Never forget New Year’s Eve of 1999

Before I move on to other merry Pookish work, I must fully reiterate the second commandment:

Fight the Negativism. Now I wished I could rephrase it as Become a Doomslayer. Consider:

Nature and Nature’s God has infused in us the ability to grow with hidden aces of undiscovered talents in our back pocket, ripe to come out and into play. In short, we have been crafted with the possibility for creating achievements. However, it is lazy to prefer an alibi than an achievement. As such, most people believe in alibis to cover up the emptiness they know their lives are.

Because of this desire for alibis, Humanity is prone to believe in hysterias…in crisis…in doomsdays. There are many (unsuccessful) movements set to tune of Doomsday. All Doomsday Movements are practically LOSER movements. These movements give us the alibi to not achieve. And in all these doomsday movements, there is usually not a ‘God,’ but there is almost always a ‘Golden Age’ that has eroded because of some serpent. The Doomsday Movements have no savior but they always have their devils.

The Men’s Movement, which is budding, is set to go one of two ways. Do you want it to become a Doomsday Movement where the only belief is “Society will collapse!” because the devils (Feminists) destroyed the Golden Age (before Feminism where, we are told, all marriages and the sexes got along perfectly!). Is the Men’s Movement growing people or is it giving men alibis to do nothing? It’s a good question, and I think there are examples for both. The Movement is too young yet to say which way it will go. I hope it veers away from Doomsday.

To illustrate just how intellectually easy and tempting it is to think in the DOOMSDAY context, never forget New Year’s Eve of 1999. Historians will forever mock us. I’m even ashamed to have lived through it.

As you recall, the ‘Doomsday’ was that computers were set to the year of two digits such as 88, 89 to mean 1988 and 1989. So, the lament went, when the year went from 1999 to 2000, the ’99’ digit would turn to ’00’ and computers would think a century had passed or that Time had reset itself!

The dangers, we were told, were ominous. The stock market would collapse. Airplanes would fall out of the sky. Trade ships would sink. There would be a rush on the banks. Missiles would fire without warning. The world was over due to our newfound reliance on computers.

Billions of dollars were invested into ‘solving’ the problem. Governments around the world sent in special task forces. Companies reviewed their infrastructure and paid millions if not billions to fix this problem or to inspect the system to make sure the company does blow up and fly through the air when the year went from 1999 to 2000. At New Year’s Eve, companies all over the nation (and probably globally) sent employees to staff the offices and observe the computers. “Oh no,” the executives said, “We don’t think anything is going to happen. But we must have employees sitting around and doing nothing at midnight just in case.

Inevitably, Father Time marched and the year went from 1999 to 2000. Some stayed home in fear. A few huddled in their bomb shelters.

…And nothing happened.

No explosions. No collapse of society. Not a single airplane falling from the sky. Doomsday had been dodged. Does the world sigh in relief? No! The world creates another doomsday! And another and another!