A coupla decades ago, I started thinking about the odometer of human history, those spinning numbers on western culture's dashboard. It was years before the 9's rolled over to 0's on our calendar, but I thought long and hard about the end of the nineties and the beginning of the "aughts"; the end of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first; the end of our second millennium and beginning of our third.
This inquiry was devoid of supernatural numerology or religious fervor or computer panic, but it was, instead, about those things. I theorized that a kind of mass hysteria would overtake reason as our society felt pushed to the year 2000.
I think it's fair to say my theory was correct: if you haven't noticed yourself as subject to mass hysteria in the past decade or so, then you've probably noticed it in others. It may be diffuse and hard to define, but like obscenity (and isn't mass hysteria a kind of cultural obscenity?) you know it when you see it.
What never reached my inquiry was a simple question, in desperate need of an answer: When would it end?
I suppose a significant slice of the hysterical pie chart would say, "With the Rapture, of course." But I was looking for a more reasonable, concrete answer.
I think we have a "prime candidate" for an answer: November 11. On that day, a second will pass twice that provides plenty of grist for the Stop the Insanity mill. In the coming weeks, I'll make the case for this theory, here, at The Bloomsday Device, but I'd encourage you to dwell on it, too.
