Y2K? It's about more than bus and beans
By Dita De Boni
If I were Jesus, I might be a little annoyed that the most noise being made about a day marking 2000-odd years since my birth came from a millennial cockroach (ie, with a brain in his head and in his butt) and concerned, in essence, the stockpiling of baked beans.
Cockroaches are, after all, next only to locusts in the historical plague stakes and baked beans are not advisable for groups of people holed-up in unventilated Y2K emergency shelters.
I might be piqued that millennial humankind is smiling smugly and considering itself far in advance of previous peoples, despite the popularity of World Federation Wrestling and the use of cold wax strips pointing to the contrary.
Here in little ol' New Zealand, displaced people by the truckload will wander through Auckland town late on the night of December 31 - pretending to be part of one party or another to make up for the fact they simply have nothing more interesting to do than watch the proceedings on television - but few will be thinking about exactly why we have chosen to infuse this particular day, this hour, with such huge significance.
A significance, that is, apart from an incredibly significant programming oversight which could see the world come crashing down around our ears.
We could say people are generally apathetic about the whole thing, which would explain why the potential spectre of losing a nation's-worth of life savings, international stock markets collapsing and the possibility of civil emergency has yielded barely a yawn in the non-tech populace.
But it seems that followers of Jesus 2000 are not capitalising on the chance to remind us of the reason for Y2K - to point out it's not a Microsoft invention or a Saatchi catchphrase.
Maybe they saw the consumer frenzy of Christmas and thought "what's the point of trying to enlighten a population heading straight to hell with their furbies and designer crockery in tow?"
Or have they simply been outplayed for airtime by computer programmers - a secretive bunch who have either whipped up a frenzy with scare scenarios to wreak revenge on jocular sporty types, or plan to lead a new world order from computer terminals when the world turns to rubble at 0:00 am, January 1?
Whether you believe in the records of Christian history or not - and most claim not to - 2000 years later we still celebrate this man's birth and his death, and this year on the stroke of midnight will raise a glass or 10 to usher in the third millennium of the Christian calendar.
It may be less a religious marker than a historical one - when 2000 years of tumultuous, measurable history, as well as the profundity of our existence and evolution as humans, can be mentally chewed on.
Either way, this type of public relations event comes around rarely, except for Christmas and Easter, for the West's most famous prophet and it's surprising that more churches and religious organisations have chosen not to carpe diem and hammer home society's continued semi-conscious adherence to the Christian calendar.
<i>Diary:</i> Dita De Boni
AdvertisementAdvertise with NZME.