Y2K as a Major Life Event by Warren Bone, explores the stages of emotional response to a great loss, in this case, our disrupted expectations regarding Y2K.
*CATCH Y2K* by Paul Gee, an exploration of Y2K as a classic "double-bind" phenomenon.
by Warren Bone (excerpt from his longer January 2000 piece)
The Major Life Event Cycle-Where are you right now?
Prepared for a War That Got
Called Off
Shock and Denial
Anger and Resistance
Questioning, Exploration, Bargaining
Depression
Acceptance, Commitment
I saved this for last since it provides a framework for understanding
the thoughts,
feelings and emotions some of us have had since the "Big
Non-Event": mid-night
rollover into 2000.
It's like the whole world was indeed prepared for going to
war. We had spent years
anticipating the very worst; preparing ourselves to contend with
the worst. Getting ready
for this first terrible battle of a war that would possibly last
for years, and would claim
many casualties. Our years of preparation and training for this
were about to pay off!
Heavily armed and totally prepared for battle, the troops were
in the trenches and
foxholes, and manning their duty stations. On the highest alert,
worldwide. Ready for
the destruction to begin precisely at midnight.
There were literally millions of brave soldiers in a thousand
armies, at the stroke of
midnight, holding their breath for the first report of that first
devastating blow signaling
the beginning of the endall preparations and training completed,
there was nothing
more to do now but wait.
We waited for that first big reportand we continued to waityet
nothing was
happening to signal that the war had begun. Nothing. We continued
to wait anxiously
through an entire 24-hour period for some sign of what we expected.
Then it happened.
A communiqué was issued advising that the war had been called off!
After all the work we had done to get ready for this, they
now tell us it's all overwe
could go home now. There's not going to be a war today!
Everyone was celebrating. Except the troops who were prepared
to fight the war. They
were emotionally drained, and not yet ready to celebrate. Why?
You see, as odd as it might seem, when troops individually-as
people, not as an
army-have mentally prepared for the battle, even to the point
that they each have
submitted to the fact that they might even die in this battle,
at the moment they learn
that "it's all over, the war's been called off," a great
disappointment takes over
immediately. A letdown. Yet some relief. But certainly it takes
time to replace those
strange emotions with happiness, and celebration.
Funny how our minds work, isn't it.
A "Major Life Event" is anything that significantly
(greatly) impacts us emotionally. The
death of a loved one is the prime example. Somehow we learn to
"deal with it."
Other examples include divorce, losing a job, serious illness,
to name but a few.
Anytime our emotions are heavily jolted because of some type Major
Life Event, we
experience several different emotions in "dealing with it."
We are now dealing with another type of Major Life Event. To
many of us the "Year
2000 War" has been called off, and we even wonder if it has
just been postponed.
Not to imply that this event in our lives compares in severity
to the loss of a loved one,
but the feelings and emotions will be the same, only to a much
lesser degree.
The cycle outlined at the beginning of this discussion explains
the various emotions
we go through when we have experienced one of these devastating
blows. People
going through this experience do not necessarily start at the
beginning of the cycle
and progress through each phase sequentially until finally arriving
at the end of the
cycle. Rather, we can move from one phase into any other at any
time, jumping
between various feelings and then coming back to where we started.
One can even be
in more than one phase at the same time. Some people skip over
some emotions
altogether, and may even jump from one all the way to the end,
and stay there.
Most times, however, most of us will progress generally through
the cycle, spending
some time in each phase, perhaps momentarily visiting another,
but eventually
completing the cycle.
It is helpful to know where you are, since others are in this
cycle with you. Knowing
where you are right now with your emotions helps you to understand
where you are
headed. A road map, if you will.
First thing that usually happens is that we are Shocked that
it even happened at all!
This is immediately accompanied by Denial. "I'm shocked!
Stunned! I can't believe
this has happened! This is just not happening to me!)
Then you will find yourself moving to Anger and Resistance.
"Ok, I know it happened,
but I'm mad as hell about it! (But I still can't believe this
really did happen.) But it did
and I'm mad about it.)
Next you will question things. Questioning, Exploring the facts,
Bargaining with
yourself. "Ok, now I'm no longer mad, and I know it did happen,
but how in the world
did it happen? I wonder? What if? Ok, I can deal with this a little
bit now. I'll just try
to figure it out."
Depression is also likely at about this point since you've
accepted the facts that it did
happen, and you've gotten over your anger enough to begin thinking
rationally about
it. "I'm really sad now, because of what happened. What did
I do wrong? What did I do
to deserve this? I've lost so much. I'm really depressed."
Finally we are able to move into Acceptance and Commitment.
"I'm feeling better
now, no longer depressed. All this did happen and now I accept
that as a fact, and I'm
going on with my lifeI'm getting on board that train! I do feel
positive about things
again! I'm ok."
Don't feel bad if you reach that final phase and later revisit
some previous territory. Just
make sure you find your way back to the end again!
by Paul Gee
movingthrough@hotmail.com
I have been trying to make sense of Y2k
For the year and half preceding year 2000 I felt like I was
living in
some bizarre, slightly surrealistic world. During that time I
did many
hundreds of hours of research. I found that Y2K was presented
both as a
serious problem - one which could logically have disastrous consequences
-
and at the same time as a trivial matter of little or no significance.
I
felt like I was Yossarian in the book 'Catch 22' trying to have
a rational
conversation with Major Major! It was impossible because reality
shifted. It
was impossible for Yossarian to argue with his superiors because
they were
committed to the twisted logic of what psychotherapists call the
double
bind. I felt something akin to this in the context of Y2K.
Double binds.
The psychology of double binds was explored in the 1960s by
the
psychiatrist R.D Laing. It was his thesis that the roots of mental
illness, particularly schizophrenia, arose from the child's failed
attempt
to make rational sense of parental mixed messages, or double binds.
A
parent might say to a child 'gives us a hug', then, as the child
responds,
the parent freezes and the child withdraws. Then the parent says
'Oh don't
you want a hug?'. The child is left confused because the verbal
and
non-verbal messages do not agree. There is no rational response.
Any
response would be wrong
Why does a parent give out double binds? According to the theory,
the parent
is holding two inner parts of the self - beliefs, attitudes, and
feelings -
which are contradictory. E.g., 'I ought to love my child: I find
closeness
scary'. This splitting of the self into two systems is largely
a defensive
measure which stops the individual from bringing into consciousness
an
awareness which would be scary or unacceptable. Often one half
of the
split is kept out of awareness - in this case 'I find closeness
scary'.
The child's failure to respond is rationalised as, 'Oh don't you
want
a hug?'
Now, double binds can be used deliberately to control others
- as
awesomely illustrated by Orwell's depiction of 'doublethink' in
1984. But
mixed messages need not be deliberate: often - perhaps mostly
- they come
from a place of fear and are out of awareness. A mixed message
is given
out because consciousness is split into two systems. This splitting,
at its
most simplistic, helps us to blot out part of the whole picture:
the part
we find most uncomfortable. But splitting can work in more subtle
ways. We
can keep both split parts in consciousness, but blot out the logical
link
between them. Again, by doing this, we do not need to see or feel
the
implications of our full awareness. It is fear that feeds the
split.
Split consciousness
So what of Y2K? I had a sense of a weird split in consciousness
in our
culture over the issue. It was perhaps most obvious in the way
the media
reported the matter. Serious evidence, when it was reported, was
reported
blandly, or in a trivial manner, with no attempt at analysis.
The mixed
message was 'this matter is serious, but not serious'. There
was no
investigative journalism, no high profile documentaries, no serious
analysis, no hard questioning of government or business leaders.
There was
no attempt to explore the issue in any depth, perhaps because
this would
have exposed the duplicity of the double bind.
It seems to me that the business world also split its consciousness
over
Y2K. On the one hand the issue was presented as not just serious,
but very
serious problem, so serious that billions of pounds needed to
be poured into
remediation projects. This was not some knee-jerk reaction, but
a
considered policy based on our understanding of the problem at
the time.
The millennium bug was sufficiently unpredictable that any non-millennium
compliant business or industry was considered to be seriously
at risk.
Industry experts from many different fields agreed with this analysis.
Yet at the same time Y2K was held as trivial: not by challenging
the
theory or offering a better one, but simply by ignoring the implications
of
the theory.
Global interconnectedness
The most deeply uncomfortable implications of the theory, it
seems to me,
came into focus when the global aspect was considered. The theory
- that
any non-compliant industry was at risk - logically meant that
every industry
in the world was potentially vulnerable. Since in a global economy,
all
industries and nations are interdependent, no nation or business
could fix
the problem in isolation. This logically meant that the problem,
as it was
understood, was insoluble except by the co-operation of the whole
world. And
it was exactly this - the global dimension - which was dropped
so thoroughly
from Y2K thinking. Yet this was surely the crux of the problem.
And it was no minor problem. By mid-1998 it was obvious that
the whole
world could not achieve full compliance: there were not the time,
expertise
or resources around the world to fix all the systems. Rather than
analysing
the significance of this, we ignored it: we allowed it to slide
out of
consciousness. Economic forecasters, the stock market, government
policy
makers and, not least of all, the media, blanked out this part
of the
problem. While national moves towards compliance were were seen
as important
achievements, there was rarely any significance given to the fact
that most
of the world (on whom we depended economically) were months, if
not
years, behind Britain in the remediation efforts.
It could be argued that there was a good psychological reason
for this.
Since we had ruled out global co-operation, the problem we were
faced with
had become insoluble, given the terms in which we understood it.
We could
not avoid the risk of disruption which the theory implied, simply
by fixing
our own systems. Yet we continued to celebrate our own companies'
lumbering
moves towards millennium readiness, as though this were somehow
solving the
problem. It was like the first class passengers, in a badly damaged
ship,
being told by the captain that holes under their part of the ship
were
almost repaired, and the passengers relaxing as though the danger
were over!
The government
So much for the way the media and the business world split
their
consciousness over Y2K: what about the government? Now the
government, it
seems to me, incorporated the business world's false logic.
They also
added another layer of contradiction which came from their need
to control.
Because they had an interest in seeking to control public reaction,
the
message to the public was nearly always 'Every thing is fine -
just check
your video recorder.' They wanted to allay panic. At the same
time, the
message to the business world was quite the opposite. Y2K was
presented as
a very serious threat. Whilst the public were being told that
rumours of
possible disruptions were a complete 'myth', businesses were encouraged
to
make detailed contingency plans because of the possibility of
'severe
disruption'!
Here was double think at its most bizarre, more reminiscent
of Stalinist
Russia than so-called free democracy. Even more bizarre and alarming
was
the fact that the utter contradiction went almost unchallenged
by the media.
But perhaps psychologically this is not surprising, as the
media were
already committed to their own brand of double think But it was
not just
the mainstream media which side-stepped the issue. From the far
right to
the far left there was almost complete silence. Alternative press
- journals
such as New Internationalist - gave hardly a mention to the issue.
Greenpeace
were silent. It was as though as a whole culture, we had somehow
switched
off our awareness of these contradictions.
Whole culture
It seems to me that this split in consciousness I have been
describing did
indeed infuse our whole culture. The logical inconsistencies,
the double
binds of the government and the business world, had become invisible
to
most of us. This phenomenon - a culture's capacity to collude
with mixed
messages - is not an unknown phenomenon: it is what enables
a
dictatorial leader to convince a population that by taking complete
power,
he is actually giving freedom to everyone. Orwell's Animal Farm
is a text
book study of this. It seems to me that unconscious collusion
of this kind
is to a greater or lesser extent present in any culture: but the
homogeneity
of the response - or lack of response - to Y2K was remarkable.
Was this
perhaps a measure of the (unconscious) fear the issue evoked in
us: did it
touch a cultural taboo?
Those of us who chose to challenge the inconsistencies which
surrounded
Y2K were faced with the full force of the double binds. Effectively
we
were outside the logic system of our culture and there was no
place for
dialogue. Y2K was not discussed except in a trivial or jokey manner.
Efforts
at serious discussion were stonewalled, ridiculed or attacked.
The
consistency of this response was striking. Many of us researched
and read
what experts around the world were saying. The jigsaw pieces did
not fit.
Rarely if at all, did we see the basic theoretic understanding
of Y2K
challenged. Over and over again it was presented as an unknown
risk, and a
serious threat. And over and over again we saw the implications
of this
theory being ignored. This was a profoundly crazy-making situation
to be
in.
It could be argued that as a culture we actually 'knew' the
experts were
wrong, that we knew that Y2K did not pose a significant threat.
This is a
nice theory but not convincing to me. If the 'all hype'
hypothesis was a
serious rational position, rather than a defensive emotional response
as I
tend to believe it was, then there should logically have been
an outcry at
the huge waste of public and corporate funds - literally billions
of pounds.
But government and corporate policy on Y2K was not challenged:
not by the
media, not by pressure groups, not by the government opposition,
not by the
business world.
If the dismissal of Y2K as trivial was based on a rational
assessment, then
where was the theory to support that conclusion? Where was the
risk
assessment model which demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt that
we could
safely ignore the whole issue? I did not find one. Certainly the
'bump in
the road' scenario was always a possible outcome. But so was a
catastrophic
one. Y2K was from the beginning an unknown risk. We could not
model it
accurately, nor could we assess the risk: we simply did not have
the
theoretical tools. What we were trying to assess was the influence
of a
potentially large but indeterminate number of errors in a very
complex
global interdependent system. It was like trying to guess
with certainty
what the weather would be like a week tomorrow!
Our responses to Y2K
I have been arguing that there was a split in consciousness
in our culture.
I am too close to claim to be able to make an objective analysis.
My guess
is that what was going on was quite complex. I am also well
aware that it
is possible, indeed easy, to project one's own pathology onto
the world and
then see the world as crazy. In matters of great importance it
is easy to
be mistaken. One of my reasons for trying to understand
the whole Y2K
issue more deeply is to help me come to understand, and come to
terms
with, my experience during that period. This writing is only a
first
tentative step in that direction.
I want to finish by going back to the example of the child
responding to
the double binds of her mother, to see what the parallels there
might be
with Y2K. You will remember that the child, in the example I gave,
was
(verbally) invited to have a hug, but was then (nonverbally) rebuffed
(the contradiction); and finally told: 'Oh don't you want a hug?'.
What
were the child's choices in that situation, and how does that
compare to the
choices we made individually and as a culture to Y2K?
A child who is faced by double binds in a family situation
- effectively the
child's whole culture - has few options. The number one
defensive ploy
is to cut out one of the mixed messages. The child does not 'hear'
the
mother say 'give us a hug'; or alternatively, the child responds,
and seeks
to ignore the fact that the hug is cold; is not really a show
of
affection. The advantage to this psychological strategy
is that the child
does not have to handle the parental contradictions. The cost
is the
repression of sensitivity : the child must blot out a part of
her awareness
of the world in order to cope with the contradictions. Essentially
the
child in some way colludes with the parents splitting of reality.
It seems to me that this was the response to Y2K which most
of our culture
chose to take. It worked out to be a good strategy in many ways
and
certainly got us through. There are possible down sides. A child
who adopts
this strategy copes, is a coper. At least appears to. Later in
life
problems start to emerge. The adult does not have the awareness
and
sensitivity to be able to make wise choices. There is an inner
tension in
the individual which may not appear as mental illness - perhaps
just
depression, or physical illness. Our cultural response to Y2K
turned out to
be effective, but was it altogether healthy? What problems might
we be
storing up for the future I wonder?
There is another way in which a child may respond to parental
double binds.
Where the child is not able to blot out one of the contradictory
messages,
perhaps because of the sensitivity of the child, or because of
the severity
of the contradiction, the child is typically either paralysed
with a sense
of shame (I am 'a bad girl' for not responding to my mother's
hug) or
feels overwhelming rage and frustration at the feeling of being
trapped. If
she makes a correct analysis of her experience - 'Your hugs don't
feel nice'
or 'You don't mean what you say' - she is ridiculed, attacked
or stonewalled.
A sensitive child's attempt to handle a severe double bind
can be a deeply
wounding experience. These are one of the roots of schizophrenia
according
to some psychotherapeutic theorists (notably Laing). The child's
sense of
reality is not affirmed. There is no solid ground upon which to
stand. It
is likely that the child (in Laing's terminology) will start to
split into
an outer 'false self' - the part which seeks to conform with parental
expectations; and a'true self' - a private inner world of the
child's
thoughts, feelings and phantasies which are not constrained by
impossible
demands. The danger of course, is that this inner world, separated
from a
rational environment, risks becoming ungrounded: mere phantasy.
There are some parallels here to my own response to Y2K. Although
I faced
it with as much rationality and courage as I could, I also felt
at times
both rage and and a sense of shame, overwhelming at times: rage
at the risk
we were putting the world to, at the indifference of most people,
at the
utter confusion of the mixed messages; and shame at my inability
to find a
response which felt wholesome, at my fear, at my inability to
talk to
others, at my inability make a real difference to the problem.
I felt
deeply about Y2K. I suspect that the depth of my emotional response
was
compounded by the opening up old childhood wounds around double
messages. I
already had a history of not knowing whom to trust.
In the adult part of me, I found that I had a great deal of
courage: I faced
fully the possible scenarios, and understood - not just intellectually,
but
emotionally - what these meant. It took courage to speak out.
And I took
action. In 1998 I did a great deal of campaigning. I believed
then that we
would tackle it as a whole world problem. By 1999 no action seemed
adequate. I felt very stuck. By the middle of 1999 I had largely
cut off
defensively to a private inner world of concern and fear, which
I shared
with a very few others, and an outer 'unreal' (or should I say
surreal)
world of normality to get through the every day activities. (cf
Laing's
false self and real self) It was these last 6 months which felt
most like a
nightmare: I found myself becoming ungrounded and withdrawn.
In some ways it was the unreality - the surrealism - of the
experience
which I found most terrifying. Certainly the future was scary,
but at least
it felt real in the sense that I was facing a real unknown and
my responses
of fear, anxiety and indeed courage felt real. It was the
complete
absence of any kind of concern from the vast majority of people
which I
found so hard to bear! In order to be part of my culture I felt
I had
somehow to pretend, to collude with the pretence that everything
was fine.
There was no common feeling of mutual support and concern, like
there was in
the 60 and 70's when the awareness of the possible devastation
of nuclear
missiles came fully into awareness. Y2K was simply invisible:
a non-issue.
The irony - and this is a profound irony - is that what we
did as a world
was in hindsight right. Somehow as a world we stumbled through
to doing
exactly what was needed. Was there some invisible hand guiding
us? Maybe
there was. I suspect that once we had reached the end of 1998,
the approach
the world took - 'close your eyes and hope for the best!' - was
possibly the
only path. It was really too late to do much else. And it got
us through.
My question is: as a culture have we learnt anything from this
experience?
Right now, I think not, but maybe that is too early to tell. Perhaps
it
the job of historians to bring the full picture into cultural
awareness and
to ask the questions we would not ask at the time.
My next question is: Do those of use who have been through
this suffering -
of facing the unknown of Y2K with eyes open - have anything to
offer; is
there any wisdom to be gleaned from the experience? I leave this
as
an open question. I have some thoughts on this, but really I am
still too
close to the experience to be able to have anything useful to
say. But I
would like to hear your thoughts on this if you are ready to put
them
into words.
This is my first attempt to make some sense of Y2K. It far
too complex an
issue to do any more than give a few broad brush strokes in a
short piece of
writing like this. I am sure Yossarian - the hero of Catch 22
- would have a
few terse comments to make about it! I should be interested to
know if what
I have written strikes any resonance in your experience and understanding
of
Y2K.