End of the Old, Repeat of the New

I was watching the new Star Trek movie when the though hit me. Humans still need hope and ideals to move us forward. Today is no different but i do think we are in a special time as we transition from old ideas of capitalism, socialism into something new never seen before.

Today we live in a time not signified by the creation of new ideas and thoughts but by the crumbling of our old ones. Crisis, like it always has, will push into new and undiscovered country once more. It reminded me of a story I wrote about many years ago.

It was a day or two away from Y2K I had heard some rumours that there was going to be a riot at the downtown celebrations. Having grown up some in the Okanagan I knew enough not to dismiss what i had heard. Kelowna boys seemed to riot at the drop of a hat back then. Y2K was coming and so was disaster. Tension was imminent and in the air.

Luckily so was the lack of heat. Nothing exciting happened as usual. Nothing but a really good party.

I still remember something my first producer John told me before I left to cover the event. We'd been talking about end of the world scenarios and the whole Y2K scare. I thought something bad was gonna happen. He thought i was a victim of the hype. Although he was too polite to say so.

What John told me was simple. Some people like to think the world is run by some great clock in the sky. To these people the idea of a grand schedule provides order, stability and comfort in lives of bedlam, uncertainty and pain. However a small problem remains. Chaos is as much a part of our existence as calm. It's a scheme breaking paradox that unravels any careful ideas of order, certainty and calm. Rather than face the problem they try to patch their paradigm, and the only logical conclusion is that chaos and disorder is on a firm schedule.

These people like their universes wrapped up in nice neat tidy packages. So it makes sense they would latch onto dates with a lot of zeroes in them. You only have to look back in history to similar events around 1000 and 1900 to find confirmation. Y2K was no different. Fortunately or not, disaster and change would be prove to be illusory once more. Physically things go on as they had before. Yet mentally and perhaps even spiritually, these people had moved on to something new and different.

So, while nothing happens on the appointed date, change does happen about ten to fifteen years after these people minds had adjusted to a new way of thinking.

John said we only had to look at what happened after we moved from the 1800's to the 1900's as an example. The real revolution lay many years down the road.

Which brings me back to today. I don't know about you, but I look around and see the basic assumptions that have underwritten the growth and progress of our society for the last one hundred years melting away like the icecap at the north pole. If there is any truth to what John said ten years ago, then we may find the change we prepared for so long ago coming soon.

The end