The Year 2000

There are many people who for some reason believed that the world would end in the year 2000. While it is true that many computer systems could have gone haywire in that year, I do not see the reason for believing that time will end with the millennium.

Speaking of time, the nature of time itself, or at least our method of keeping track of it, is one reason for my disbelief. Time on Earth is a "necessary fiction." It has no meaning in the scheme of things. Time is entirely based on our planet. One year on Earth is only half a year on Mars. We merely keep time for the purpose of arriving promptly for appointments and organizing our tangled histories.

As I see it, there is no set end to the world, and there is no set beginning. The beginning is the end, and the end is the beginning. For me it is like a circle, which keeps going around and around.

And, of course, there is always the fact that our method of keeping track of years is wrong anyway. Supposedly, the Christian solar calendar is based on the year Christ was born, but according to modern theories we have got that date wrong. If we wanted to be true to that base in telling time, than the millennium has already ended. We just missed it.

Who needs the Christian calendar for telling time? If you asked a Jew, she could tell you that the year 2000 was over 3,000 years ago. If you asked a Muslim, he might say the millennium will not come for several hundred years.

Finally, why choose 2000 as the year to bring on Armageddon? Why not pick a year with some real significance, such as 2077?

In case you wonder why, that's the 100th anniversary of Elvis Presley's death. What could be more culturally significant?

Copyright © 2002 Colleen Fischer | Last updated October 7, 2002