The Third Millennium Has to be Better

Does history march forward purposely, or backward peevishly? Or does it just zigzag aimlessly?

Any division of time is artificial. Even birthdays. But they can be moments for deeper reflection. We look backward, most often in gratitude, and then forward with new resolve.

Some thinkers argue that human events cannot help but proceed in such a way as to advance the species - in other words, that history crawls forward. So whether the second millennium was a boon or a bust, here's a toast to the new one: it's bound to be better.

But as we stagger to its doorstep, a contrary view emerges out of some sobering developments. The ethnic cleansing in Europe, Asia and parts of Africa cast doubt on the notion of human progress.

In that skeptical vein, this century has yielded some nightmarish vision of the future. Witness Alex Huxley's book "Brave New World", George Orwell's book "1984", or Paul Verhoeven's movie "RoboCop". These gloomy works doubtless flowed from 20th century horrors. For all its claim of being the pinnacle of human advancement to date, the century that's drawing to a close is likely the bloodiest ever.

Surely no earlier villains matched Germany's Adolf Hitler or Cambodia's Pol Pot in body count. Surely the most ferocious army of earlier centuries came nowhere close to inflicting as many casualties in one swoop as did the US in Hiroshima, and then Nagasaki.

The atomic bomb serves now as the classic example of technology gone awry. Our tools propel us into the future, but perhaps a menacing future - a source of worry for writers like Alex Huxley.

George Orwell got his inspiration from the rise of totalitarianism in the form of Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia, where the state attempted to control what the citizens wanted to think. For Orwell, rather than living up to its promise of liberating humans, technology furthered state control.

The Detroit of "RoboCop" is not totalitarian. Rather, its focus is the widening gap between the haves and have-nots, between the suburbs and the city. The movie rides that trend line into a grim future.

In contrast to the dour vision of the science fiction writers, Francis Fukuyama is optimistic about the future. He stirred up much debate in 1992 with a book titled "The End of History and the Last Man".

He takes up the 200-year-old ideas of German philosophers Immanuel Kant and Georg Hegel, who argued that history had a beginning, several middle ages and an end. The end comes when a society becomes free. Karl Marx borrowed Hegel's story line, but argued that the philosopher concluded it prematurely because the freedom was only for the bourgeoisie. The final stage is the classless society, Marx contended.

The dramatic collapse of Marxism-Leninism reaffirms Hegel, Fukuyama argues. The end point of history is liberal democracy.

Sure, many nations have yet to reach the finish line. But a growing number have. What's more, many of the laggard recognise liberal democracy - that is, a political system in which the people elect the leaders and basic laws safeguard individual rights - as their only legitimate destination.

Perhaps the second millennium takes on special significance because it is the first to be celebrated since the advent of the notion of globalisation of the domestic economy. Our neighbours are no longer just those we live near. Rapid communication has brought the whole world immediately before our eyes, as never before in history.

Because of that world platform, we must ask not only who is left behind in our nation but also who is left behind in the world economy. We can take this occasion to call on the developed nations for writing off the existing foreign debt that strangles the poor of so many nations, preventing them from living truly human lives. At the same time, we must help these people to overcome the internal hold that corruption has often had on their nations, so that any debt-relief truly helps those in need and does not end up increasing the Swiss bank accounts of a select few.

Perhaps the triumph of the second millennium merely ended Book 1 of the human story, though. Perhaps Book 2 includes the struggle to live up to the promise of liberalism, to fashion a society in which citizens are equally free to fulfill themselves. Perhaps the next text will focus on efforts to end hunger, poverty, war and ethnic cleansing and to protect the thin web of life that hugs the planet.

Surely, such struggles will shape the beginning of the new millennium.