers and your government. As a population, we are trained not to think outside the politically-correct boundaries. From the time we enter the government-run propaganda centers known as "schools," we are trained to accept authority, to fit in, to believe whatever we are told as long as it comes from a teacher, a person with a PhD, the press, or the government. To question these things is to invite immediate punishment. It is no more complicated than the rat in the electrified cage. You step over the boundaries, you get shocked.

For example, try watching a child in the 4th grade question whether Christopher Columbus was the "discoverer" of America. Naturally, this is just a myth: an abundance of physical evidence proves that explorers from other countries were here decades -- even centuries -- before Columbus ever landed. But Columbus is the "official" story, and more likely than not, the teacher is just as unaware of the truth as anyone else. Thus, the 4th grade student is pounded into line. "Believe Columbus or else!"

That's the message today. "Believe Y2K is solved or else!" Or else what? Or else you will be ridiculed. You will be punished. And in the end, you will be blamed for causing the problems.

For many people, that's all it takes. They jump back into line. "Yessir!" They're good little citizens: they do what they're told.

If you rock the boat, you might just cause a panic, didn't you know?

SHRUG OFF THE DISCONNECT You are an intelligent being. You can shrug off the temporary effects of the Y2K Disconnect simply by reclaiming your own natural ability to think, to make decisions, to follow cause / effect logic. You are not a robot. As a human being with a powerful soul, you have the ability to make these decisions for yourself and to take proactive action.

The only way to shrug off the Disconnect is to realize you have been under its influence. You can't escape a cage you don't think exists, of course. So now, if you really want to get out of the herd and see what's really going on, your first job is to see the cage. Notice the boundaries that have been placed on your thoughts and your behavior. This act alone is empowering.

Next, you must take one step outside the boundaries. Test the waters, see what happens. You will be battered, of course, by the herd-minders who want you to come back into line. They might be your neighbors, your friends, even your coworkers. Don't pay attention to that: your independent thinking is making them look foolish, and they want to punish you for it. Move ahead.

When you break away from the herd enough, you will discover the grass really is greener on the other side. Not only that, you will find yourself among highly-capable, intelligent human beings who control their own destinies; who decide what they are going to think and believe, not what the herd wants them to believe.

(How, exactly do you accomplish this? First of all, you read your information, don't let people tell it to you. That means turning off the television for good. Throw it out. From here on out, you take responsibility for what you read: read the news and think, don't sit on the couch and let the networks stuff your brain with garbage.)

In this place, away from the herd, the air is fresher, the grass is greener, and you will be able to examine Y2K with a sense of clarity. You won't be very popular here, of course, because the herd has moved on. You will, however, be empowered.

Welcome to the land of original thought, where Y2K isn't a joke or a myth. It's a serious problem that is easily survivable. From the outside, Y2K suddenly becomes clear: it challenges all the myths, the half-truths, and the fiction of the establishment. It challenges the fractional reserve banking system, the faith in technology, the faith in big government, the belief that highly-complex financial entitlement systems make the world a better place. It challenges a highly-complex tax code, the "automated" society, the fractional policing system, the daily surrender of personal privacy to computers.

From the outside, from that green grass, you can see the Y2K problem encapsulated: it is a giant bubble, filled with dark, strange logic, warped thinking, poor communication, and outright deceit. It's all stirred up in there, the mixture of people and computers, the bubble boundaries, the herd population.

And now you know why they don't want this bubble to pop. It would spill everybody out into the green grass. It would give them their first opportunity to see outside the bubble. It would force them to think.

BOTTOM LINE The Y2K Disconnect is:

An unwillingness to zoom out and see the big picture.

An inability to follow cause / effect beyond the first step.

A personal surrender of the responsibility of drawing conclusions.

A desire to "conform" in order to avoid ridicule and the burden of original thought.

A selective delusion that supports a person's stock market investments.

A comfort zone where neighbors, friends and colleagues all believe the same (false) information.

To shrug off the Y2K Disconnect:

Throw out the television. Stop letting megacorporations feed filtered information and emotive advertisements directly (and passively) into your brain.

Get your information through reading. Reading involves active thought. You must think about the information as it comes in.

Challenge the mainstream. Ask questions, follow the logic, follow the money, follow the motive. Ask who is behind each Y2K claim. Ask what motive the sender of the message might have for sending it.

Complete your own Y2K preparations. Once you are physically and mentally prepared for Y2K, you are no longer tied up by emotions like anxiety or fear. Eliminate those emotions by taking action.

Educate yourself. Don't allow others to tell you what's real. Search out the information on your own. Draw your own conclusions, question credibility, question motive. Y2KNEWSWIRE, for example, accepts no outside advertising. But NBC, CBS and ABC all accept hundreds of millions of dollars in outside advertising, mostly from companies that would be harmed by rapidly-falling stock prices if they admitted to Y2K problems. Recognize this conflict of interest.

As you do this, you will find yourself empowered not only about Y2K, but about the entire world. This is one way in which Y2K can have a lasting, positive effect on humanity. It can wake up a large number of people. How about you?

-- helium (heliumavid@yahoo.com), July 01, 1999.

:)

...the best-written confirmation yet!

Thank you, Andy Ray

-- Andy Ray (andyman633@hotmail.com), July 02, 1999.

...of cybernoia, that is.

Andy Ray

-- Andy Ray (andyman633@hotmail.com), July 02, 1999.