Figures in parentheses refer to notes at the end.
"Has it ever occurred to you
that God might be a committee?"
- Jubal Harshaw
THE THIRD MILLENNIUM OPENS
Now, at the beginning of the year 2001, it is time to see where we have been and guess at where we are going. A thousand years ago Otto III ruled the Holy Roman Empire, William the Conqueror was not yet born, and the Discovery of America was almost five hundred years in the future. The condition of mankind had not changed in most important respects since the dawn of history. Aside from language and local custom a peasant of 1000 B.C. would have been right at home in a village of 1001 A.D.
He would not be so today!
The major changes took place in the last two centuries, but the most significant change of all occurred in the last fifty years, during the lifetimes of many of us. In 1950 six out of ten persons could neither read nor write; today an illiterate person is a freak.(1)
More people have learned to read and write in the past fifty years than in all the thousands of years preceding 1950.
This one change is more world-shaking than the establishment this last year of the laboratory outpost on Pluto. We think of this century just closed as the one in which mankind conquered space; it would be more appropriate to think of it as the century in which the human race finally learned to read and write.
(Let's give the Devil his due; the contagious insanities of the past century - communism, xenophobia, aggressive nationalism, the explosions of the formerly colonial peoples - have done more to spread literacy than the efforts of all the do - gooders in history. The Three R's suddenly became indispensable weapons in mankind's bloodiest struggles - learn to read, or die. Out of bad has come good; a man who can read and write is nine - tenths free even in chains.)
But something else has happened as important as the ABC's. The big - muscled accomplishments of the past fifty years - like sea - farming, the fantastic multiplication of horsepower, and spaceships, pantographic factories, the Sahara Sea, reflexive automation, tapping the Sun - overshadow the most radical advance, i.e., the first fumbling steps in founding a science of the human mind.
Fifty years ago hypnotism was a parlor trick, clairvoyance was superstition, telepathy was almost unknown, and parapsychology was on a par with phrenology and not as respectable as the most popular nonsense called astrology.
Do we have a "science of the mind" today? Far from it. But we do have - A Certainty of Survival after Death, proved with scientific rigor more complete than that which we apply to heat engines. It is hard to believe that it was only in 1952 that Morey Bernstein, using hypnotic regression, established the personal survival of Bridget Murphy - and thereby turned the western world to a research that Asia and Africa had always taken for granted.(2)
Telepathy and Clairvoyance for Military Purposes. The obvious effect was the changing of war from a "closed" game to an "open" game in the mathematical sense, with the consequence that assassination is now more important than mass weapons. It may well be that no fusion bomb or plague weapon will ever again be used - it would take a foolhardy dictator even to consider such when he knows that his thoughts are being monitored ... and that assassination is so much harder to stop than a rocket bomb. He is bound to remember that Tchaka the Ruthless was killed by one of his own bodyguard.
But the less obvious effect has been to take "secrecy" wraps off scientific research. It is hard to recall that there was once a time when scientific facts could not be freely published, just as it is hard to believe that our grandfathers used to wear things called "swimming suits" - secrecy in science and swimming with clothes on are almost equally preposterous to the modern mind. Yet clothing never hampered a swimmer as much as "classification" hampered science. Most happily, controlled telepathy made secrecy first futile, then obsolete.(3)
But possibly the most important discovery we have made about ourselves is that Man is a Wild Animal. He cannot be tamed and remain Man; his genius is bound up in the very qualities which make him wild. With this self - knowledge, bleak, stern, and proud, goes the last hope of permanent peace on Earth; it makes world government unlikely and certainly unstable. Despite the fact that we are (as always) in a condition of marginal starvation, this fact makes all measures of population control futile - other than the ancient, grisly Four Horsemen, and even they are not effective; we finished World War III with a hundred million more people than when we started.
Not even the H - bomb could change our inner nature. We have learned most bloodily that the H - bomb does nothing that the stone axe did not do - and neither weapon could tame us. Man can be chained but he cannot be domesticated, and eventually he always breaks his chains.
Nor can we be "improved" by genetic breeding; it is not in our nature to accept it. Someday we may be conquered by super beings from elsewhere, then bred according to their notions - and become dogs, rather than wolves. (I'm betting that we will put up a fight!)
But, left to our own resources, improvements in our breed must come the hard way, through survival and we will still remain wild animals.(4)
But we have barely begun to study ourselves. Now that mankind has finally learned to read and write what can we expect him to accomplish?
We have no idea today of how self - awareness is linked to protoplasm. Now that we know that the ego survives the body we should make progress on this mystery.
Personal survival necessitates Cosmic Purpose as a "least hypothesis" for the universe. Scientists are tending to take teleology away from theologians and philosophers and give it a shaking. But concrete results this century seem unlikely. As of now, we still don't know why we are here or what we are supposed to do - but for the first time in history it is scientifically probable that the final answers are not null answers. It will be interesting indeed if one of the religious faiths turns out to be correct to nine decimals.
Since ESP talents seem to be independent of space-time it is theoretically possible that we may achieve a mental form of time travel. This is allowable under the mathematics being developed to describe mind phenomena. If so, we may eventually establish history, and even prophecy, as exact sciences.
On the physical side we can be certain that the speed - of - light barrier will be cracked this century. This makes it statistically likely that we will soon encounter races equal or superior to ourselves. This should be the most significant happening to mankind since the discovery of fire. It may degrade or destroy us, it may improve us; it cannot leave us unchanged.
On the mundane side we can expect a population of five billion by the middle of this century. Emigration to other planets will not affect the total here.
Scientific facts will continue to be discovered much faster than they can be classified and cross - referenced, but we cannot expect any accompanying increase in human intelligence. No doubt the few remaining illiterates will continue to be employed in the subscription departments of periodicals; the same bigmouths who now complain about rocket service to Luna (but who can't thread a needle themselves) will in 2050 be complaining about service to the stars (and they still won't be able to thread a needle).
Unquestionably the Twentieth Century will be referred to as the "Good Old Days," we will continue to view with alarm the antics of the younger generation, and we probably will still be after a cure for the common cold.
Notes : 1980
1. He's still a freak but he's all too common. There is a special circle in Hell for the "Educators" who decided that the Three R's really weren't all that important. Concerning our public schools today: Never have so many been paid so much for so little. I thank whatever gods there be that I went to school so many years ago that I had no choice but to be tightly disciplined in classes in which the teachers did not hesitate to fail and to punish.