Happy New Year! Wow, what a trip!
If indeed there are no calamities or Bad Things out there in our world as a result of Y2K, we are both lucky and blessed. And clever, for fixing things in time. I am very grateful to the techies and code writers whose long, hard work managed to keep the power on, the water flowing, etc. Whoever you are, if you're reading this, thank you. And I'm especially relieved that the soldiers, cops and other minions of the State stayed put in their bunkers and didn't run rampantly amok all over us and the Constitution. I was sure that would happen. How wonderful being wrong is these days!
I haven't got a tv, nor have I read or heard the news since 12/31, so I haven't heard much yet on the subject of Y2K. I expect that those who ridiculed us alarm-sounders last year are loudly continuing to do so. I also suspect that the Pentagon (or any of its global counterparts) is unlikely be forthcoming about any glitches in the National Insecurity realm, had they occurred. So far, all appears to be well.
I have been changed by all this, by watching and waiting, organizing and worrying, preparing and finally witnessing our passage through the confounding gateway that was and is Y2K. Running the gauntlet of our own design.
It seems to me that Y2K as "bug" is the perfect, cosmic Prank upon our human-created idea of linear "time." Time is, for me, already a complete boondoggle. I don't understand it. John Broomfield, in his book, "Other Ways of Knowing" has finally explained this predicament for me. Nowhere in the universe is anything organized in a strait line, let alone flowing in one direction only, that is, forward. Time marches on! No "going back," ever? No reaching into the "future"? And the "present" is just an elusive little sliver that no-one can ever grasp? Where does that leave me?
I realize that the mechanized world needs mechanical accuracy, proficiency and "timing". I'm not suggesting that we try to change that fundamental operating principle for the incredible machines that (mostly) serve us so well. But what of human affairs? Animal affairs? Forests? Shouldn't living systems be allowed the freedom to be alive on their own terms and schedules? Isn't there room for us to have more than one way of being here?
It seems to me (and Fritjof Capra has been expanding on this argument for 30-plus years now) that this linear, mechanistic model wreaks havoc on us all. Look at factory farming, at the cruel imposition of assembly-line "efficiency" onto living creatures. Look at our own office buildings. At traffic jams of "commuters" - human beings - in all of our cities. Yet we remain convinced that we plod along a linear path that truly exists, that we can apply our reductionist instruments to mark our progress at a certain rate, and everything can be made sense of, and hopefully controlled, in that way. Forget the circle, the cycles of moon and season and life itself. Forget all the wisdom of indigenous people, who patiently wait (still!) for us to listen to them. Forget all the knowledge available to us that we never even try to hear in the rivers, trees, tides or stars, in the animals and insects on their miraculous migrations. The specter of Y2K came along and scared the shit out of us. A deadline, a date with destiny we could not control. Coming home to roost. And it passed by, silent as a ghost. I hear derisive laughter from somewhere in the ether, a mischievous cackling of the Ultimate Prankster. Got us good!
What I'm taking from this experience is a renewed, redoubled enthusiasm for my work in the world and a good, solid kick to my ass. The veneer was cracked. The foundation was rocked. Not just my veneer and my foundation. The whole insane and wonderful human project was turned on it's head for awhile.
I think we just experienced an epiphany of the fattest order for the entire human race. For the first time we all HAD to consider our interconnectedness. Even the "nothing will happen it's all a hoax" camp had to think about it. Many people came to understand (however uneasily) our frailty, vulnerability, unresilience, and even our stupidity, stuckness and arrogance. We looked at our basic human needs and realized we didn't know where the water in the tap or the mango in the grocery was from, and at what cost it got there, and was it worth it. What a gift!
I feel we are still looking at "the single greatest organizing tool of our lifetimes" as Elizabet Sahtouris called Y2K last February. We still live under the bomb. The imminent threat of lunatic nonleaders with their nasty fingers on the triggers of nuke arsenals is still there. We still live with toxic industries, nuke power plants, rapacious corporations. Little girls are still sewing clothes in hellish factories for Disney or Walmart or your neighbour's kids or you or me. We are still living in "the Mess" as Sharif Abdullah calls it.
The difference is that we have been unnerved. Not everyone, but many more than I believed possible. Just as Tom Atlee and co. told us in "Awakening: The Upside of Y2K," we must look at potential disrupters of the status quo as keys, windows, launchpads. In Seattle, we had people coming together in new ways, inclusive ways. People are "getting it" and there is nothing that can stop that now. I can't BEGIN to tell you how happy I am to be alive on this Earth right now, and in knowing all of you. I'm so grateful for this amazing journey. Viva, Pacha Mama!
From the cowardice that dare not face new truth
From the laziness that is contented with half truth
From the arrogance that thinks it knows all truth
Good Lord, deliver me.
-Kenyan Prayer
Standards of Leadership - Secular and Sacred:
An unconscious or careless populace gets what's coming to it. For a new culture to survive and properly discharge its sacred obligation to the living planet, its originators must implement an effective method of ensuring that each generation of leadership and citizenship fulfills its mandate without corruption, for the duration or "designed lifetime" of the culture. Compassion, conscience, common sense, essential integrity, humility, strength, stamina, intuition, intelligence, vision, reason, righteousness, wisdom and real will, are some of the necessary attributes found within the core models and leadership of successful and enduring human societies.
from "Creative Culture, the Community Ark and Beyond"
Sunship Publishing, Nelson, BC www.sunship.com
would you teach your children to tell the truth
would you take the high road if you could choose
do you believe you're the victim of a great compromise
cause I believe you change your mind, you change our
lives
your life is now
your life is now
your life is now
in this undiscovered moment
lift your head up above the crowd
we could shake this world
if you would only show us how
your life is now
John Mellencamp
Copyright Mendocino Environmental Center 2000
Permission granted to excerpt or use this article if source is cited