This millennium thing has really fizzled out. With the majority of the population suffering from "Greatest All-Time" list fatigue and the barrage of "Will 2k," they’ve become oblivious to the true potential of this event.
The millennium is not a finish line or a graduation ceremony. There will be no diplomas awarded. Instead, we have the opportunity to examine our last thousand years, measure our merits and failures, and devise a way to become better people.
Throughout lifetimes, the year 2000 has been a metaphor for the splendid technological future. By all accounts in early motion pictures, the US flag should be flying on Mars and we should be eating whole meals in pill form by now. This brilliant future has less than three weeks to arrive.
Gyro-cycles aside, you must agree our present station is not the pinnacle of human existence. No matter what your ideological stripe, the limits of our potential as a species has yet to be measured. But we live in a time that imposes an unspoken moratorium upon thoughtful discussion. The hubbub over cloning blew over pretty fast: nothing solved, many questions left unanswered. Have we been so conditioned in this decade of wasted, vacant culture, that we cannot put forward the effort to affect the world in which we live? This wasn’t always the case.
In the past, we had bodies like the Concert of Rome–an organization created to facilitate discussion on pressing philosophical and real world issues between all viewpoints and disciplines. But how much of this kind of interaction is actually happening now–bearing in mind that the occasional relevant episode on Politically Incorrect isn’t enough. The millennium publicity blitz never examines the past or how we could grow in next thousand years.
Societies crumble and empires collapse when new thought stagnates. Relying upon once useful methods and philosophy is the doomsayer. It is true that "those who do not heed the past are doomed to repeat it." What is too often forgotten is that axiom’s companion: "those who are unwilling to affect the future are doomed to live in the future they get."
So what will you be doing until the cosmic odometer roles over? You could do what we did and complain about the ’90s (see preceding 14 or so pages). Or you could do what should have done in the years building up to this moment: Change.