Because I have the modest reputation of being a technoguru of sorts, an alpha AG (Alpha Geek) if you will, a lot of people and companies have sought my opinions and advice the past couple of years about the upcoming potential problems posed by the Year 2000 AD/CE. Especially in the case of companies, what problems they may or may not end up having with their software aside, I've been asked to address potential issues regarding Y2K coping strategies, logistics, and corporate perceptions.

Let me give you the advice and essence of the philosophy that I've been espousing regarding the impact of the so-called Y2K crisis to come. Once you fix the date bugs in your software if any, then other than some extreme reactive actions that some people in society might take, the Year 2000 is going to be one great, big, overblown fizzle, a sparkler on a cheesebox raft atop the river of human history, rather than some atomic explosion bellowing from the heartburn of God.

Why do I say that? Because, the Year 2000 as we perceive it is a myth, it hasn't and won't ever exist. Ever since the 6th century monk Dionysius miscalculated and accidentally worked backwards to the wrong year of Jesus' birth, the Western World has since mindlessly accepted it as a defacto benchmark for the birth of civilization as we've come to know it. The plain incorrectness of Dionysius' attempt at establishing the pigeonhole year of when Jesus was born is beyond academic dispute. Then why do we, why have we accepted the wrong breakpoint as the starting point for all years hence? Because it's simply been easier and more convenient to do so, rather than tamper with two thousands years of incorrectly perceived timeframes of history after the fact.

Humankind is a creature of habit, and is often basically lazy, especially when an issue isn't life and death to its gestalt consciousness. So, if  the Year 2000 really won't be that, it might actually 2001 or maybe even 2005 or later, who cares, right? Well, the power of perception is no more or less real oftentimes than the power of reality. Thusly, the perception by most that Y2K is a significant date via ripple effect makes it a power in the reality of those of us in the minority who truly believe that the Year 2000 is a harmless fraud.

Most great religions have always had their own calendars. Jews, Moslems, Hindus, Buddhists, etc. to name a few, keep their own records in their own time and in their own way. Does that make our Christ-originated calendar any more or any less valid than those? Of course not. But with the conquering of the world of commerce and industry by the English-speaking world, comes an imposition of the timemark of the Christbirth-centered calendar. Does that make such an imposition via the power of the $dollar$ on the rest of the world an act of cultural terrorism? No, but we Americans especially need to recognize more clearly the cultural paradigms which gave us the calendar we're currently using, and accept that our perception of the time of our civilization isn't the only correct perception out there.

Even if you're the most hardshell, fundamentalist Protestant Christian possible, one who believes in their heart that God created the world as we know it just a few thousand years ago, even that belief doesn't reconcile on balance the incorrectly determined benchmark of Christ's birthyear. And, if you believe like a majority of Americans do, and believe that the Earth is billions of years old, then what possible difference could some fifteen-hundred-year-old totally-arbitrarily-set timelock for the past couple of thousand years make to you?

So, good folks and dear readers, permit to offer you one friendly bit of advice, offered in the spirit of reason and logic...r-e-l-a-x!!! If the world does come to end on January 1 2000, it'll be because God's in His infinite wisdom has determined that's to be the day and the time, which only He knows, not because it's the anniversary date for some hapless millennium which isn't even correct in the first place.

What am I going to doing, where will I  be New Year's Day of the New Bimillennium? Well, bowing to common sense, logic, knowledge of technology, and a tiny bit of gut-level fear of some other people's stupidity, I won't be on a commercial airliner in mid-air going somewhere that day, and I will be looking over my couple of weeks' worth of groceries stuck back and my couple of month's worth of cash stuck back, too. Mainly, I'll be enjoying that unique New Year as any other before, remembering the past, being hopeful for the future, definitely enjoying and not sweating the present.