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Brooks Peterson
Brooks Peterson's column is published Mondays. Brooks also sits on the Caller-Times editorial board and can be contacted at petersonb@caller.com
Monday, October 11, 1999
Any takers for a moratorium on the millennium?
As we approach the next millennium, there are all sorts of tasks confronting us: Depending on our take on the phenomenon, we may be surreptitiously draining our bank accounts of cash, stocking up on Army surplus field rations, fiddling with our computers (as if that were going to avail us anything when the appointed hour arrives and we all experience the great trans-galactic chip-frying meltdown) . . .
Or maybe we're just sitting out on the back porch kneading a grimy bandana in our hands and whimpering ineffectually as we wait for the black helicopters to come swooping down on us to offload mercenaries in the employ of the Council on Foreign Relations.
And that's just fine. It's a free country, at least for the time being. Like our sturdy pioneer forebears, we will look deep inside ourselves to fashion our own response to the gathering crisis: Gird for the ordeal, or party like it's 1999? (The latter actually makes a certain amount of sense, when you stop to think about it.)
However, could we agree on just one thing? Could we please agree to abandon finally, conclusively and forever the endless nattering about when the new millennium really starts?
Look, I don't know about you, but how many more of these meticulously reasoned, scrupulously documented screeds on whether the millennium begins on Jan. 1, 2000, or Jan. 1, 2001, can the Republic endure?
The party arguing for Jan. 1, 2000, has behind it the not inconsiderable force of popular usage and superficial plausibility. I mean, consider: You think "millennium," and what are you envisioning? I'll tell you: You're envisioning something ending with three zeroes, that's what you're thinking.
Ah, but the Jan. 1, 2001, crowd shoots back - with some logic, I must regretfully concede - that any century (and, by extension, any millennium) must end with a double-nought. With that maddening plausibility of theirs, they point that a collection of 100 of anything - years, jelly beans, whatever - cannot begin with a zero. Thus, the first year of the 20th century was not 1900, but 1901.
At this point, however, I must, however forlornly, send up a cry grounded not in mathematical abstractions, but in the kind of spirit that motivated Rodney King to utter his memorable plea:
Can't we all just get along?
I mean, we've got to reach some kind of accommodation here. We are, after all, confronting the prospect of not one but two shattering interruptions in the rhythms of our collective life: first, the new millennium itself; and, second, that ol' Y2K thing - you know: the abovementioned phenomenon which may or may not turn our computers into junk sculptures and convert our bank accounts into vapor.
Does its make sense that we should negotiate Y2K only to confront another year of worrying about all the other millennial stuff?
I say, let's get it all over with in one fell swoop. I don't know about the rest of you, but if I see one more letter to the editor, or hear one more phone call to a talk show host, arguing the 2000 vs. 2001 thing, I will seriously consider booking passage to an uninhabited guano island off the coast of Peru. (Which, come to think of it, might be a fairly sensible Y2K strategy in itself.)
Look: I respect your concern. I acknowledge the force of your arguments. But, dang it, there comes a time to move along, to get on with our lives.
Are there not other issues to command our attention? Of course there are. A few years back, we had a long-running discussion between two gentlemen in the Letters column regarding the merits of Theosophy. At the time, I recall, I found these carefully and passionately reasoned exchanges a bit on the heavy side. Now, however, I look back on them with the kind of nostalgic affection others might accord to, say, the golden twilight of Edwardian England.
Anyone up for a little tussle on Theosophy? The phone lines are open. What would Madame Blavatsky have to say about the New Millennium?
Nothing, I fervently hope.
(Peterson can be reached by phone at 886-3772, or by e-mail at petersonb@caller.com)
Brooks Peterson
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