Looking Back and Looking Ahead

ARE we still here?

The much-feared Y2K date glitch caused no obvious or severe disruptions in electric power, communication, banking or other computerised services that define modern life. So now it's time for some soul-searching. For the lesson on this millennial eve -- yes, it really doesn't start until next year, but why spoil the fun -- we can look back at the last millennium.

In the past thousand years, we have travelled across the planet, exploring our world, the reality around us and the depths of our own souls. Unfortunately, we are not always quick to understand what we have found.

Make no mistake, humanity has done great things and come a long way. We have filled the world and explored every corner of its surface. Built great cities, and then, great nations. Gone from trading pottery with our neighbours to trading online on the computers. We have explored the earth and then started reaching out to the planets beyond. Obviously foremost among our achievements was the development of the scientific methods as a way of exploring the world around us. We have gone from fearing eclipses to studying them; from working out myths built on the patterns of stars to working out the molecular structure of those stars.

We learned to communicate instantly; to send images through cables so we can now view a sunset thousands of miles away. We built vehicles that move faster than sound and ships that sail under the waves. We even learned to fly -- and to walk on the moon and take pictures of Mars. We came so far technologically that we have stood on the brink of annihilating ourselves simply by pushing a few buttons.

We became physicians and learned to heal ourselves, too. Many deadly diseases have been brought under control. We now transplant organs that 1000 years ago many didn't even know existed. Unfortunately, disease is a tough customer, and just as we eliminate one plague, other stronger strains rise up to bite us.

We became politicians and explored different ways of governing ourselves, although we keep coming back to the old idea that there is nothing like self-determination. Great empires came and went; democracy, once perjured as mob rule, seems to have become the standard for a civilised society.

In this century alone, we experimented with Nazism and Fascism and found through bitter experience and brutal loss what false gods they were. We explored religion, too. And, although at times, religion was undoubtedly science's nemesis, it also at other times was learning's partner. Where would mathematics be without Muslim scholars? So, have we made progress? You bet we have.

In 1099, a Crusader army captured Jerusalem in the name of Christendom. The army then proceeded to use its swords to slaughter the city's population of Muslims and Jews. In 1999, Albanians and Serbs slaughtered each other in Kosovo with automatic weapons while Pakistanis and Indians tested nuclear weapons that are now pointed at each other. In fact, the 20th century that saw us progress more rapidly technologically than perhaps all previous centuries combined, we also slaughtered more humans than previous butchers had ever dreamed possible.

For evidence, we don't need to go too far. During our own Liberation war, people were lined up and made to run over open ground into waves of machine gun fire. Others were forced to stand at the edge of mass open graves as they listened to the gun bolts sliding back behind them. Entire villages were set ablaze as if they were medieval torches.

Thousands were allowed to starve to death while thousands more were marched into something the 20th century can surely call its own: the human death factory. Too many of us still too often exhibit a callous disregard for life. Maybe part of it is because our individual lives are short, and that despite all our technological trappings, we aren't so different from our forebears. We find our joys and sorrows in the moments of our daily lives, just as they did. And we don't always learn what we should, just as they didn't.

The problem as we move into the future, however, is that our certain order will become more precarious than ever and that the day after tomorrow may be far different from the day before yesterday. So this is as good a time as any to take a look forward.

One hundred years ago, many people living at the end of another century believed themselves at the pinnacle of civilisation. They believed more progress have been made in their century than in the previous eight hundred years combined. And they were right. Some even had the good sense to worry that those developments could lead to devastating consequences in the coming century. They were right, too.

How much farther have we come since then? And what new dangers lie ahead? Changes have been fast and furious. And be sure of one thing: the pace of change will continue to accelerate. We will have rapidly expanding amounts of information at our fingertips while continuing to have trouble figuring our what to do with it.

And that's hardly the end of our rapidly developing confusion. Genetic research could in time -- and not a very long time -- create human clones, eliminate disease and give us engineered humans. It's all part of humanity's never-ending story of exploration, which will continue in other ways, too. We will undoubtedly plumb the ocean depths and move into the solar system, discovering more than we now can possibly imagine. But the big question is: what kind of ethical or belief system will we develop to deal with such issues? How do we balance the ideal of realising the potential of each human with the ideal of building communities that serve the greater good of humanity, especially since both ideals are needed to adequately explore and understand the reality around us?

Maybe we can start by taking the best from our past and making sure it is preserved in the face of the new technologies that threaten to overwhelm our future. Maybe we should see if change can be slowed a little so that we can understand its ramifications or, if not, maybe we can make sure that we at least think about such things rather than turn a blind eye to what might happen.

Surely, there's no better time to start thinking than right now.