Millennium reflections, Part 2

This New Year marks the true beginning of the third millennium, according to Arthur C Clarke in his book, Greetings Carbon-Based Bipeds. Unlike last new year, however, it has been a refreshingly unassuming transition - no Y2K paranoia, no lavish spending on superficial millennium projects, no extravagant parties. All in all, a better atmosphere in which to calmly reflect on the achievements and failures of human civilization over the arbitrary 100-year and 1000-year time scale.

What can I say about the last millennium that doesn’t sound trite, trivial or ignorant? I have glanced over the historical summaries given by The Economist’s Millennium Special Edition and Norris McWhirter’s Book of Millennium Records. Based on these, and my negligible knowledge of history, all I can intelligently say is that the visible aspects of life - the political structure of society, our scientific understanding of the world and the technological drivers of the economy - have changed almost beyond recognition.

On the whole, these revolutions have created more opportunities for significant cultural advancement and personal development, but this has by no means been the universal outcome. There are still many contradictions. We have a Universal Declaration of Human Rights, but are still witness to genocide and a lack of respect for the rights of other life forms. We have seen the spread of political democracy, but companies and market forces with little or no accountability are destroying people’s freedom of choice and ability to exercise self-reliance.

We have profound scientific theories such as Einstein’s Relativity, Bohm’s Implicate Order and Sheldrake’s Morphic Resonance, yet we still act as if we live in a Newtonian clockwork universe of absolutes and separation. We recognise Huxley’s Perennial Philosophy as a unified understanding of the world’s spiritual traditions, yet religion is still one of the most divisive and bloody forces in society. Technology has advanced at a dizzying speed, with all the potential to improve our lives in every way, but we find ourselves more stressed, with less creative time, destroying our natural environment.

What of the future? As we have seen in the political transformation of South Africa, constructive change is more possible than we dare to believe, but it all hinges on a change in perception. In the century and millennium ahead, interconnectedness should be our watchword. If we are to advance as a civilisation, if we are not to destroy ourselves, we will need to radically shift the focus of our energies, from external conquests to internal frontiers. Mapping the unseen world and learning to navigate the uncharted waters of the mind is the challenge facing humanity today.