Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, August 7, 1995 TAG: 9508070092
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BILL HENDRICK COX NEWS SERVICE
DATELINE: ATLANTA LENGTH: Long
So can civil rights leader Hosea Williams. He'll be 73.
``New Year's Eve 1999 will be a milestone we'll always remember,'' Marlow said, ``like that day in '63 in 10th grade English when a trembling voice on the intercom said President Kennedy had been shot. Like when I got my draft notice in '68.
``Like the night before I left for 'Nam, the radio was on about men going to the moon and I was out in the yard with a friend, Bob Dendy. It was a great thing, but I had tears in my eyes. I was on my way to war, and other guys were on their way to the moon.''
Williams also expects a memorable 2000 - like March 18, 1945, when he was shot by a German soldier. Or the night of April 4, 1968, when Martin Luther King was murdered just a few feet away from him in Memphis.
``I was in room 102, and his was 202,'' Williams says. ``The limo driver was named Jones. Martin's last words were, `Jonesey, I'll get my topcoat,' and the bullet was fired.''
No matter when you were born or what events you've witnessed, odds are you know how old you'll be in 2000 - about 1,600 days away and counting. There's something weird, even mystical, about such milestones. Most are intensely personal. A few, like the murders of Kennedy and King and the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, are seared into the collective memory, as scholars say 2000 will be.
Why?
Why will what's really just another year take on added significance, making us remember what we were doing, where we were, with whom, maybe even what we were thinking in the first few seconds of the year?
Part of the answer lies in superstition and religion, and part in a human fascination with numbers, said Edward Cornish, president of the World Future Society, a Bethesda, Md.-based group of philosophers that held its annual convention in Atlanta recently.
``The end of the century, and the beginning, have a psychological impact,'' Cornish said. ``People are suddenly more aware that time is changing, and the times. Now we're about to have three even digits: zeroes. This has never happened to any of us born in this century.''
Brooks Holifield, theology professor in Emory University's Candler School of Theology, said mysticism revives at such times. At the turn of the last millennium - the year 999 - many people were convinced the end of the world was nigh because of a reference in the New Testament to ``1,000 years of peace,'' he said. As 2000 nears, he added, ``you'll see a rise in doomsday cults, even in mainstream religions, and they'll be a lot more vocal.''
Other religions have attached special significance to the number 1,000 since long before the modern era, he said, and many fundamentalist sects can be expected to ``prepare for the end'' as 2000 nears.
And don't forget Nostradamus, the famous 16th-century astrologer whose disciples through the ages claimed he predicted the French and Russian revolutions, AIDS, space shuttles and a cataclysmic world-ending war around the end of this century.
Most scientists pooh-pooh Nostradamus, but there's a consensus that the coming of the millennium is causing widespread angst, said prominent futurist Arnold Brown, chairman of Weiner Edrich Brown, a business consulting firm.
There's a lot of foreboding in society now, not just because of the massive downsizings and loss of job security of the past few years, but also about the future, he said. People must have forecasts to make decisions, Brown said, but even the most basic questions about what's just ahead haven't been answered.
Such as: What will the next decade be called? The Naughties? Or the Aughties? Or maybe just the Ohs? Or the two-thousands? Or the 20-ohs? Or the naughts or the aughts? And should 2001 be called two-thousand-one, two-thousand-and-one or twenty-oh-one? Or aught-one? Or naught-one. Or just oh-one?
Such questions aren't at all trivial, Brown said. A lot is at stake, such as time. It doesn't take as long to say oh-one as twenty-oh-one, and the cliche that time is money will be even truer as the information age speeds up everything we do.
Plus, Cornish said, people correctly fear that discoveries and lifestyle changes will be far greater - and greater in number - than in the 20th century, which gave rise to fast cars and computers, electrical appliances, nuclear power, space flight, television, cellular phones, space satellites, CNN and medical tools not even dreamed of a century ago.
Ted Daniels, head of the Millennium Watch Institute in Philadelphia, said people notice when three zeroes appear on their car's odometer. ``2000 will be the same phenomenon on a much bigger scale, because everybody in the world is going to know about it,'' he said. ``The foreboding comes in about change. These days it seems to be accelerating and broadening in scope. Change is always destructive and constructive. It is unpredictable and therefore scary by its nature.''
Although the turn of a century isn't quite as scary as a new millennium, the end of the 19th century was characterized by optimism, while the 20th is ending on a note of pessimism, Cornish said.
In the 1890s, a catastrophic depression hit early, then ended; America won a quick war with Spain; and progress - industrial, medical and technological - was everywhere. Railroads were expanding in every direction. Cities were growing and bustling. The quality of life in much of America had been improving since the Civil War.
``They had not yet begun to realize that technology could be bad,'' he noted. ``Telephones were coming in, and these were real wonders. There was real reason for optimism.''
Though the economy seems healthy now and unemployment is low, things are a lot different, Brown said. People seem baffled by the pace of change.
Millions of women have entered the work force, many not by choice. Divorce rates have soared. Inner cities are falling apart, murder rates are skyrocketing, drug abuse is rampant, and new and frightening diseases, such as AIDS, have popped up.
Even in the era of prosperity after World War II, paranoia reigned with the advent of the Cold War, which sent the youngest baby boomers scurrying under their desks in atomic bomb drills. These same kids, by the time of the Vietnam War, had become the most cynical generation in history - perhaps explaining today's angst.
``People feel much more alienated,'' Brown said. ``Our inclination always has been to be horrified by change.''
And change, he said, will be as dizzying as it has been in the past decade, thanks to new and more powerful computers, forcing people to learn how to cope.
Dr. Max North, a scientist at Clark Atlanta University, also foresees radical changes in the health care and entertainment industries. A specialist in virtual reality, he recently participated in a project designed to cure people of phobias, such as fear of heights, by fitting them with helmets that simulate - via tiny cameras and sensors - new, if unreal, worlds.
In the movie ``Disclosure,'' virtual reality machines were portrayed as being so real that people could see and feel the exact sensations they would if transported to a different world. Virtual reality is just five to 10 years away from that level of sophistication, North said. He thinks virtual reality will be used to treat people with mental disorders, help pilots fly better and rehabilitate soldiers who have experienced trauma.
But this new technology also may bring an unintended side effect, Cornish said. He frets that virtual reality could lead to ``personality afflictions that will send people to psychiatrists'' if they forgo their ``real'' identities in favor of ``perfect bodies created'' in virtual reality.
Scientists, in general, are upbeat about the Third Millennium. Cornish said it won't be long before cures are found for fatal diseases; we'll have more leisure time; religions will strengthen as interest in science wanes; and families, now disintegrating, will become stronger as the values of the 1950s experience a rebirth.
As scientific research continues to expand, Cornish said, ``the world gets a little bit smarter,'' with scholars at prominent institutions already ``having a field day.''
Ironically, futurists say excitement about the Third Millennium is a tad premature. It won't actually start until Jan. 1, 2001.
But most people will observe it on New Year's Eve 1999, and many hotels - including all the major ones close to Times Square - already are booked for big parties.
``We have been in negotiation with the Washington Hilton for party space in 1999, but we may not have any celebration at all,'' Cornish said. ``We anticipate it's going to more of a madcap day for all the freaks in the world to be showboating. So we may wait until the end of the year.''
by CNB