Richard Thieme wrote: > > The Challenge to our Humanity > by Richard Thieme > > I ran into my neighbor this morning at the supermarket. She works in > "logistics" for a large retail chain. I asked how they were doing with the > Year 2000 (Y2K) challenge. > > "We're afraid," she said. > > "It isn't us, it's our suppliers, manufacturers, the whole big chain. We > receive 20% of our merchandise from outside America, mostly by ship. If we > put every single ship in dry dock today to make them Y2K compliant, there > wouldn't be room in the world to hold them all. > > "Some manufacturers tell us they're just starting to do assessments. Which > means, of course, it's already too late." > > We looked at the frozen food, the lights, the cash registers, the shoppers > going about their business. "People just blow it off when you tell them > what could happen. Everybody's in denial." > > Well � not everybody. > > The futures market, making big bets on either side of the millennium, is > not in denial. The wolves of Wall Street are betting on catastrophe. > > The scene outside the supermarket is tranquil. Ornamental trees are > blossoming, lilacs blooming, and the sun on this crisp spring day is > radiant. The local multiplex movie theater is showing another disaster > movie, this one about a comet hitting the earth. I remember "On the Beach," > the last days of remnant nuclear-boomed humanity, the end signified by > newspapers blowing through empty streets. In "Y2K - The Movie," the final > image is a dead computer, not newspapers no one is left to read, and the > streets will be full, not empty. > > In "Y2K - The Reality," humanity is again being called to measure and > declare itself. The real issue is, are we up to the challenge? Are we up to > fighting this war? > > Every one of us is a philosopher. We all make decisions about what matters > most. Usually it's not words but our lives that testify to our deepest > beliefs and the commitments that elicit our passion. > > For atheistic existentialists like Jean Paul Sartre, who believed that > extreme conditions illuminate the truth of our souls, the battle cry is "No > excuses!" For explicitly religious people, the mandate is to take > responsibility for living rightly. The results in both cases are the same: > men and women who refuse to be seduced by trivial distractions or lesser > goods and who live from the depths of their quest for meaning. > > The week that Princess Diana and Mother Theresa died, we also lost Victor > Frankl. Frankl's belief that the search for meaning is our ultimate > motivation was discovered in a concentration camp. The Nazis took Frankl's > livelihood and made him a prisoner. They took his clothing and replaced it > with oversized striped pajamas. They took his name and replaced it with a > number. They took his family and replaced them with nothing. They took the > predictability of daily life and replaced it with a constant threat of > starvation and torture. They took every single thing that we use to make > life "human" yet he clung to the belief that life even in hell had meaning. > He embodied the truth that especially when the chips are down and our backs > to the wall, we are capable of responding to whatever life brings with > resilience, dignity, and in our best moments, genuine heroism. > > Life in the United States has been for many a long sunny ride on a tame > horse. The "haves" seem lost in euphoric fog, oblivious to our radical > contingency. After a run of good luck, people think they deserve it. That > can make real threats to our well being seem like special effects, digital > manipulation that we watch on a distant screen, warm and dry as Manhattan > floats away when a tidal wave hits. > > In Hilo Hawaii there is a large green park on the oceanfront. There used to > be buildings there. When the warning came of a tidal wave, people gathered > to watch it slam into the town. Then the water receded, thousands of fish > flopping in the mud flats as the ocean disappeared. Hundreds of people > rushed onto the reef to gather fish. Then the second wall of water came, > moving at hundreds of miles an hour, fifty feet high. A third wave cleaned > up whatever was left. > > The current warnings of Y2K are the first wave. We go to the movies, shop, > live our lives, happily gathering fish flopping in the shallows. > > This is a war. Wars require organization, rationing of scarce resources, > hard choices made in light of the Big Picture. This crisis will reveal who > we really are. Some will engage in quiet heroics and no one will ever know. > Some will discover how shallow and venal they really are. The American > Civil War brought us both Abraham Lincoln and those he called "the wolves > of Wall Street," who bet against their own country to leverage their > advantage. > > How do we access those depths from which human beings respond with their > best efforts? Religious people use symbols and beliefs to access in a > primary way the capacity for self-transcendence. Having faith - using those > symbols sincerely - is like solving a puzzle in a computer game, taking > ourselves to the next level. Belief moves people to move mountains if not > the mountains themselves. Yet those who have no explicit religious beliefs > also have innately within themselves, intrinsic to their humanity, that > same capacity to respond in ways that dignify our species. That capacity is > accessed when we choose to access that capacity. > > No excuses. > > To know what CAN happen means we can make choices now about critical > systems and plan for the long haul. In the long haul, humanity does quite > well. We're learn from this experience - although slowly, slowly - and > maybe we'll pay attention a little more closely in the future. The future > is not fixed. The future is a spectrum of possibilities fanned out before > us. It may be too late to reprogram everything, but we can still choose > the wiser options if only we have the will to do so before the next wave hits. > > ********************************************************************** > > Islands in the Clickstream is a weekly column written by > Richard Thieme exploring social and cultural dimensions > of computer technology. Comments are welcome. > > Feel free to pass along columns for personal use, retaining this > signature file. If interested in (1) publishing columns > online or in print, (2) giving a free subscription as a gift, or > (3) distributing Islands to employees or over a network, > email for details. > > To subscribe to Islands in the Clickstream, send email to > [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the words "subscribe islands" in the > body of the message. To unsubscribe, email with "unsubscribe > islands" in the body of the message. > > Richard Thieme is a professional speaker, consultant, and writer > focused on the impact of computer technology on individuals and > organizations. > > Islands in the Clickstream (c) Richard Thieme, 1998. All rights reserved. > > ThiemeWorks on the Web: http://www.thiemeworks.com > > ThiemeWorks P. O. Box 17737 Milwaukee WI 53217-0737 414.351.2321 > ********************************************************************* -- ======================== Kathy E. 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