Reframing humanity’s future

Do you believe in humanity? In its worthiness, and in its future?

As a human being, your answer to that ought to be easy: “Yes, of course.” Today, however, many would say that you are blind. We might have confidence in technology or God or future generations – but in ourselves?

Individuals who do not believe in themselves—in their worthiness to exist and their potential to grow and thrive and accomplish—are at a disadvantage in life. If human beings cannot simply say that we believe in ourselves in general, what does that do to blunt our potential?

The drag on our confidence, optimism, hope — is our present circumstances and our recent history. (We can all make a list.) Whether it’s defined by the quality of humanness, or by the quantity of actions taken by all of us individual human beings, humanity today seems to be a bit of a mess.

And if we don’t have confidence in humanity, doesn’t that undermine confidence in ourselves?

So what is a millennium handbook, and how can it help?

Well, a millennium is a big enough unit of time to see changes in human beings generally—changes in humanity. And a handbook is a guide to getting something done.

So a millennium handbook helps us reframe our sense of ourselves across time, by looking at humanity’s capacity for change. We gather insights about our past, and we can begin to project our future... 

The basic message we arrive at is what, then? 

That we are evolving, rapidly, in ways we don’t really recognize. Ways that are not merely genetic. Ways that suggest enormously positive potentials—which will be useful only as we wake up to them and take charge of them.

This is the message of our new millennium, the one that began just a generation ago. And this is the central question for all of us who are alive. But has the message gotten through?

The “new millennium” was over almost as soon as it began. The magic of a thousand years spreading out in front of us was largely used up in its first 1,000 hours.

There were parties around the world on 12/31/1999. There were some serious millennium goals talked about, and a millennium summit at the UN, but no great new ideas or perspectives emerged. And  the spirit of possibility was definitively swallowed up twenty-one months later by 9/11.

As a factor in daily awareness, for a few more years there was  some hoo-hah and some frou-frou, some ron-ron and some blah-blah about 2000 and “the millennium”, but so what? The marketing power had expired. Only the word “millennial” is holding on, as the label for a “new generation” (a fifteen-to-twenty year “demographic cohort”), the oldest of whom reached age 21 at or around 2000.

Now, the “new millennium” has had 21 years to grow up. Since this span has 978 years left to play itself out, let’s take a fresh look. 

Let’s begin with some simple big millennial questions: 

• Where are we?
• What are we?
• Why are we here?
• What is this humanity uniquely good for?

These may seem too big for ordinary folks (“above my pay grade”), but it is not so hard to bring them down to a personal level. And then perhaps a few insights can both restore our hope about ourselves, and provide a basis for all of us to take part in planning our future.