I've been wondering about LAYTK (life after y2k). Maybe stuff isn't going to be so bad...as in...we laugh at ourselves, breathe a sigh of relief, and move on with life with all its normal ups and downs.

But what if the System is really really stressed to the limit? Government has a hard time collecting any taxes. Power off and on sporadically. Rampant lawlessness and vigilantism. Severe malnutricion. Institutional decay.

The cracks in the world built for us by the heroes of WWII and the Depression are now dangerous fissures, and our social edifice is teetering in the aftershocks of y2k.

...In short, TEOTWAWKI--a 1930s style Great Depression or Worse.

What do you do? Surely the government will be taking emergency measures to reassert its authority and restore order to "the way things were." Surely lots of angry, discontented folk will want nothing to do with any Federal kind of solution to our problems. But surely lots of other well-meaning citizens will be doing all they can to assist in the restoration of this Condemned Old Building that is our society.

I've been wondering about this for a long time. Will it be better to just let the building crash on its own and then build an entire new one, or support intensive renovation? If things ever get That Bad, what will be the most important things in our civilization worth preserving? (I have no easy answers to any of that.) But what do you think??? What kinds of post-y2k worlds do you want to be building for our children and grandchildren?

-- coprolith (coprolith@rocketship.com), August 12, 1999

Answers

"What do you do? Surely the government will be taking emergency measures to reassert its authority and restore order to "the way things were.""

I don't have any kind of answer but let me say this

What the govt. takes away it never gives back.

-- Johnny (JLJTM@BELLSOUTH.NET), August 12, 1999.

If things ever get That Bad, what will be the most important things in our civilization worth preserving?

I don't know but those 40,000+ nukes might be something we want to keep tabs on.

-- (for@starters.anyway), August 12, 1999.

We need God.

Mankind is incapable of governing himself. As with all of the types of governance man has attempted in 6000 years of recorded history...none last, and all have decayed into corruptness and brutality. As our last experiment in "Represenative Democracy" fails, to be replaced by Global Governance, which will also fail, man will ultimately learn that he is incapable of governing himself without the risk of annihilation.

After much suffering and death, maybe then, after man has been humbled to recognize he has no control...perhaps then we will be ready to listen to how God intended us to live.

It's going to take God to get us out of this mess, and what he leads us into is nothing short of Paradise. But He will be doing it, not us. We aren't capable of peaceful paradise on our own accords.

May He speed that day.

-- INVAR (gundark@sw.net), August 12, 1999.

I have been thinking about this quite a bit since Ed started his Humpty Dumpty Forum.

I keep thinking about values.

I am 50. My parents are 80. My children are about 20. I recently wrote my will and had a discussion with a sibling about what we would do in the eventuality of the future failing health of our parents. I think about changes in the quality of my own life in decades to come and the part modern technology might play in prolonging my physical life and what that means.

As a baby boomer, I think of the burden supporting my generation, and possibly our parent's, may place upon my children. My parents still have a "stake" in the politics of shaping their own future. I still have a "stake" in those politics and my children have a "stake." Today, the future no longer belongs to the young. Many generational lines have 4-5 generations alive at this time. As a consequence, populations grow geometrically. I think of the pressure that technologically supporting ever-growing popluation levels places on resources and the environment. Do we have the wisedom to manage the increasing technological power we have gained to impact our physical world? How will we address this and maintain value in human life? Have our moral values grown to match our technological potential? When do we say: "Even though we CAN do this, we won't."

The constant pressure of technology is to compete to achieve greater speed, higher efficiency, greater productivity, accumulate and control more data. Are human beings biologically able to handle the prolonged stress of this technological age? Have these new "techno-qualities" replaced the "values" that make our lives seem meaningful? Are some of the old values really deeply rooted in our biology as a social animal? Does the one who dies with the most toys win? Have we replaced social inter-dependence with technological inter-dependence and lost our souls? I watch people reach for the bottle, the pill, the remote control, the headphone, the computer, the gun to "treat" anger, depression or some vague sense of disenfranchisement from unsatisfactory relationships with themselves, their mate, their children, their family, their co-workers, their community, their country. Has techno-centrism left many of us starving for the exchange of human touch, emotional context and spiritualism necessary for our health and identity as human beings? Do we spend our days relating to machines or to eachother through machines?

Will the events ahead, such as y2k, provide us will the opportunity to ground ourselves in eachother, to regain our equilibrium in humanity, before proceeding into the new millenium?

Heck, I don't know....

-- marsh (armstrng@sisqtel.net), August 12, 1999.

A couple of good Bible sayings come to me... 1. worry not for the things of the morrow, but worry only for the things of the day. For you no not of the things of the morrow.( because you cant handle the truth ) You do however have it in you to handle the things of the day. The sentence in () is not Biblical I couldnt resist. and the other that comes to mind following Desert Storm..is pride is just before the fall. Our electronic prowess is going away..Lets pray to God that God hasnt gone away either.

-- Les (yoyo@tolate.com), August 12, 1999.

and don,t forget=from.proverbs>man proposes-GOD=disposes.like i keep asking>WHO,S IN CONTROL.---IS Y2K= a-test?

-- lookin-up. (dogs@zianet.com), August 12, 1999.

marsh - good questions in a thoughtful post. I think that techno-man is at odds with our very wetware wiring and consequential social needs. We may be masters at manipulating our physical reality, but in so doing we have lost touch.

corprolith - I doubt that the grand cycle of rising and falling civilizations is something that is within our reach to affect to our wishes.

Live simple with few wants. Live in balance with nature. Live close to source. Laugh and smile regularly.

-- Mitchell Barnes (spanda@inreach.com), August 13, 1999.