One hundred and sixty-five years ago today, on October 22, 1844, the world was supposed to end. As you may have noticed, it did not, and while humanity’s continued plodding may be a source of relief to you and me, to the most fervent believers in the October 22nd scenario, the failure of history to climax on that date became known as the Great Disappointment. Nearly a quarter million otherwise very normal Americans heard the preaching of William Miller, a farmer from Upstate New York, and came to believe, with him, that the Bible foretold Christ’s return to earth on a fall day more than eighteen hundred years since his last appearance.
We, of course, are too sophisticated to believe in such hooey. The wonderfully smart students in my class on apocalypticism in American culture are sensitive enough to look for meaning—psychological and sociological, mostly—in the tale of the Millerites, but they, and I, also can’t help express a bit of condescension at the rubes who sold their farms and embarrassed themselves in anticipation of the end.
But we sophisticates must tread lightly here. In my more sober moments I am tempted to call the Miller phenomenon an example of “irrational exuberance,” recognizing that it was no more irrational or exuberant than our own millennial dreams. The very markets about which Alan Greenspan spoke when he coined the term have proven that. Mr. Greenspan himself—our William Miller, disgraced prophet of bliss—has been forced to recant, telling Congress a year ago this week that the Crash of 2008 revealed a “flaw” in his previously unassailable faith in self-regulating markets. A year has passed, and little has been done to learn the lessons of 2008, the lessons of Greenspan’s flaw. After the Great Disappointment, the vast majority of Millerites returned to their farms, families, and lives; we, on the other hand, continue to wait on the mountaintop. The Millerites are looking less and less crazy all the time.
... and everyday life 
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