The Third Millennium—or Bust
So What’s a Millennium?
The year 2001 marks the only beginning of a calendar millennium that you and I will experience; it’s only the third that our species has ever had, according to the Christian calendar. (When 2001 rolls around, the Jewish community will be looking forward to their year 5762, to begin in the Christian month of September; they will have already experienced five millennia. Muslims will observe their year 1421.)
By Christian theological definition, The Millennium is that period during which Jesus Christ will reign on Earth, following the chaos of Armageddon and the chaining of Satan, but we have chosen to attribute to the arrival of each ordinary thousand-year period some mysterious, metaphysical significance.
Other important dates have been experienced which would appear far more grave and portentous. Even the Number of the Beast was contained in the year 1666, giving the inhabitants of London good reason to suspect that the Black Plague which had ravaged them the previous year and their Great Fire which followed it in 1666 truly marked the advent of the Battle of Armageddon.
And What’s This “Armageddon”?
Although commonly used as a designation for the end of the world, this name actually applies to a real geographical location in Israel near Mount Carmel, about five miles from the present coastal city of Haifa. It was the site of several important battles in ancient history.
According to the predictions of St. John in Apocalypse, a battle between good and evil will take place there at some unspecified time, producing a river of human blood “to the height of a horse’s bridle” for a distance of two hundred miles. Assuming that (a) all the blood were to be drained from each victim’s body at the same moment, that (b) the “river” is only ten feet wide and does not flow at all, and that (c) the horse is rather small, it would mean that some three hundred sixty million persons would have to be slaughtered during this battle, all simultaneously. Since the area cannot itself hold that number of persons standing shoulder to shoulder, it appears that St. John’s figures are poorly arrived at. But perhaps that’s one of the properties of a miracle.
Why All This Concern?
I believe that the significance of this third millennium is essentially a phenomenon of our collective imagination—partly a romantic notion, partly the result of our accepted system of counting and of the calendar decision that was long ago forced on us, and our misunderstanding of the general idea of numbers. Our counting system, based upon tens, presents us with a particularly fascinating triple-zero when 2000 rolls around. Any other radix would have placed the start of our third “millennium” in another space-time location; using a base of twelve rather than of ten would have spotted it in what our descendants will know as the year 3457, with the second having passed by in our 1729, when nothing really very special happened except for the founding of Baltimore and J. S. Bach writing the Saint Matthew Passion. Hardly, in my estimation, apocalyptic-sounding events. Important, perhaps, for Baltimoreans and other passionate folks, but not in general.
Away back in the year 525, an otherwise-obscure monk named Dionysus decided for us that the calendar should begin with the birth of Jesus Christ. He opted to have no year 0, so that 1 B.C. is followed immediately by 1 A.D. (He wrongly placed that birth date too, so that Christ was actually born in 4 B.C. by his system, but that’s a small matter.) Since old Dionysus was also using a ten-base counting system, it became significant to the ubiquitous catastrophists to advertise the year 1000 as a pivotal one. That seemed like a good idea to everyone in Europe, where life at that time was rather like what we see as the worst of the Third World today.
It Wasn’t a Fun Time
At the turn of the 11th century (these number matters are confusing, but bear with me), life expectancy was about 30 years; anyone who lived to see 50 was a celebrated exception. Armies consisted of teenage soldiers led by officers themselves barely 20. Just a few years earlier, Pope John XI had been anointed to his exalted position at age 21. There was a serious shortage of workers for farms, and to encourage the copious production of serfs, youths were heavily fined for not marrying the instant that they came of age. The world population was only 1/20 of what it is today—a mere 275 million—but the large portion that lived in Europe were so miserable that they rather looked forward to a millennial disaster.
Superstitions and Magical Thinking
Sylvester II, who was pope in the year 1000, was a learned man, an innovator, and an inventor; he was accused of having obtained his knowledge from Spanish magicians and the Devil, such were the standards of the day. The basic idea and nature of numbers, largely misunderstood even today, was deliciously mystical even to the ancient savants, who followed the notions of the Pythagoreans with great devotion. The number 1000 was thus irresistible to them, and it seems that the number 2000 is equally attractive to our generation.
As We Prepare to Enter the Third Millennium …
Fifty generations have passed, and we are about to enter the Third Millennium. We would do well to examine the mind-set of this generation both here and abroad, to explore what people expect of the next thousand years. It’s of interest both from the apocalyptic and from the more realistic points of view. After all, our species has not only survived every sort of organic, philosophical, and natural catastrophic problem but has managed to become the dominant species to inhabit the planet. Or so we prefer to think; judging from our potential for destroying the whole thing, that opinion is obviously valid.
The Millennium Watch Institute in Philadelphia was set up some years back by a folklorist to record how Millennium fever develops in these closing years of the old millennium. It tracks some 600 groups who are eagerly awaiting The End in the year 2000—or in 2001, depending upon your mathematics. The invasion of UFOs, the Second Coming of Christ, the fulfillment of Nostradamus’ prophecy (in one of three quatrains in which he gave three different dates, taking no chances) and any number of other modes are preached by these groups. The New Agers, ever eager to embrace yet another cataclysm, warn of man-made plagues, nuclear holocausts, and gene-splitting calamities—to be followed by their New Eden. They anticipate that two-thirds of the population of Earth will expire.
Not Only the Loonies are Worried
Legitimate scientists, too, are properly concerned about global disasters, though not those inescapably connected with the advent of the year 2000. Environmental considerations, possible (and actually inevitable) collisions with meteors, comets, and/or asteroids, and various other more subtle influences are being watched carefully. We can and will see other meteoric impacts such as that which flattened a portion of Siberia on June 30, 1908. The Arizona Meteor Crater is evidence of a relatively small cosmic object falling on Earth.
There is no need to fear of the arrival of 2001, any more than there was for 1001, or for any other turn of the century.
Terrestrial life of all sorts exists within narrow limits of tolerance. As the caretakers of the environment, we have proven ourselves less than conscientious. We hold in our hands the power to reduce this planet to a ball of hot, lifeless mud. I think we’re too smart to do that, and I’m encouraged by the efforts of those who fight, against incredible odds, all attempts to subvert common sense and ethics to avarice and stupidity. There is no need to fear of the arrival of 2001, any more than there was for 1001, or for any other turn of the century.
Previous Expressions of Doom
Dutch painter Hieronymous Bosch (1460-1515) satirized his generation’s views of Heaven and of Hell, and the English mystic/artist/poet William Blake specialized in apocalyptic visions and inspirations from Revelations. And a Doré or two dealt with the dreaded notion, too.
February 1, 1524, was one of the most pervasive Doomsday-by-Flood expectations ever recorded. In June of 1523, astrologers in London predicted that The End would begin in London with a deluge. Some 20,000 persons left their homes, and the Prior of St. Bartholomew’s built a fortress in which he stocked enough food and water for a two-month wait. When the dreaded date failed to provide even a rain shower in a city where precipitation is very much to be expected, the astrologers recalculated and discovered they’d been a mere one hundred years off. (On the same day in 1624, astrologers were again disappointed to discover that they were still dry and alive.)
The year 1524 was just full of predicted disaster. Belief in this date was very strong throughout Europe. An astrologer impressively named Nicolaus Peranzonus de Monte Sancte Marie found that a coming conjunction of major planets would occur in Pisces (a water sign) that year and this strengthened the general belief in a universal final deluge.
The significance of this third millennium is essentially a phenomenon of our collective imagination.
George Tannstetter, another astrologer/mathematician at the University of Vienna, was one of very few at that time who denied that The End would occur as predicted. He drew up his own horoscope, discovered that he would live beyond 1524, and understandably denied the other calculations were correct. But George was considered a spoilsport, and was ignored.
A “giant flood” was prophesied for February 20 (some say the 2nd) of 1524 by astrologer Johannes Stoeffler, who employed his skill to establish that date in 1499. Such was the belief in his ability that more than one hundred pamphlets were written and published on his prediction.
The planets involved in this dire conjunction were Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn, along with the sun. Neptune, unknown then, was also in the sign Pisces. Other major influences, Uranus and the moon, were not. Nor was Pluto, also unknown then. But the date of this conjunction was February 23 (old calendar), not the 20th. Gotta be careful about these matters, even if they’re worthless.
In response to the 1524 prophecies, in Germany, people set about building boats, while one Count Von Iggleheim, obviously a devout believer in Stoeffler’s ability, built a three-story ark. In Toulouse, French President Aurial also built himself a huge ark. In some European port cities, the populace took refuge on boats at anchor. When it only rained lightly on the predicted date where Von Iggleheim had his ark, the crowd awaiting the deluge ran amok and, with little better to do, stoned the count to death. Hundreds were killed in the resultant stampede. Stoeffler, who had survived the angry mob, re-examined his data and came up with a new date of 1528. This time there was no reaction to his declaration. Sometimes people actually get smart.
Incidentally, the 1878 Encyclopaedia Britannica described 1524 as “a year, as it turned out, distinguished for drought.”
Yet Another Fizzle
Another heavy apocalyptic date was April 3, 1843. William Miller, founder of the Millerite church, spent 15 years in careful study of the scriptures and determined that the world would conclude sometime in 1843. He announced this discovery of what he called “the midnight cry” in 1831. When there was a spectacular meteor shower in 1833, it seemed to his followers that his prediction was close to being fulfilled, and they celebrated their imminent demise. Then, when the date he’d named failed to produce Armageddon, Miller moved it up a bit. He named July 7, 1843, March 21, and October 22, 1844 as “rain dates” (pun intended). The faithful continued to gather by the thousands on hilltops all over America each time one of the new dates would dawn. Finally, on October 22, 1844, the last day that Miller had calculated for The End, the Millerites relaxed their vigils a bit. Five years later, Miller died, still revered and not at all concerned at his failed prophecies.
We’re big winners, we humans, and this year 2000 is just another corner to be rounded, perhaps with a change of pace to keep the contest going.
The movement eventually changed its name and broke up into a number of modern-day churches, among them the Seventh-Day Adventist Church, which today has over three million members.
Moving Right Along …
John Wroe, who is described by the kindliest historian we can find as a “foul-mouthed, ugly, dirty lecher,” in 1823 inherited the leadership of the Southcottian sect in England when an End-of-the-World prophecy by then-leader John Turner failed. Learning from the example, Wroe took no chances. He made his confident Armageddon prophecy for 1977. A 1971 book, Prophets Without Honor, says of Wroe:
At a time when thermo-nuclear powers face each other across the Iron and Bamboo Curtains, it is well to remember that—as far as can be judged from the scanty records—John Wroe, indeed, was a true prophet!
Some Advice …
Rather than fearing the future, let us celebrate our species, our planet, our future and the fact that we’ve made it this far and have an infinity of millennia and years to go. We’re big winners, we humans, and this year 2000 is just another corner to be rounded, perhaps with a change of pace to keep the contest going. And it will go on. I predict it.
Frankly, I’d like to be able to accept some sort of divine origin for life just to simplify my own life. But the nagging scientist in me insists that powerful mathematical and physical realities have willy-nilly gone through the nearly infinite number of experiments of which one of the end results was the emergence of life. This “successful” experiment has given rise to us and to the literally millions of other species that we presently recognize on our planet. But we are all, regardless of size, intelligence or dominance, not much more than highly organized specks of dust, infestations and irregularities in the normal chaos of random matter. We are exceptions to the usual disorder of things rather than special examples of glorious designs directed by an external and seemingly capricious intelligence.
That said, I humbly admit to my overwhelming delight in the cunning complexity of a spider’s web, the structure of a snowflake, the hushed scene at a remote sunset. I know, if I care to recognize it, that the spider built its web from an inherited, built-in programming that has enabled the species to survive and prosper for endless millennia. The snowflake, I know, gets that way from the natural attractions and default movements of its molecules when subjected to the effect of a thermal energy drain. I’m well aware that various particles and vapors, affected by the momentum of my spinning planet relative to its star, and the varying refractive indexes of the terrestrial atmosphere have made the sunset into an image that my mind interprets—through my own inherited programming and my individual remembered associations with similar events and an electro-chemical process of that remarkable computer just behind and above my eyes—as a thing of great beauty. The splendor of these phenomena exists only through my own perception of them. Ah, but that splendor …!
The year 2000 will inexorably arrive. It will be here in a fleeting fraction of a microsecond, a tiny instant in the progress of the vast, boiling, spinning nebula in which our solar system, our planet and our individual bodies are involved, an instant no different from the truly infinite number of others past and future. But we will take note of it among popping champagne corks and cheers. And that process, to us, will be important.
Because we are what we are. And that’s worth celebrating.