The Year 2000

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 dabbled 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 Panglossy 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.