Pedro Lilienfeld

I penned this short essay towards the end of 1999 amidst the anxieties of the impending Y2000 transition

Our Western frenzy about the upcoming millennium should be tempered by the realization that: a) the timing of this momentous occasion is simply a quirk of the decimal counting system that we have chosen to adopt, and b) for the majority of humanity this millennium is not even imminent.

Let us clarify. If evolution had given homo sapiens a dozen fingers, our grandiose year 2000 would probably read a prosaic 11A8, nothing to justify making reservations for New Year’s celebration at some exclusive New York skyscraper restaurant three years in advance of the blessed event. Conversely, the beginning of a third millennium in that 12-fingered counting system would have to wait for the rather distant year 3,456 AD by our traditional decimal reckoning.

If we were genuine nerds trained to think like computers, i.e., weaned on the binary (zeros and ones) system, our great start of the third millennium would be expressed by the even more unprepossessing 11111010000, hardly a reason to contemplate suicide to escape Armageddon, as some pessimistic fundamentalists may choose to do. Computer programmers will have trouble enough surviving the Y2000 bug crashes. After all, no nerd worth his/her salt could have predicted that humanity would make it all the way through the 20th century, and still worry about such mundane matters as Social Security checks and other similar amenities.

As to the majority of the nearly 6 billion^[1] fools who accompany us on this benighted planet, most of them do not even reckon dates starting on the debatable birth year of either the Son of God or a Jewish carpenter’s son, depending on your opinion. In fact, as far as the Jews are concerned we are slowly approaching the seventh millennium. For the Moslem world we are about half way into the second, and the large Buddhist contingent believes that we are already well into a third millennium. By the French Revolutionary calendar, decreed by the National Convention of 1793, France would have barely entered the third century. January 1, 2000 would have been a Gallic 12 Nivôse An CCIX (the 12th day of Snowy month, year 209). Napoleon saw to the early demise of that oddity.

Finally, let us remember that we can not even agree on whether the new millennium starts with the year 2000 or if that is the last year of the tired second millennium. In any case, let’s drink to the beginning of …..whatever and whenever.    

---

^[1] Note that in 1999 the Earth’s population was fewer than 6 billion. Now, in 2024, it is 8 billion.