Larry Sanger -- Y2K in Our Decadent Age

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Y2K in Our Decadent Age

Editorial by Larry Sanger

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Western civilization, including American society, has become decadent. To say so is now a platitude; for all but bitter moralists, our decadence lacks the power to dismay.

(Not to say that dismay is a healthy reaction. A healthy reaction comes in two parts: (1) acknowledgement of the fact of our decadence; followed by (2) putting the fact out of mind as much as possible.)

This platitude bears stating clearly. The claim is not that Western civilization could not get any worse - of course it could. Nor is the claim that, at some previous time in history, Western civilization was full of nothing but saints, or that there were no previous periods of decadence - of course there were. Immorality is hardly a modern invention. But the fact (if there are moral facts, which of course there are) is that the quality of the moral character of the average American, Canadian, Briton, German, etc., at the end of the 1990s, is considerably worse than it was a hundred years ago, or even fifty years ago.

"Decadence" can mean at least two different things depending on whether it is in the mouth of a leftist or a conservative; but both seem to emphasize specific kinds of decadent behavior. For the leftist, decadence is capitalist decadence, and refers to vain acquisitions and pursuit of mindless, frivolous amusement. For the conservative, decadence refers primarily to the decline of moral standards, primarily religiously-defined standards, governing behavior - everything from premarital sex, to drug use, to portrayals of family life in mass culture. As an equal-opportunity moralist, I'll join in recognizing both kinds of decadence.

My main concern, however, is with a variety that leftists and conservatives alike may bewail. Decadence is not merely a matter of specific kinds of corrupt behavior; indeed, at root and most importantly it is a matter of character, of virtues and vices, of habits that determine how we live every aspect of our lives. The worst kind of decadence is defined by a list of vices: habitual lying, breaking promises, laziness, cheating, viewing others as objects to be manipulated for personal gain, arguing unfairly, making excuses for vicious behavior, failure to value useful knowledge, etc. And this is the short list.

So: we have become a society of liars, promise breakers, lazy bums, cheaters, power mongers and demagogues, intellectual charlatans, cynics, and know-nothings. If the shoe fits, dear reader, wear it.

To intelligent, decent, thoughtful people, this is all uncontroversial and old news. But the obvious, despite being obvious, sometimes needs to be pointed out - and illustrated, as I will now do.

Corporate, governmental, media, and private reaction to Y2K has been an example par excellence of our decadence. The particular vice this reaction illustrates is dishonesty: at all levels we have labored mightily to avoid learning and confronting the truth, for fear of what the truth might be. The delicious irony about this is that we may indeed have to pay dearly for this dishonesty, and if we do, everyone will have a vivid example of how important honesty is. So much the worse for our decadence then; that'd strike a blow for virtue. It's almost enough to make a bitter moralist wish for disaster.

Here is a rough, working definition of the virtue of honesty: honesty is the habit of using words and taking actions that evince a high value placed on one's own, and others', having the truth. So an honest person's words and actions show that he values both his own and others' having the truth. Someone who avoids knowing the truth is intellectually dishonest, a self-deceiver; someone who tries to keep others from knowing the truth is a liar, or, in case he manages to avoid direct lies, then a deceiver.

The main reason honesty is a virtue is that we need information we can trust as accurate - we have a need for knowledge - in order to make wise decisions. Accordingly, the primary reason fastidiously honest people love the truth is that they believe the truth will ultimately inform the best actions, attitudes, and reactions. Accordingly, the reason dishonesty is profoundly vicious is that it can and does prevent oneself, and others, from having the knowledge that allows us to behave in a way that promotes our best interests. Strange to say but one can die from ignorance. Dishonesty is not a trivial vice.

The situation we find ourselves in, facing potential disaster in various industries and governments around the world, has the awful potential to illustrate how important dishonesty is - and by extension how important our decadence is, immoralists notwithstanding. Let me explain.

As any thinking person who has followed the news reporting about Y2K knows, corporations and government agencies have done their best to obfuscate, cover up, and in some documented cases, lie about what they know about their Y2K risks and preparation efforts. The majority of surveys and studies of individual industry preparedness are based on company self-reports and are, consequently, mostly rosy.

This is, perhaps, understandable: businesses face, at least, stock devaluation and lost business if they report much bad news, and government agencies risk losing the trust of citizens, which of course they want to avoid. This is why survey self-reports are glowing, and why we hear rather few stories about actual Y2K-related glitches, even though the vast majority of organizations surveyed admit to having already experienced some such glitches. The question these organizations face is: are we to ruin our reputation or bottom line for the sake of an abstract moral principle? For most managers, even in societies suffering less decadence than we do, that's a no-brainer.

But this widespread practice of putting a rosy face on the news makes it extremely difficult for a responsible, objective observer to form any reasonable opinion about industry and government preparedness - at least, not based on the information given us directly by the organization PR people themselves.

If one major corporation were to tell the entire truth - gave us total disclosure on a continually-updated basis - the consequences might be severe and not just for that corporation, but for our high-flying stock markets as well. This assumes the report would contain bad news, but presumably it would. So there has been a conspiracy of silence; better to hide the full unvarnished truth than to risk undermining public confidence.

To managers that may seem reasonable. But the consequences of public ignorance of Y2K risks, should Y2K turn ugly, may be far worse than a temporary stock correction in advance of Y2K that full disclosure might bring. If there are many power outages, halted factories, water treatment problems, air travel delays, etc., as a result of Y2K, the stock market will very probably plunge more severely than it would if investors knew of the risks beforehand. And confidence in individual companies and government agencies will be absolutely ruined if they experience many particularly costly problems, to a much greater extent than it would be if there were advance warning. In that case, they will face two PR disasters: the Y2K problems, and public knowledge that they tried to hide them in advance. So much for decadent PR policy, then.

If our reporters and editors, with the full weight of their massive organizations behind them, were to dig deep for the relevant information - interviewing employees surreptitiously, seeking out ex-employees, getting their hands on internal reports, etc. - then much of the effect of corporate and government cover-up efforts would be mitigated. Alas, that is not in the character of the major modern news organizations, which are just as decadent and corporate as the organizations they would investigate.

As (again) any thinking person who follows the news about Y2K knows very well, most reporters covering Y2K (with notable exceptions) fail to report the answers to difficult questions, to dig deep, and to arrive at a comprehensive, balanced understanding of the risks we face, so that they can convey that understanding to readers. Instead, there has been a huge number of news reports that are simply recycled press releases and interviews with PR representatives. The dishonesty of corporate and government portrayals of Y2K readiness is for the most part left uncorrected by the media. The media cynically shares in their dishonesty and, contrary to their very purpose, joins in the conspiracy of silence.

As daily editor of Sanger's Review of Y2K News Reports, I was surprised at how often extremely important stories would be broken by obscure publications like Federal Computer Week, only to be ignored or downplayed by major news sources. I think this is further evidence that larger news organizations simply have decided not to report too much bad news about Y2K - regardless of what the truth is.

A critic might object here that perhaps the reason they have not reported so much bad news is that not much bad news exists to be reported. Perhaps. But until we have answers to a wide variety of detailed, difficult questions, answers to which are hardly ever reported, we will never know.

Matters have not been helped by the huge number of opinion pieces (and opinion pieces masquerading as news reports) that we have seen over the past few years. Most mainstream columnists have not soberly investigated Y2K, but have tended simply dismiss Y2K fears as infantile or uninformed, while citing few or no facts in support of their own views. Particularly silly is the occasional article that approvingly cites some psychologist who holds that Y2K fears are neurotic, when the psychologist himself clearly doesn't know whether such fears might be well-founded. One can't find a better example of intellectual dishonesty about Y2K than that.

To be fair, I should say that, on the other hand, some other journalists, columnists, and particularly some online commentators have played up the risks irresponsibly, i.e., without giving rigorous arguments and adequate supporting facts needed to support their dramatic claims. But at least most of these people are informing themselves and their readers of the evidence and most are, in my judgment, generally making an effort at being fair. Moreover, given the extent to which others dismiss Y2K as merely hype, the pessimists' tendencies to draw conclusions not warranted by the evidence are forgivable to a degree (although by no means entirely; and some have offended egregiously in this regard).

Columnists, both optimistic and pessimistic, have a responsibility, particularly with respect to important issues like Y2K, to know whereof they speak (as much as they can, anyway) and to think very carefully and critically. Anything less is to display a cavalier attitude toward the truth, or in short, to be intellectually dishonest.

None of this is to deny there are some very fair, objective commentators; the Eds, Yourdon and Yardeni, spring immediately to mind. But the intellectual dishonesty of most opinion-makers does a great disservice to the public, which takes what they say seriously. If many ordinary citizens look to the supposedly cool heads to determine whether they ought to prepare, and most of the cool heads have irresponsibly and dishonestly made fun of the problem, the ordinary citizens may suffer if Y2K catches them unprepared.

The final group of people who have been dishonest in their approach to Y2K are the vast millions of ordinary, private individuals. I have personally encountered a great many people who have adopted a "wait and see" attitude in their own lives, not wanting to know more, or to prepare themselves, after having been informed of some of the more telling facts about the threat Y2K poses. What consequences their self-deception will have, if they are unlucky, we will see shortly. Hopefully, none. They are perhaps not to be blamed so much, because they have been misled or at least underinformed at all levels, by corporations, government leaders, reporters and editors, and commentators. Even otherwise intelligent, independent thinkers, because they already have quite enough to worry about, will not take the time to investigate a subject on which the apparently sensible majority view advises calm.

In the early part of next year, a few months away, we will begin to able to assess how bad the damage is. If minor, as I hope, the Y2K pessimists will be able to plead that they helped to get the world prepared and to avoid disaster. In that case, at worst, they will be embarrassed; at best, they will (and no doubt should) be praised for their public service. But if the damage is major, the consequences of our widespread dishonesty, at all levels, will be crushing. Make no mistake: it is a vice that would have those awful consequences. The worst of Y2K will have been avoidable, had there been full disclosure and a commitment to having the truth, from the very beginning. Do not let it be said that ethics has nothing to do with reality, or that our decadence is merely a joking matter. Y2K shows how our ordinary immorality could, ultimately, be a matter of life and death.

Posted November 29, 1999. Please e-mail Larry Sanger with any questions or comments.

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-- Brooklyn (MSIS@cyberdude.com), November 30, 1999

Answers

Thanks for posting this, Brooklyn, I was just about to do that, but you beat me to it!

-- (pshannon@sangersreview.com), November 30, 1999.

Bravo.

I'm not sure about Dr. Ed Yardeni as being a shining example, he just happens to be the only big name economist who bothers to address y2k in public. My milage varies on his conclusions.

-- Mitchell Barnes (spanda@inreach.com), November 30, 1999.


A point of view like fresh water for a parched throat. Thank you.

-- (normally@ease.notnow), November 30, 1999.

Excellent post, and I'm abidextrous!

kooK

-- Y2Kook (Y2Kook@usa.net), November 30, 1999.


Y2K is a typical large software project. Everything is "fine" until 90-95% done ... then everything is not fine. This happens so often it should be expected with the biggest software project of all time - Y2K.

-- Richard Greene (rgreene2@ford.com), November 30, 1999.


He's oh so correct.

-- Mara (MaraWayne@aol.com), November 30, 1999.

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