Y2K responses and flawed mindsets; draft only

[Roberto Verzola <rverzola@PHIL.GN.APC.ORG>]

Please note that the essay below is a draft. I would like to ask the
list members opinion particularly on:
   - the typology of responses
   - the list of flawed mindsets we want to point out

May I request all recipients: PLEASE DO NOT EMAIL THE DRAFT TO ANY
OTHER ADDRESS OR TO OTHER MAILING LISTS. It is not meant to be
distributed beyond the subscribers of the Interdoc-Y2K list.

After I hear comments (particularly strong disagreements) I will
revise the draft and do maybe another round of discussion on this
list, and then release a final version for distribution.

I repeat my earnest hope that others join me in trying to zero in on
the most important flaws which should be the target of a systemic
reform. If you feel I missed something very important, or included
something trivial, please say so (and be ready to argue your case!).
I do listen.

I hope this can serve as basis for more active list discussions.

Thank you all.

Roberto Verzola
-----

Draft (Please do not email to others or post elsewhere)

After the Millennium Bomb:
"Business as Usual" or "Transform the System"?
by Roberto Verzola


     The Millennium Bomb is the software time bomb in millions of
computers and automated machines that is slowly ticking away as the
year 2000 (Y2K) approaches.

     This software time bomb lurks within thousands of mainframe
computers and millions of automated equipment where the year is stored
using two digits instead of four, to save two bytes of data space. At
the turn of the millennium, year 99 in these machines will become year
00, making time appear to have moved back by a full century. Computing
the elapsed time between 23:59:59 of 12/31/99 and 00:00:00 of 01/01/00
will give not one second but more than three billion negative seconds
or negative 100 years. All elapsed time computations between an event
before and another after the millennium midnight will also be wrong by
the same amount.

     This wrong result can lead to unpredictable consequences. Some
computers and machines will stop working; others will generate
astronomically high -- and perhaps negative -- figures; still others
will provide reasonable but nevertheless wrong figures. Where
computers and machines automatically control industrial production or
financial transactions 24 hours a day with no human intervention, the
implications are enormous. In the industrial and financial centers of
the world where these machines comprise the technological nerve center
that keeps the whole economy going, even minor disruptions, especially
if they occur simultaneously, can trigger a cascade of failures that
may lead to system collapse.


The spectre of panic: bank runs and food riots

     In December 1998, the United Nations itself hosted an
international meeting in New York, held specifically for its
member-countries to discuss the Y2K problem. Finally, although too
late, governments were acknowledging the problem.

     In his statement, the U.N. Under-Secretary-General for
Management, Joseph E. Connor, warned: "The essence of the Year 2000
dilemma is that it is impossible to accurately predict the effect on
our world." While Connor hedged and said that the problem could
"either paralyze our civilization, or just confound simple systems, or
anything in between," his own dire warnings made clear that he
considered the looming Y2K crisis no less than a global problem of
emergency proportions. Here are some of Connor's warnings:

     * Disruptions are unavoidable and many cross-border activities
will be affected, ranging from transportation to energy distribution,
from defense to telecommunications.

     * No matter how much we prepare, there will be aspects that will
be overlooked and will only manifest themselves in the new millennium.

     * Failures may occur in many processes and many places at the
same time (multiple simultaneous failures). In an increasingly
networked world, non-compliant systems may create a "domino" effect,
causing even compliant systems and facilities to malfunction or fail
altogether.

     * The spectre of public panic has been raised by several
publications and many stories in the press indicate that a number of
countries may be developing plans to handle civil disorder or panic -
from massive cash withdrawals from banks to looting.

     So it is official: even the U.N. is now warning countries that
panic scenarios like bank runs and food riots are possible, hinting
that governments develop contingency plans for such emergencies.

     As Connor's warnings indicate, Y2K problems may propagate through
at least four levels, with problems in one level possibly triggering
new problems either on the same level or on another level. These
levels are: the computing infrastructure level, the production and
distribution level, the financial level, and the psychological level.


Failures in the automated backbone

     Due to inadequate time for remediation and testing, it is
virtually certain that a portion of the machines that comprise the
automated backbone of all modern societies will fail at the turn of
the millennium. Some failures will occur immediately. Others will
recur intermittently. Still others will occur only under a combination
of conditions. These failures will hit the hardest those societies
which are most dependent on these machines for even their most basic
daily needs.

     The requirements of Y2K conversion, like many other software
conversion projects, are very often grossly underestimated. Once such
projects are well underway, adding more people may delay instead of
speed up the project. Even minor changes in software can introduce new
errors (the industry experience is one error for every 14 lines of
code modified). The time needed to thoroughly test the software may
approach or even exceed the time it took to write the software.

     Even more difficult to convert are the embedded microprocessors,
because there may be billions of them deployed all over the world,
inside almost every type of modern automated equipment. Unlike
mainframe software which can be conveniently edited on video
terminals, embedded software are generally burned-in, permanently
stored in microchips called ROMs (read-only memories) which are
themselves often soldered on printed circuit boards bolted inside all
kinds of equipment. These programs are also invariably written in
lower-level assembly language. They are therefore much more difficult
to debug, modify, reinstall and retest than their high-level
counterparts.

     Department-wide, company-wide or industry-wide networking
complicates the situation, because it couples many of these vulnerable
systems together. As part of a network, even Y2K-compliant systems can
fail if they are connected to a failed non-compliant piece of software
or equipment. Non-compliant data can corrupt a compliant database.
Some of these problems can lurk undetected for a long time, and then
spring a nasty surprise at the worst moments.

     Because of the sheer volume of work needed -- identify all
software and machines that use two-digit years, test which ones are
vulnerable to failure, upgrade or replace them, and then retest the
new systems thoroughly to ensure compliance -- experts generally agree
that there is not enough time for remediation. Thus, machine failures
will definitely occur.


Disruptions in production and distribution

     Obviously, all automated production systems are at risk,
including strategic industries like fossil-fuel extraction, processing
and distribution; electricity generation; land, sea and air transport;
and communications systems. If they fail, these vulnerable strategic
industries can bring down with them many other industries, including
those who are are fully Y2K-compliant as well as those whose
production systems are not automated.

     Production vulnerability is aggravated by contemporary changes in
production systems. Just-in-time manufacturing, for instance, can bog
down from delivery delays. Today's global firm usually sources its
components from subsidiaries and independent contractors distributed
worldwide. If any of its overseas suppliers fail to deliver due to Y2K
disruptions, then the final product itself cannot be assembled. This,
in turn, can cause problems even among Y2K-compliant suppliers,
clients and creditors, not to mention employees.


Financial crisis at the periphery as well as the center

     The global finance today is an extremely complicated web of
transactions among global and local players, averaging nearly $1.5
trillion each day. Problems in one part of the system can quickly
propagate to other parts, triggering more serious repercussions which
can in turn cause new problems that feed back into earlier ones.

     The present global financial crisis was triggered by failures in
the system's periphery: Thailand, Indonesia, South Korea and Russia.
These failures then threatened larger economies like Brazil and Japan.
Without factoring in the Millennium Bomb, the situation has remained
very serious, requiring extraordinary measures by the IMF as well as
the U.S. Federal Reserve.

     With the Millennium Bomb, simultaneous multiple disruptions will
occur not only in the periphery but also in the very centers of
international finance, which are even more completely dependent on
computer equipment for their most basic operations. Obviously,
financial shocks in the center can create even more serious problems
than the shocks of peripheral origin which we have been facing since
July 1997. Thus, the risk of worse financial collapse is more real
than ever.


Early panic: the 1999 wildcard

     The uncertainties are greatest at the psychological level. Mass
psychology can respond unpredictably to the slightest rumor. It is the
year 1999's wildcard. On it rests whether the Y2K crisis will, as U.N.
Under-Secretary-General Connor put it, "paralyze our civilization, or
just confound simple systems."

     In fact, the self-fulfulling nature of some Y2K fears can lead to
major panics even in 1999, before any Y2K failure has actually
occured.

     The U.K. and Canada, for example, have began advising their
citizens to stock up several weeks' supply of food due to a possible
breakdown in their distribution system. This can trigger in 1999 a mad
rush by other countries -- and within every country, by families who
can afford it -- to stock up food themselves, leading to artificial
shortages and panic-buying in other areas of the economy. It can also
lead to a socially-explosive situation where some supplies may be
rotting in basements of the well-off, while others go hungry because
there is nothing left to buy or the prices are sky-high.

     The financial system is even more sensitive to mass psychology.
We know that the supply of financial instruments has bloated way
beyond the actual value of real goods and services on the market. It
is often acknowldged that some $20 to $50 of "hot money" are in
circulation today for every dollar of real goods and services. Critics
have warned for some time that this financial bubble will eventually
burst.

     Widespread panic-buying in 1999, for one, can easily burst the
bubble. When $20 to $50 of money and money-equivalents desperately bid
for every dollar of real goods, money's value can plunge very quickly.

     Should bank depositors decide to withdraw large amounts, either
because they want to stock up on food and other essentials, or because
they are concerned about possible disruptions in banking and credit
card services, another panic situation can arise. Most banks only keep
5-15% of their deposits as reserve, the rest being invested elsewhere
or out on loan. If the banking system is unable to service
simultaneous heavy withdrawals, the threat of widespread runs on banks
-- Y2K-compliant or not, computerized or not -- then becomes very
real. Bank runs in one country can also trigger runs in other
countries.

     By 1999, the Millennium Bug will be a major public concern. It
will increasingly get blamed -- with justification or not -- for plane
crashes, ship collisions, hospital deaths, industrial accidents, and
bank mistakes. Television programs and movies will exploit the issue's
entertainment and box-office potential, bringing it even closer to the
popular psyche. As the world ticks towards the new millennium, the
sense of tension, hysteria and panic will build.

     Panic can also be triggered by the apocalyptic messages of
millennarian groups, as their doomsday scenarios in anticipation of
the new millennium reach a crescendo. Every comet, eclipse,
earthquake, volcanic eruption or flood will tend to acquire
millennarian significance, fueling apocalyptic expectations and fears.
This will aggravate the situation even more, as the millennarians'
doomsday warnings and the public's justified anxiety over the
Millennium Bomb reinforce each other.


More ecological crises on the horizon

     In addition to these Y2K-related problems, all peaking in the
year 2000, other long-term ecological crises are also coming to a
head, due to accelerating widespread ecological destruction from
industrial activities.

     Global warming, for instance, is breaking temperature records
worldwide. It is also bringing with it extreme unpredictability in
climate and weather patterns that threatens our food production
systems. The destruction of watersheds and the pollution of fresh
water sources may lead to scarcity of clean water for drinking and
household use in the 21st century. The indiscriminate use of
antibiotics both in human medicine, in animal husbandry and in genetic
engineering has raised the spectre of super-microbes which are beyond
the control of current medical technologies. The proliferation of
toxic substances in our food, water, home and the environment is
resulting in widespread cancers, mutations, fetal development
problems, and disruptions in the human endocrine system.


Responses to the millennium crisis

     There have been at least six types of responses to the Millennium
Bug. These are:

     * early concern,
     * problem denial,
     * frantic remediation,
     * individual survavalism,
     * community self-sufficiency, and
     * systemic transformation.

     In a way, because the Y2K crisis is a ominous precursor of worse
economic and ecological crises in the future, these responses probably
represent similar typical responses to other global crises which are
looming on the horizon.


Early concern

     A few people had the foresight to anticipate the consequences of
a two-digit year and to do their best to initiate early corrective
measures. Often, however, their early warnings were ignored by
decision-makers who preferred to overlook the problem. Among the
earliest was IBM specialist Robert Bemer, whose frustrating experience
is related by Robert Sam Anson in his January 1999 article for Vanity
Fair entitled "Nightmare on Main Street: The Approaching Y2K
Disaster."

     As early as 1960, Bemer had campaigned hard to make four-digit
years a universal computer standard. Anson relates: "As a practical
matter, the only opinion that counted was that of the Department of
Defense, the largest computer operator on earth. For
bigger-bang-for-the-buck reasons, it was unshakable on the subject of
year dates: no 19s."

     Bemer lobbied succeeding U.S. administrations, to no avail. In
1970, Bemer changed tack, Anson writes, and "beseeched private
organizations to call for a voluntary four-digit-year option. But once
more, the Pentagon's position prevailed. Mindful of government
contracts, big business went along."

     When Bemer retired in 1982, nothing has changed, although he
assumed that "Y2K would be ironed out long before it did any damage."

     Early concerns have also been expressed on issues like the
growing disparity between rich and poor, global warming, mass
extinctions of species, and genetic engineering. We should take these
concerns very seriously.


Problem denial

     Bemer was confronted by the policy-makers' typical response to a
future problem whose solution will cost a lot of money, with no
corresponding gain to show for it. They deny the problem, and thus
postpone the costs of solving it. In the context of a short planning
horizon, the postponed costs do not figure in current decision-making.

     As far as the Millennium Bomb is concerned, problem denial has
become increasingly untenable. However, the bureaucratic and corporate
mindset behind it still dominates today.

     Problem denial was the government's and industry's typical
response to obvious and serious global problems like tobacco-induced
health problems; the cancers and mutations caused by toxic chemicals
like DDT, PCBs, dioxins, etc.; the generation of greenhouse gases; the
mass extinctions of species, now comparable to the prehistoric mass
extinctions; the field release of genetically-engineered organisms;
the depletion of fossil fuels and other non-renewable resources; and
the increasing disparity between rich and poor. Because these have no
fixed deadlines and their impacts are diffused over time, they are
even easier to deny.

     Where governments and businesses have been forced by persistent
citizens' movements and concerned groups to grudgingly acknowledge a
serious problem, they have invariably delayed solving it to postpone
costs and to continue profit-making operations for as long as they
could.


Frantic remediation

     By the time the Y2K problem appeared within the planning horizon
of most governments and businesses, there wasn't enough time to solve
the problem.

     Many of those who had earlier denied the problem are today
switching quickly to frantic remediation efforts. Because these
efforts are late, they can at best reduce the severity of the
problems. They will not be able to take away the uncertainties.

     Some governments and businesses are actually denying the problem
publicly, but are doing frantic remediation work privately. Businesses
do so to avoid loss of confidence by their customers, suppliers,
creditors or stockholders. Governments do so to avoid alarming the
public and causing mass panic.

     The late and frantic remediation of major risks is clearly an
unacceptable response. Yet, governments and corporations continue to
deny many of our ecological and economic problems, although the risks
are greater and very obvious. Will we resort to frantic remediation
again when the terrible consequences of these problems overwhelm us?

     We must identify the flawed mindsets that lead to problem denial
initially and then to frantic remediation subsequently. We must make
sure that, as we try to confront the Y2K crisis, we also free
ourselves from these flawed mindsets.


Individual survivalism

     Among those engaged in frantic remediation, an increasing number
are coming to the conclusion that a crisis of major proportions is
inevitable.

     They are now anticipating some of the worst-case scenarios being
painted by pessimistic assessments of the Millennium Bomb's impact.
Working within the old paradigm of getting the greatest gain for
themselves from whatever situation, they will react competitively,
stock up on food, necessities, and other essential goods and position
themselves to take advantage of new opportunities for profit-making.
They see the looming crisis as a situation where the "only the fittest
will survive", and they want to make sure they belong to those who
will.

     Problem denial, frantic remediation and individual survivalism
are responses that eventually expect a "business as usual" post-Y2K
scenario. These responses reflect a mindset that minimizes cost and
maximizes gain before, during and after the crisis.


Community self-sufficiency

     Among those who are preparing themselves for the crisis, there is
a smaller but nevertheless significant number who are approaching it
not from the individual but from the community perspective. They
realize that to cope with the increased risks posed by the Millennium
Bug, cooperation is better than competition, sharing resources is
better than monopolizing them, and self-sufficiency in basic needs
should be one of the highest priorities of the community. Thus, they
are organizing their community to confront the crisis together, to
support each other, and to help the most vulnerable members of the
community.

     The concept of community and national self-sufficiency has a long
history of debate with the opposite idea of interdependence and
globalization, with the latter emerging dominant in recent decades.
Threatened with the Y2K crisis, however, communities have been forced
to rediscover the importance of ensuring that the productive
facilities for meeting their basic needs are within local reach and
local control, and they are now preparing themselves accordingly.

     Such self-sufficient communities will be the most prepared to
weather the looming millennium crisis.


Systemic transformation

     A mindset that would allow a simple problem like a two-digit year
to persist until it was too late to correct is a deeply-flawed
mindset. Applied to other fields, such a mindset can cause us to miss
other obvious and serious global problems until it is too late to
solve them. The global ecological problems immediately come to mind.

     The Millennium Bomb provides us a perfect occasion for initiating
a thoughtfully-planned process of systemic transformation: identifying
these flawed thinking processes, discrediting them, and proposing
better alternatives. Many social critics have long raised fundamental
questions about today's dominant paradigms which include the
philosophy of mechanistic reductionism, the economics of neoliberalism
and globalization, and the culture of materialist consumerism. The Y2K
crisis, together with other looming ecological and economic crisis
ahead, are a strong argument take seriously these critics' messages.

     Many of these critics have been slow -- perhaps even slower than
governments -- in recognizing the implications of the Millennium Bug.
Hopefully, they will quickly realize that the Y2K crisis provides a
very good opportunity for discrediting old flawed paradigms and
advancing the alternative paradigms which they had been advocating for
decades. When they respond to the crisis, these groups should stop at
nothing less a systemic transformation, a supreme effort at universal
soul-searching and community organizing to free post-2000 societies of
their pre-2000 flaws.


Discrediting flawed mindsets, proposing new paradigms

     There are enough critiques of the deeply-flawed aspects of modern
industrial society. If these critiques have not led to transformation,
it is because industrialism has put in place a full range of powerful
economic, political, cultural and ideological mechanisms for
maintaining the status quo, reproducing itself and reinforcing its
dominance.

     The Y2K crisis, however, will shake industrialism to its very
core, exacerbate its weaknesses and reveal its deepest flaws to all.
It will force individuals and communities to rethink fundamental
patterns of thinking and behavior, and to reorganize themselves
accordingly to respond to the crisis. Earlier debates will be
resurrected, and more powerful arguments in favor of alternative
mindsets will present themselves. Because of the global impact of the
crisis, the possibility has emerged that those communities which are
today spontaneously switching to new patterns of thinking and behavior
to prepare for the crisis will decide to keep their new mindsets
beyond the Y2K crisis, providing the nucleus for efforts at further
systemic transformation after the crisis is over.

     To be realized, this possibility requires a supreme effort by
change advocates. They have to take root among the emerging
self-sufficient communities, or lead in their formation; they have to
sharpen their critique of the flawed mindsets of present society; and
they have to argue out the alternative mindsets they are proposing.
And this will all have to be done within the window of opportunity
presented by the period 1999-2000.

     Among the flawed mindsets which must be discredited through our
Y2K experience are:

     * technoworship
     * gain-maximization,
     * externalized costs,
     * short planning horizons,
     * quantification fetish,
     * globalism, and
     * individualism.


Technoworship

     The Y2K problem exposes modern society technoworship: a blind and
nearly total reliance on technology, particularly high technology, and
its high priests. Thus, when technology fails, many members of society
are completely lost, unable to even take care of their most basic
needs, the production of which has become increasingly detached from
ordinary human experience and hidden behind the veil of technology.

     Technoworship leads to alienation from nature, from our fellow
human beings, and from the products and processes of human labor.
Technology achieves this through its ubiquitous intervention,
constantly putting itself and its products between us and nature,
between us and our fellow human beings, and between the worker and the
raw material, the production process and the final product. This
forces us to relate directly to the technology over and above
everything else.

     This way, technology has managed to increasingly control our
lives.

     But something else controls technology. The puppeteer behind the
veil of technology is corporate research and development, which
decides what technologies are to be developed, how, by whom, and for
what purpose. And they have chosen the direction of more powerful and
all-encompassing -- and therefore more potentially destructive --
technologies.

     The alternative to technoworship is the development of
human-scale tools which keep the individual and the community in touch
with nature, with each other, with the raw material, with the
production process, and with the final product. In the past, this has
been called appropriate technology. Today, it might be called the
principle of local-sufficiency.


Gain-maximization

     The preoccupation with efficiency -- or gain-maximization -- can
be counted among the greatest flaws of modern industrial society.

     It became a dominant paradigm after Adam Smith convinced
economists that an economic agent maximizing its own gain is also
maximizing gain for society as a whole. This imbued the principle with
moral force.

     We moved a step further when we allowed in our laws the creation
of a special kind of legal person. Unlike a natural person which is a
confusing bundle of mixed motivations and emotions, this legal
person's one and only motivation was to maximize its own gain. This
pure gain-maximizer is the for-profit corporation.

     Worse, we ensconced in laws these pure gain-maximizers' economic
and political rights, which they shrewdly used to create an
environment more conducive to their survival and further growth.
Having acquired foothold, these gain-maximizing agents gradually
expanded their corporate rights ("liberalization"), worked to remove
social and legal restrictions on their operations ("deregulation"),
and took over many of functions originally reserved for other societal
structures and institutions ("privatization").

     Gain maximization is the overall context that encouraged
shortsightedness, cost postponement and microefficiencies, the
mindsets which directly led to the Y2K problem.

     Beyond Y2K, let us look at other global problems which threaten
us and our environment: global warming, toxic proliferation (a
superset of the tobacco problem), loss of habitats leading to massive
species extinction, wealth concentration, etc. Behind these problems,
we will usually find the visible hand of these agents of
gain-maximization who recognize no limits in their pursuit of growth
and gain.

     There are obviously other deeply-flawed mindsets within modern
society, but the gain-maximizing paradigm is truly a major one among
them.

     We suggest moving away from gain-maximization towards
risk-minimization, and alternative tends to encourage cooperation,
resource-sharing and collective ownership of assets. Risk minimization
is also called the precautionary principle.


Externalizing costs

     Efficiency calls for minimizing inputs or costs. Over the
decades, cost-minimization has become an art and a science practiced
to near-perfection by pure gain-maximizers. While they can be
legitimately reduced, costs are often simply excluded from the
cost-accounting system by "externalizing" them. This is done in
different ways:

     * The costs are passed on to social sectors who have little no
voice in decision-making and are therefore unable to protest or
refuse. This is a social justice issue.

     * The costs are passed on to the environment, which may
effectively absorb them for a while but whose capacity to do so is
eventually exhausted. This is an ecological issue. It is also becomes
a social justice issue when it affects people who depend on the
environment for survival.

     * The costs are postponed and passed on to the future. Given a
short planning horizon, the costs do not figure into current
decision-making. This is an issue of generational justice. Cost
postponement was a major factor which sapped the institutional will to
solve the Millellium Bug until it was too late.

     * The costs are simply counted as gains. It sounds ridiculous,
but this is exactly how economists and national-planners have been
doing it, adding goods as well as "bads" to the gross national product
(GNP) or the gross domestic product (GDP) to measure "improvements" in
a country's economy. Note, for instance, how the Y2K remediation and
litigation costs will raise GNP.

     Externalizing costs blinds the decision-making process to major
risk factors and unacceptable costs which we would otherwise reject.

     The alternative to cost externalization is full-cost accounting,
in which the costs to various sectors of society, to the environment,
and to future generations are fully accounted for, and in which goods
and bads are not lumped together into meaningless figures like GNP or
GDP. This may be called the principle of fairness.


Short planning horizons

     A simple way of externalizing cost is to adopt a short planning
horizon and to postpone costs beyond the planning horizon. This is how
concern for the exhaustion of non-renewable resources like
fossil-fuels and minerals is disregarded. This is how we miss obvious
potential threats like greenhouse gases, toxic chemicals, or
genetically-engineered organisms.

     Obviously, we must adopt longer planning horizons, to avoid
missing future cost factors. Some indigenous tribes are said to figure
into their decision-making the impact of proposed actions over seven
generations.

     Truly, had decision-makers similarly adopted a longer planning
horizon and avoided repeated postponement of the costs until it was
too late, the Y2K problem would not have reached the crisis
proportions it has today.


Quantification fetish

     The Y2K crisis will be triggered by potential and actual failures
in the measurement of elapsed time. That such failures of measurement
can threaten global economic collapse is a reflection of how the
measurement of quantity has come to rule our economic life, at the
expense of sensing quality.

     Thus, because we can measure the time, we have forgotten to keep
pace with day and night. Because we can count the days and the months,
we have forgotten to adopt naturally to the seasons. Because we
measure income and GNP and count populations, we have forgotten how to
sense the quality of life and the happiness of peoples. Because we
measure cholesterol levels, we have forgotten how to feel our own
state of health. By counting calories, we have forgotten how
distinguish between nourishing and toxic-laden foods. And by passing
on to machines the tasks of counting and measurement, we miss the
essence of things completely.

     An alternative to the quantification fetish is the quality
principle. By restoring the dynamic balance between quantity and
quality, we can also restore those human capacities which cannot be
measured and which machines cannot detect: the capacity to feel, to
love, to enjoy, to intuit, to be healthy, and to be happy. After all,
it is the quality of life that matters.


Globalism

     In their relentless pursuit of efficiency, pure gain-maximizers
have advocated globalism and taken the lead in breaking down modular
barriers such as economic barriers, cultural and linguistic barriers,
territorial barriers, geographic barriers, and even biological
barriers between species.

     There is enough in systems theory to explain why turning a
network of relatively independent modular subsystems into a single
tightly-coupled humongous system will geometrically increase the
number of potential interactions and undesirable side-effects in a
system. The side-effects will, in turn, make the system bug-ridden,
unreliable and failure-prone.

     The Millennium Bug is a perfect example. Globalization has
dramatically increased the number of possible interactions within the
world economy among its components at different levels: computing
infrastructure (global networks and the Internet), production and
distribution (globalized production systems and global free trade),
finance level (liberalization and global capital mobility), and
psychological level (international media and the Internet). Because of
the global nature of these interactions, a Y2K problem in one level
can easily lead to numerous side-effects at its level as well as in
other levels. The numerous Y2K failures will make the global economy
problem-ridden, unreliable and crash-prone.

     Even biology eschews globalism: living systems do not exist as
one humongous community, but in the form of separate species. If
species barriers are broken down -- which is what cocky and incredibly
naive genetic engineers are doing -- unrestricted DNA exchange can
dramatically increase the number of potential biochemical
interactions, including undesirable side-effects that can propagate
throughout the system. The consequences of a genetic equivalent of the
Millennium Bug are too horrible to even contemplate.

     For systems of high reliability, designers almost always use the
modular approach, i.e., they break up a complex system into smaller,
relatively autonomous subsystems (or modules), which interact only
through well-defined interfaces. Then, they create barriers --
firewalls, even -- between modules, to prevent unnecessary
interactions among components in different modules, and to ensure that
the interactions go through the modules' interfaces.

     A alternative non-globalist approach will give priority to
community, bioregional, and national self-sufficiency, and build a
robust network of these self-sufficient communities, bioregions and
nations which will interact with each other through well-defined
rules. This is based, in systems theory, on the principle of
modularization.


Individualism

     We are not only members of human communities, with the
corresponding social rights and responsibilities that such membership
confers us; we are also members of a much larger community of life,
which confers us a similar set of ecological rights and
responsibilities.

     Individualism contraposes the individual to its community, losing
sight of the necessary balance between the two and overemphasizing the
individual. It likewise contraposes the human community to the rest of
the living world, leading to a similar loss of balance. This mindset
leads to a failure to appreciate the importance of community to the
individual and the importance of nature to human communities.

     This flawed mindset manifests itself as individual survivalism in
response to the Y2K crisis. It is also an important factor behind the
ecological disasters worldwide and the general social breakdown in
highly individualist industrial societies.

     The alternative to individualism is a community-spirit that
sensitively and dynamically balances the interests of the community
vis-a-vis the individual and the entire society and the interests of
human communities vis-a-vis the rest of the ecological world. This may
be called the principle of wholeness.


The Millennium's greatest challenge

     Beyond the Y2K crisis, these flawed mindsets will lead us in the
future to even worse ecological crises, whose early consequences we
are already starting to feel.

     In this sense, the Y2K crisis is just a warning shot. While it is
scaring the wits out of many people, its impacts will not be not as
bad as the ecological disasters looming on the horizon. In fact, it
serves nicely as a timely reminder for us to stop ecological problem
denial, to switch to early concern, and not to rely on frantic -- and
futile -- remediation in the future. The Millennium Bomb's wakeup call
is probably our last window of opportunity for a relatively painless
systemic transformation.

     The greatest challenge that faces us, therefore, is to transform
the Y2K crisis itself into a great movement for universal
soul-searching that will call attention to the flawed mindsets which
are leading our societies towards disaster; to free ourselves, our
institutions and our communities of these flawed mindsets; and to
initiate discussions within emerging self-sufficient communities
toward formulating socially-just and ecologically-friendly patterns of
thinking and behavior.

     There are those who are overwhelmed by this task and by the
seemingly inexhaustible capacity of the modern industrial system to
remain dominant. They fear that it will again be "business as usual"
after the crisis is over, and that the pure gain-maximizers and
everything else these represent will be more entrenched than ever.

     On the other hand, let us not lose sight of the increasing number
of people who are demanding to move away from socially-unjust and
ecologically-disastrous mindsets and who are now forming themselves --
with conscious intent or forced by the Y2K crisis -- into
self-sufficient communities. The crisis will weaken industrialism and
strengthen these new self-sufficient communities. With the help of
conscious advocates of systemic transformation, many of them can
survive and flourish well beyond the crisis years, and pose a direct
challenge to the flawed mindsets at the core of industrialism.

     If, through our supreme efforts, we manage to form enough of
these transformed communities, absolutely unwilling to return to the
old ways and perfectly capable of replicating and multiplying
themselves, then we will have created a way out for civilization.

     It is then up to the rest to take this escape route from the
looming ecological disasters created by today's flawed paradigms.

     Then, and only then, can we welcome with great joy the new
millennium.