Missing Y2K

I first heard about the Y2K Bug and survivalism about 10 years ago. According to the theory a programing glitch would cause all computers to fail on the first day of the new millennium. Since computers ran everything some speculated that this could lead to a catastrophic collapse of all technology, economy, government creating a new dark age in which modern people would be helpless without the services and structures that had sustained their lives. Many people I knew were preparing for the worst, stockpiling food, weapons, and supplies, making pacts to care for each other when safety suddenly became tenuous. I must admit on New Years Day 2000 I had a slight sense of disappointment. Nothing happened—the modern world had survived unscathed.

Perhaps the wildness and romanticism of being a 23 year-old made the collapse of everything seem more exciting than dreadful, but I don't think I was alone in being hopeful about the “end of the world as we know it.” While fear may have played a role, the overwhelming feeling I recall in people's voices when they spoke of the coming disaster was ecstatic anticipation. People were eager for the power grid to go down never to come on again.

I have recently become aware that expectations of modern society disintegrating are still alive and well. The newer theories for the coming collapse are more diverse (economic depression, oil running out, terrorist attack, global warming, bird flu, etc) but the final prediction is the same: The system becomes too unstable to continue. The store shelves and gas tanks go empty. The lights go out. The government stops working. Suddenly the world we knew is gone and won't be coming back. People are fascinated with the idea. There are hundreds of websites with information and debates on how to prepare for this. Hollywood has become caught up in survivalism in films such as “28 Days Later” and “I Am Legend”

After seeing Y2K and 9/11 do little to disrupt the modern world, I am much more skeptical about the contention that our system is a house of cards awaiting the slightest tremor to send it to pieces. The secret wish that it would all fall apart, however, is not as easily banished from my mind. Is this just the destructive impulse to tear apart the world we inherited? It seems to me that this is essentially a hopeful rather than violent phenomenon. Survivalists don't want the world to end, they look forward to a new beginning.

Why would so many in the world's freest and richest nation eagerly dream of destitution and danger? It must be a symptom of fatal flaws in our culture when many of our strongest impulses and deepest hopes are for the implosion society. Has our culture been swept up in the current of building wealth and feeding appetites that it lost track of deeper but more subtle human needs? Has the technology that made everyone's lives easier ended up making us feel more isolated? Has the mass society of cars, computers, and cities distracted us from our sustaining relationships with each other, the earth, and God? Or perhaps the human mind is always that of hunter-gather which expects to find itself barely scraping out a living and living in a tiny tribe, and the world of modernity is just too much for it to bear—a dream from which we keep expecting to wake up?

In the end, I don't think that the doomsday predictions of the survivalists are very likely. For better or worse the modern system is stronger than it appears. I also don't believe that my romanticized expectations of living after a crash would be liberating like it was in my imagination. We may be stuck with the modern world, but we should examine it more critically. If the modern world isn't remedied to accommodate our ancient needs it may end up ruining us yet.

How to Live When the World Falls Apart

This is the last in a series of three posts from the months surrounding 9/11 five years ago. I wrote it in a gridbook after Thanksgiving. Every year for the last 5 years a group of my friends has met to celebrate that holiday together. The first Thanksgiving was in a secluded cabin in the mountains:

It was the day after Thanksgiving. We were all together beside a waterfall in West Virginia. The sky was gray and overcast. We were close enough that we could feel the thundering of the water beneath us. I was talking to Scharlie and Chris. We had been talking about living in community. I was telling them about the old electrical plant beside the river in Georgia. I telling them about the group of people I had known who were planning for Y2K and had considered buying the abandoned plant. “It was such a strong building in a secluded place; they thought it would be a good place to go if the world falls apart.”

Chris never moved except for stroking his beard with his long, thin fingers. His eyes never left the torrents beneath us. He said, “Everyone keeps looking for the world to fall apart. What no one seems to realize is that it already has.”

I thought about the recent death of David, about the bombing in New York and the war in Afghanistan, about the obnoxiously sentimental advertisements for Christmas shopping, about my love Joya and my hope for a life with her, about my beloved new niece Hadley who would grow up in front of a television, about my parents who had done nothing but fight recently, about that Thanksgiving in a tiny cabin with friends who I loved. I watched John and Brian jump from rock to rock over the roaring falls, calculating where I would have to jump into the water beneath me to save them if they slipped, wondering if it was possible to survive in those freezing rapids under the best circumstances. I was sure Chris was right. The world has fallen apart and no amount of hopefulness or flag-waving can undo what has already gone too far.

So what should one do when he lives in the waning of a great civilization? I am studying medicine. I hope to marry Joy someday. I hope to be a doctor for the poor in some rural town. I think I need to write –exactly what I should be writing I’m not sure. I need to pray and read the scriptures more. I need to eat less and get my large body more physical exertion. I need to visit my family more, before Joel and Emily’s daughter grows up. I need to tell my friends that I love them. I need to somehow keep myself from quitting medical school. I am growing old. I feel older than I really am. I think about all these things and wonder… Is this the right way to live at the end of the world? I don’t have the answers. I don’t even think I am up to the few tasks I have given myself.