The Third Millennium: So Far, So Good

[Guest guest]

January 2, 2000

 

Copyright 2000 The New York Times Company

 

 

The Third Millennium: So Far, So Good

By STEVE MARTIN

or me, and I assume for most of you -- since whatever I'm thinking so too is

the nation -- it was difficult to know exactly what to celebrate on Dec. 31,

1999. Do I celebrate the end of the year, the end of the 20th century or the

end of the millennium? I chose the one remaining option, and therefore I

assume so did most of you: the end of the day. This made for significantly

reduced partying intensity. However, waking up on Saturday, knowing that

Friday was now over, I felt compelled to write about the past 2,000 years

and the changes that would be wrought in this new age. This was indeed a

challenge to me as I desired to write the history of humankind, past,

present and future, without bothering to do any research.

A Short History of Thought

 

It is of course impossible to offer anything but a cursory look at the

history of thought in the few paragraphs I'm allotted here.

 

For more elaborate study see my book "The Long History of Thought" or, for

the enthusiast, "The Very Long and Heavy History of Thought, So Long You

Can't Believe It."

 

Before Jan. 1, 0000, thought did not exist. Yes, there were Socrates, Plato

and Aristotle, but their one-word names keep them from being taken seriously

as philosophers. Think of them as the early Greek equivalent of Cher,

Liberace and Madonna: great entertainers, but their views on the nature of

the universe are somehow not sticking. Of course Plato can't be faulted for

naïvely thinking of the world in terms of forms and shadows; technology was

not advanced enough for him to have known that the universe is composed of

tiny particles called "futons." And think of poor Socrates, with his simple

answer to the question "What is justice?" There was just no way for him to

have foreseen a jury's $3 million payout to a McDonald's customer who

spilled a cup of too-hot coffee in her lap.

 

Aristotelian thought dominated culture for 1,500 years and was immediately

dumped when it was discovered that the center of the universe was not earth,

as Aristotle had claimed, but was actually Donald Trump. Aristotle's

metaphysics were then succeeded by the religious philosophy of the Roman

Catholic Church, which created a fervor that resulted in the creation of

many great paintings and sculptures, and inspired men to turn casual

comments like "I need a little something over the sofa" into monumental

works of art. In fact, it was Pope Sixtus IV who remarked to Michelangelo

upon seeing the Sistine Chapel for the first time, "I said paint the

ceiling, not go nuts."

 

The dogma of the church was challenged in the mid-17th-century by RenÀe

Descartes's famous pronouncement "Cogito ergo sum" ("I am nervous about

having to add"), and the age of rationalism began. Rationalism then gave way

to empiricism, and David Hume declared that it was impossible to know if

anything existed at all, though later he recanted when he stubbed his toe on

a doorjamb.

 

Thought continued unchanged until the end of the second millennium, except

for a brief moment in the early 20th century when Ludwig Wittgenstein

destroyed the foundation of all philosophical thought, and people didn't

know what to believe anymore, causing them to feel lost, hopeless and

fearful. This resulted in the biggest clothes-buying spree the world has

ever seen.

 

The third millennium, now well into its second day, appears to have taken

thought to new and unexpected extremes. The first of such extremes appears

to be that the fundamental philosophical belief of the 1990's, the personal

tattoo statement, is no longer tenable, and 200,000 indelibly inked young

people will be shipped off to a special holding farm in Java. Out of concern

for them, they will be kept in the dark about the fact that the fad has

passed.

 

Morality Through the Centuries

 

The history of thought not only deals with philosophy but ethics and

morality as well. I offer the advanced student of moral history the

following summary:

 

Roman era: anything goes

 

Medieval era: nothing goes

 

Renaissance: anything goes

 

17th-century Spain: nothing goes

 

18th-century France: anything goes

 

19th-century England: nothing goes

 

1920's America: anything goes

 

1950's America: nothing goes

 

1990's America: anything goes

 

Even as rhythmic as these statistics are, it is impossible to predict the

moral tenor of even the next few years, because of the Elvis factor. The

Elvis factor is the tendency of an era with one consistent and rigid moral

philosophy to be upset and radically altered by a simple, uneducated

hillbilly with a new idea.

 

Communication in the Third Millennium

 

Communication has changed so rapidly in the last 20 years, it's almost

impossible to predict what might occur even in the next decade. E-mail,

which now sends data hurtling across vast distances at the speed of light,

has replaced primitive forms of communication such as smoke signals, which

sent data hurtling across vast distances at the speed of light. Let's

suppose that you want to say, "I am a jerk." In the 18th century, you would

have to go around person to person and utter the phrase individually to each

one of them. However, here in the third millennium, with our advances in

telephone communication, it is possible to say, "I am a jerk" to a thousand

people at a time by forgetting to turn off your cell phone and having it

ring during a performance of "Death of a Salesman."

 

Also, there is now a sophisticated communication technique used between men

and women that eases marital strain and opens wide the doors of

understanding between the sexes. This new technique, developed by

psychologists and sociologists, is called "listening." It will be

interesting to see if the new technique lasts or whether it will disappear

and be replaced by older, more traditional methods, such as "leaving the

room."

 

Art in the Third Millennium

 

I sometimes wonder if a 19th-century artist could have imagined a Picasso. I

wonder if Raphael didn't one day scratch out a nice Cubist doodle and toss

it in the fireplace, or if Goya ever conjured up a de Kooning, dismissed it

and went on with his work. I think not. It seems logically impossible for a

thought to be dreamed up before its time, even with the obvious catch that

once it is thought up, it is, by definition, its time. All this means

nothing for the real world except that the art of the third millennium is

unknowable by us, just as the art of Picasso was unknowable to Manet, though

Cézanne might have, on one odd night, dreamt it.

 

But it is clear -- mayors aside -- that art will continue. The great moments

in art history occur when the hitherto unthinkable thought coalesces in the

brain of someone capable of manifesting it. Yes, something is waiting out

there in the misty future, with "unknown" as its caption, that we cannot, no

way, imagine. Once the new art is created, however, it is up to us to ensure

its rightful place in the pantheon of art history by persecuting and

denouncing it.

 

It is interesting to note that the current art scene, with its bent toward

video works, installations and performance, has devastated the picture hook

industry. In fact, one C.E.O. of a popular picture hook company, who used to

vacation yearly in New York, Paris and Venice, is now spending his summers

at the New York, Parisian and Venetian casinos in Las Vegas.

 

Our Wonderful New Millennium

 

The third millennium, with its exciting parties and fireworks, puts to shame

the incredibly dull first millennium and already outshines the violent

second millennium with a significantly reduced statistic of accidental

deaths by longbow. The parties and celebrations surrounding the birth of

this newest and best millennium also point to its importance. There was no

celebration at the start of the first millennium, as it was not known that

it had begun, and the celebration at the end of the year 999 was muted

because the rotating, mirrored party ball had not yet been invented.

 

We can measure the impact and value of each age by looking at a brief

history of its inventions and accomplishments. It is lamentable that there

have been only three millenniums, and the poor folk who lived before the

"age of millenniums" thought they were having a good time but are actually

condemned to hell.

 

Pre-first-millennium inventions:

Dice

 

First-millennium inventions:

The windmill

 

Second-millennium inventions:

Eggplant parmigiana

The Chinese finger trap

 

Third-millennium inventions, since Jan. 1, 2000:

Nine bug fixes on Windows 98

 

My Dream for the Future

 

My dream is simple. It is that this millennium, nay, even this decade, will

be the first in which we stop referring to centuries by the one-off method.

How many schoolboys have been perplexed forever because we refer to the

1900's as the 20th? Why are the 1800's the 19th century? After all, when we

are 39 years old and someone asks us our age, we don't say, "I'm starting my

40th year!" Why must we pause and recalculate every time we mention a

century and have to figure out that the 17th century, even though it begins

with a 16, is not really the 16th century because the 1st century, which has

no "1" in front of it, actually counts as a century and the century that has

a "1" in front of it is really the 2nd century?

 

So right now let's start calling the third millennium the second millennium.

After all, doesn't this millennium start with a 2? You ask, so how will we

refer to the first millennium, the one that begins with all the zeros? Easy.

We will not refer to it. We will pretend it never existed. There is no point

referring to an era whose biggest accomplishment was the windmill, and you

know what? We'll get along fine without it. Problem solved.

 

A Sad Note

 

 

I hesitate to point out that by the end of this, the second millennium, we

will all be dead. This is especially sad to me, as my life seems to be much

more valuable than other people's, what with my special love of flowers and

poetry.

 

Worse, it is discomforting to think that once I'm gone, all my things will

be owned by someone else.

 

There will be people living in my house, wearing ridiculous hairdos, who

will think of me and my age as hideously old-fashioned and moronically

stupid, and who will look at our newspapers and see ads for clothes-storage

shrink-wrap suction machines that will make them roar with laughter.

 

On the other hand, it is comforting to note that these people will also be

frighteningly stupid, sitting on their "sunflower" chairs, wearing their

"wigwam" slippers and eating brain-enhancing toad power-pellets just as

embarrassing as anything we ever sat on, wore or consumed. And perhaps you

and I will be a few atoms in the raindrops that fall on them and ruin their

day.

 

A Final Thought

 

When I was a boy, I calculated how old I would be in the year 2000. I was

shocked to see that when the millennium arrived, I was fully 10 years

younger than I expected to be. But then, I'm in show business. Some of us

are beginning our lives, some are in the middle, and some are at the end (I

have a proof of this statement, but it will not fit in the margins). But it

is wonderful to think that if one day all of us humans, regardless of race

or creed, could lay down our differences and create a human chain by

circling the globe and holding hands, we would all come down with exactly

the same cold.