Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, January 22, 1995 TAG: 9501200022
SECTION: ECONOMY PAGE: 2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: GREG EDWARDS STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
This is nothing new. On the contrary, it's a phenomenon that's at least a thousand years old, says Marshall Fishwick.
Fishwick, who teaches humanities and communications studies at Virginia Tech, is editing a book on the year 2000, tentatively titled ''Trauma - The Millennium Is Ahead.'' Fishwick also is writing the book's opening chapter.
The central theme, Fishwick said, is a question: Why are we so obsessed with the future? Why have we invented a subject called futurology that is taught at many universities?
The obsession grows out of our history and our present social unrest, he said.
As the year 1000 approached, mass hysteria reigned in the Western world, Fishwick said. People expected the return of the antichrist to mark the end of the world. They sold their lands, gave up their jobs and stood in the streets waiting for the end to come. And all this turmoil was sanctioned by the church.
We can take comfort, Fishwick said, in the fact that the apocalyptic visions of our ancestors were wrong. And people today can look forward to doing something no one has done in a thousand years: witness the end of a decade, the end of a century and the end of a millennium, he said.
Nevertheless, we are today witnessing a corresponding rise in religious literalism and huge unrest in society - distress, crime and violence, Fishwick noted.
The Democratic party's losses in last November's congressional election despite good economic news show people want change. It's millennium thinking, he said: If we've only got a little time left, we need to do something drastic.
Particular classes of people - those who are most unsettled and feel most threatened - appear particularly susceptible to millennium fear, he said. Those people include manual workers, anyone over 50 who is computer illiterate, and anyone working for a big corporation that has become lean and mean. These fears are aggravated by the psychology of patronage that U.S. businesses had long promoted, he said.
We no longer have a working concept of where we're going, Fishwick said. "Everyone is scared he is going to get up tomorrow and something terrible is going to happen."
Thomas Malthus' theory that the world population tends to increase faster than the food supply with inevitable disastrous results is coming back into his own, he said. For years, we believed we could conquer hunger and disease, but do we believe that now?
The decline of the U.S. auto industry vis-a-vis foreign competitors became a symbol of our humiliation, he said. And politically, we feel powerless as we look at small powers holding U.N. peacekeepers hostage while we do nothing about it.
It was in 1946, at the end of World War II, that the American dream hit its zenith. It was then that U.S. power and industry dominated the rest of the world.
Since then, the dream has dissipated, Fishwick said. Most of the people of the generations since the war, if they worked hard, did all right, he said. For Americans just becoming adults today, that's not always true.
In the main, however, the quality of life has improved for everyone, he said, remembering the days not too long ago when some people in Blacksburg still had outhouses and no running water.
The people for whom the quality of life has deteriorated most are children. The younger you are, the more your standard of living has fallen, he said.
The loss of Piedmont Airlines, the Norfolk and Western Railway headquarters and Dominion Bank were disasters for his hometown of Roanoke, Fishwick said. As towns such as Charlotte, N.C., and Atlanta became major centers of the New South, Roanoke languished as a relic of the Old South.
In the past few years, however, Fishwick said he's begun to sense a turnaround in the city's economic fortunes. "I wish I felt so well about some things as I do business," he said.
Fishwick said he thinks the social safety net constructed by government is secure, despite attacks on it by politicians. He believes the American sense of decency and fair play will take over. "We're not going to let those Mexicans in California die in the streets," he said, alluding to the passage of California's anti-immigrant Proposition 187.
He is pessimistic, though, about the future of American political life. "No man in his right mind will run for office now," he said, referring to the media scrutiny candidates must endure. That's not the case everywhere, he said, pointing out that when the newspapers in France reported that French President Mitterand had a mistress, the public rose up in arms against the newspapers.
The media's big problem is sorting and sifting through the deluge of information that technology has dumped upon us and, so far, they've not done a good job, Fishwick said.
"We have media indigestion." It's "data, data everywhere and not a chance to think," he said.
The media are struggling to master the new technology and because of that they seem to be less effective, he said. Nevertheless, better people are coming into the media and Fishwick said that he has hope for the future.
Intellectuals and writers during the past half century have been proud to be liberals, Fishwick said. Liberalism meant belief in progress and unchecked growth, acceptance of other groups or nations and confidence that individual effort would be rewarded.
The heroes of liberalism, besides Franklin Delano Roosevelt, were the industrial tycoons who managed corporations like Ford, IBM and General Motors and grew them to world prominence, Fishwick said.
Liberals, he said, say go for it. Risk all. Dare all. Conservatism has been a reaction to that attitude, he said. Conservatives warn that you should watch out for Mr. Big in government and society.
Of 21 great civilizations throughout history, 17 have fallen, Fishwick said. The good news, he said, is people with good leaders can take steps to stop their decline.
For modern futurists, however, predicting anything past the year 2000 enters the realm of science fiction, Fishwick said.
by CNB