TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/033092/0330640.000

Text File | 1992-10-19 | 21KB | 439 lines

                                                                                ESSAY, Page 73

THE YEAR 2000


Is it the end -- or just the beginning?

By Henry Grunwald

[Henry Grunwald is a former U.S. ambassador to Austria and
former editor-in-chief of Time Inc. This article is adapted from
a lecture delivered at the New York Public Library.]


    Certain expressions can be rendered only in French.
Esprit de corps. Joie de vivre. Cherchez la femme. Croissant.
They don't really work in translation. And that is true of fin
de siecle. "End of the century" sounds flat and clunky. It
doesn't carry the suggestion conveyed by the original of hectic
decay and a sort of perfumed dying fall.

    When the expression fin de siecle first appeared in France
roughly 100 years ago, it meant modern and up-to-date, but it
quickly acquired a very negative connotation, and people spoke
of a sickness -- la maladie de fin de siecle. The term was
applied to anything thought to be corrupt, febrile, degenerate.

    What some people called decadent, others called modern.
The Fauve painter Andre Derain complained that "we are the
mushrooms on ancient dunghills." But the dunghills produced the
art and literature of the modern age, with their deliberate and
unprecedented break from history and tradition.

    In the optimistic, progress-obsessed U.S., the fin de
siecle had a different tone and temper. The new century seemed
to be the new frontier, and predictions about what it would
bring were rampant. Many were accurate, from airplanes to
television to freeways to disposable bottles. There were some
howlers as well, including the forecast that autos would make
streets as quiet as country lanes, that there would be no trees
left in America by 1920, and that by the end of the 20th
century, blacks would constitute about two-thirds of the U.S.
population.

    No prophet could anticipate what actually did happen. So
here we are, an incredible, terrible, marvelous century later,
nearing our own fin de siecle -- and fin de millennium.

    How do we measure up in comparison? We are beset by a
whole range of discontents and confusions. For a great many, the
dunghill has become a natural habitat. Derain and other
observers of depravity would, in fact, be stunned by the chaos
of manners and speech, by the hellish ubiquity of crime and the
easy -- one might almost say the democratic -- availability of
drugs; by the new varieties of decadence -- rock songs about
rape and suicide, pornography at the corner newsstand,
commercials for S&M clubs on your friendly cable channel, not
to mention telephone sex.

    The prophets of doom from the previous fin de siecle would
also find much to welcome. Murky but menacing predictions by
Nostradamus are widely quoted. Survivalists are digging caves.
Evangelical sects are getting ready for famine, flood, comets
and war to accompany the End of the Days, as outlined in the
books of Daniel and Revelation.

    Nevertheless, some of the most persistent forecasts of
doom have so far not come true, and others keep being recalled,
like defective cars. So our Cassandras have to try harder. The
prospect of AIDS unchecked gets more attention than the ever
growing life expectancy, and gene technology suggests nefarious
experiments with life itself as much as dramatic new ways of
preventing disease. We have come to distrust science. The public
even seems bored with space travel, although in hindsight it may
prove to be, along with the computer, the most important
achievement of our century.

    In 1907 Henry Adams wrote that in the modern world the
dynamo had replaced the Virgin as the power that drives history.
Were he around today, it is the computer, not the dynamo, that
would impress him with its occult powers and emanations of moral
force. It enables the mind to ask questions, find answers,
stockpile knowledge and devise plans to move mountains, if not
worlds.

    We do have our indomitable optimists. An outfit called the
Millennium Society has lined up the QE2 to transport 3,000
people, all presumably upbeat, to a huge celebration at the
Great Pyramid of Cheops. The authors of Megatrends 2000 look to
"a period of stunning technological innovation, unprecedented
economic opportunity, surprising political reform and great
cultural rebirth."

    Whether pessimists or optimists, we are once again awed by
the fin-de-siecle frisson. As Barbara Tuchman put it, people
feel "as if the hand of God were turning a page in human fate."
We have a sense of things ending and others beginning.

    First, of course, we are witnessing the end of communism
and beginning to cope with what this will mean for capitalism.

    Second, we are witnessing the end of nationalism as we
have known it, and beginning to look for new international
arrangements.

    And third, we are witnessing the end, or at least the
decline, of an age of unbelief and beginning what may be a new
age of faith.

    The end of communism (and it is the end, its temporary
survival in China notwithstanding) is something we have not yet
been able to assimilate. It is like suddenly being without a
familiar pain, like the void left by a missing limb.

    From the moment in 1917 when Lenin arrived at the Finland
Station in the city that would for decades bear his name, the
conflict with communism has overshadowed our century. It
dominated our politics, our hopes and fears, our view of the
world. It cost us many lives and much money. We learned to live
with a permanent enemy, studied his every trait and listened to
his endless, dreary polemics (we should not overlook sheer
boredom as a factor in communism's fall).

    And now all this is gone. A few words should be said over
communism's corpse. For one thing, it was not an illusion. Its
incredibly fast collapse tempts many to believe that the threat
was never all that real or serious, and that it proves
yesterday's doves to have been right. That view is mistaken. All
the evidence confirms that the resistance of the West, including
the American arms buildup, was essential to bringing about the
collapse of the system so quickly and so totally.

    At the same time, it is true that Western pressure could
not have accomplished what it did if the the system had not
been deeply flawed. Marxism-Leninism -- and socialism in
general -- embodied the basic fallacy that people do their best
work in a vast collective, rather than in free pursuit of their
self-interest, and that government or bureaucrats can run an
efficient, egalitarian economy.

    Some heavy gloating on our side is fully justified. But
the collapse of communism does not guarantee the permanent,
universal triumph of capitalism and democracy.

    We must remember what gave birth to communism in the first
place: the social upheavals and new poverty brought about by the
Industrial Revolution, troubles that preceded its immense
benefits. The man-made calamities of the capitalist free market
constituted, as it were, acts of God without God. The socialist
movements that sprang up in protest were animated partly by
Luddite rage, partly by the dreams of a just and stable society,
a New Jerusalem. These dreams have not been eradicated by their
devastating practical failure.

    We have immensely mitigated the harshness of early
capitalism, have in fact transformed it beyond recognition; but
we have still not solved its basic contradiction. This is not,
as Marx thought, economic but psychological: on the one hand,
capitalism requires the engine of self-interest -- or greed, if
you will -- while on the other hand, society requires attention
to the general interest -- the taming of greed. We are still
pulled back and forth between these two poles.

    Basically we like the free market only as long as the
trend is up. As soon as the inevitable downturn occurs, we
complain bitterly and expect the government to fix things. We
want to have it both ways -- the energy and dynamism of
capitalism, plus stability and security. It is simply impossible
to square the circle completely. But we seem to be working out
a new geometry. We are rethinking the interaction between the
government, private enterprise, the local community and the
individual.

    The private sector can be monstrously inefficient too,
quite often owing to the very sins typical of government:
bureaucracy and inflexibility. But sooner or later, market
forces catch up. Something similar will have to happen in
government. Cities are already bringing competition into the
picture by privatizing services, including street cleaning,
police, even prisons. The new federal highway bill partly
privatizes road maintenance. Privatization is not the answer to
everything, but some enthusiasts, including Norman Macrae of the
Economist, suggest that people will someday elect commercial
firms instead of politicians to run their cities.

    We are starting to see that economics is at bottom
psychology. The most successful economies in the world are, more
than anything else, the expression of a people's spirit, will
and intelligence. We will need a new sense of drive, less
emphasis on "rights" and more on responsibility -- in short, we
must create a new psychological climate.

    It is not reassuring, however, to see the reappearance of
that favorite American animal, the scapegoat. Whatever Japan's
reluctance to open its markets, the biggest share of the blame
for our economic and social troubles rests with ourselves -- our
complacency, our neglect of education, aggravated by the
deterioration of the family and lack of social discipline.

    There is little doubt that in the next century, the
world's economic center of gravity will shift to Asia. As a
Pacific power, the U.S. can and should participate in that
shift, and this could spur a long-term American resurgence. But
it won't happen if we succumb to economic nationalism.

    As communism crashes, nationalism seems to be replacing it
as a menace. The Soviet Union has broken up into a clutch of
quarrelsome new countries: yesterday's republics whose names we
are still learning. They will be lucky if they are not torn
apart by civil war like Yugoslavia. The Balkans are back with
a vengeance.

    Historically, nationalism -- as distinct from nationality
or patriotism -- is a fairly recent development. For a thousand
years after the fall of Rome, people's loyalties were to their
church, their lords, their rights and duties under the feudal
system, to their guilds, eventually to their King.

    Only in the French Revolution did nationalism burst forth,
complete with flag and anthem. Nationalism became a new
religion. Altars were raised to the French nation, with the
inscription THE CITIZEN IS BORN, LIVES AND DIES FOR LA PATRIE.

    Given such messianic megalomania, national freedom didn't
lead to individual freedom. On the contrary. In the name of the
French nation, Paris long suppressed the national aspirations
of Bretons and Normans; as soon as the Hungarians gained a
measure of independence, they did the same with their Slavic
minorities; and so on.

    All this, unfortunately, is as pertinent as ever today.
After two world wars, some thought that we might be heading for
something approximating world government. But nationalism proved
stronger than anybody had expected. New nations proliferated,
many of them hardly viable; at last count we have 170 sovereign
states in the world speaking 4,000 different languages.

    And yet something is happening to the traditional
nation-state. It is beginning to explode in two directions. Some
of the newer, less stable states are exploding downward, as it
were, into ever smaller ethnic or religious units -- which
really is not nationalism but tribalism. Such splintering in the
name of self-determination and freedom is understandable, but
can also be dangerous. It makes no sense for every tribe, every
language group, every cultural community to try to be sovereign.

    The nation-state is also exploding upward, into larger
units, notably the European Community. It has not eradicated
national rivalries, or xenophobia, or protectionism, or the
danger of international trade wars. But the historic fact is
that Western Europe has learned the momentous lesson: that war
and conquest no longer lead to economic prosperity. Bending
sovereignty, states are increasingly joining to cope with such
common problems as the environment, communications, nuclear
proliferation and a whole range of issues that used to be
"internal affairs" -- including human rights.

    In much of the world, though, for a long time, nationalism
and tribalism will remain intractable forces, especially in the
Middle East, where they are mixed with deep religious passions,
hatreds and dreams of revenge. In the long run, only the
promise of economic progress, much as it may be loathed by
Islamic fundamentalists and others, can dissolve such atavistic
rages. A Japanese management expert says, "People don't want
nationality and soil; they want satellites and Sony." A little
glib, perhaps. But ultimately there is a universal desire in the
Third World to achieve the better life that the developed world
promises, or, as sociologist Alvin Toffler puts it, for the slow
world to catch up with the fast world. The U.S. and other
advanced nations will have to help. It is ironic that at this
very moment the U.S. itself seems threatened by a kind of
tribalism, flying the "multicultural" flag.

    One of the most remarkable things about the 20th century,
more than technological progress and physical violence, has
been the deconstruction of man (and woman). We are seeing a
reaction against that phenomenon.

    Our view of man obviously depends on our view of God. The
Age of Reason exalted humankind but still admitted God as a
sort of supreme philosopher-king or chairman of the board who
ultimately presided over the glories achieved by reason and
science. The humanist 19th century voted him out. It
increasingly saw reason and science irreconcilably opposed to
religion, which would fade away.

    Secular humanism (a respectable term even though it became
a right-wing swearword) stubbornly insisted that morality need
not be based on the supernatural. But it gradually became clear
that ethics without the sanction of some higher authority
simply were not compelling.

    The ultimate irony, or perhaps tragedy, is that secularism
has not led to humanism. We have gradually dissolved --
deconstructed -- the human being into a bundle of reflexes,
impulses, neuroses, nerve endings. The great religious heresy
used to be making man the measure of all things; but we have
come close to making man the measure of nothing.

    The mainstream churches have tried in various ways to
adapt themselves to a secular age. The Roman Catholic Church
made its liturgy accessible in the vernacular and turned
increasingly from saving souls to saving society. The major
Protestant denominations also increasingly emphasized social
activism and tried to dilute dogma to accommodate 20th century
rationality and diversity. Churches not only permitted the
ordination of women -- long overdue -- but are seriously
debating the ordination of homosexuals and the sanctioning of
homosexual marriages. Fin de siecle?

    But none of these reforms are arresting the sharp decline
of the mainstream churches. Why not? The answer seems to be
that while orthodox religion can be stifling, liberal religion
can be empty. Many people seem to want a faith that is rigorous
and demanding, or else more personal and emotional. That
explains in part why denominations outside the mainstream are
doing well, including Fundamentalists (despite the decline of
the scandal-riddled TV ministries).

    Equally significant is the flood of substitute religions.
The most prominent of these is the so-called New Age movement
-- a vast, amorphous hodgepodge of spiritualism, faith healing,
reincarnation, meditation, yoga, macrobiotic diets, mystical
environmentalism and anything else that helps transform the
self. Its followers sound as if they were born again, but
without Christ. A motto often used by them is borrowed from
Joseph Campbell: "Follow your bliss."

    The New Age bliss has grown to extraordinary proportions,
with magazines, books, records, mass merchandising. Large
corporations have dab bled in New Age techniques to control
stress in their managers. Some New Agers often affirm that all
is God, hence all is good. As Chesterton said, "When men stop
believing in God, they don't believe in nothing; they believe
in anything."

    But the New Age phenomenon points to a void that our
society has left in people's lives. They don't need Sartre to
find existence meaningless. In New Perspectives Quarterly,
author Christopher Lasch laments the loss of institutions of
"organic unity" like family, neighborhood and religion, a loss
to which "liberalism never had an answer."

    The irrepressible religious impulse -- the revenge of the
sacred, as it has been called -- is perhaps even more clearly
displayed outside our own country. Note the spread of Islamic
fundamentalism, the strength of Hinduism, both often accompanied
by violence. Throughout the Third World, Christian churches,
especially the Evangelicals, are gaining more converts than ever
before. In Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, despite
decades of officially imposed atheism, religion is once again
a major force.

    Where will all this lead? Just possibly, to a real new age
of faith. Not a new universal religion, or the return of a
medieval sort of Christianity overarching all of society -- nor,
one hopes, the resurgence of what might be called the Bible
Belt Inquisition. But we may be heading into an age when faith
will again be taken seriously, and when it will again play a
major part in our existence. As the Swiss-born theologian Hans
Kung says, "Ethics must again become public instead of merely
personal."

    For a long time we Americans considered our nation itself
as the fulfillment of a sort of millennium, a divinely ordained
new order, God's own attempt to start over. The notion is far
from dead, and it doesn't show up merely in Fourth of July
patriotism. There is, for instance, the Pan glossy suggestion
from a serious academic that, at least in theory, we have
devised so perfect a system that we have reached the end of
history.

    In our daily lives, we believe in a great many small
secular millenniums; one of them is success. Romance is a kind
of millennium too, and we cling to it with amazing fidelity,
despite sexual freedom and divorce -- the triumph, as Dr.
Johnson said about second marriages, of hope over experience.

    Our elections also inspire some millennial attitudes;
despite our cynicism about our politicians, we can't quite
resist the sneaking hope that the next occupant of the White
House will set everything to rights. There is a similar feeling
about our great secular crusades -- for civil rights, for the
environment. We believe that these problems can be solved for
good; and while we do achieve tremendous improvements, we keep
being surprised if they are neither complete nor permanent.

    We have a hard time accepting the notion that history is
not a steady ascent, that it can move us from high civilization
to barbarism, from democracy to dictatorship, from
licentiousness to prudery -- and back. During the past hundred
years, let alone the past thousand, we have made almost
unbelievable material and social progress; what has not changed
is the nature of humanity and our never ending challenge: to
keep working, to keep mending, to keep building. It has been
suggested that Sisyphus is the myth most typical of the human
condition. A better choice might be Faust, who, after all his
dealings with God and the devil (not to mention Helen and
Gretchen), winds up erecting dams against the tides of the North
Sea, dams that are never totally secure and must always be
rebuilt. Goethe points the moral, "Only he deserves his life and
his freedom who conquers them anew every day."

    Not a bad message for America right now. The year 2000
could very well open a second American Century, given a major,
national effort of will. Absent that, it could also be the
beginning of the end of the U.S. as a significant power, and we
could (to vary what Beyond the Fringe once said about Britain)
sink, not giggling but grumbling, into the sea. The outcome is
up to us.

    So let's, by all means, approach our fin de siecle, our
fin de millennium, with what joy we can muster. Let's get
aboard the QE2; let's celebrate at the Great Pyramid or
wherever. And then let's get down to work again, and back to
reality.

    But let's not assume that the next millennium will be the
Millennium.