Tech obsolescence? Universal Basic Income? And the Age of Amateurs

Thought provoking for the coming weekend: Stewart Brand’s “Long Now” reflections about which aspects of our world change rapidly... and which more slowly... and how this can help us grapple with vital issues, like education.

One from my own such list: About a century ago, John M. Keynes prophesied that rising industrial production would pour forth so much wealth with such automated efficiency that the forty hour week (just then coming into fashion) would be reduced to thirty hours, then twenty, as jobs were shared and and the working class got more leisure time. 

As it happened, there was a vast world out there that still needed to industrialize, and the West’s appetite for ever-more goods kept factories and mines etc. humming hard for all of those decades. Indeed, the developing world uplifted itself primarily out of the spending by Americans and others, of trillions of dollars on mountains of crap we never needed. A strange - and by far the most successful - kind of foreign assistance. And yet it never threatened the 40 hour week.

But there’s something on the horizon. A century forestalled, the era foreseen by Keynes seems about to dawn, with automation appearing about to render most kinds of human industrial employment wholly or partially obsolete. Indeed, many white collar jobs and even creative tasks seem prone to takeover by AI systems. Local production of goods and food may end the long chains of container ships crossing oceans, an ecological godsend, but perhaps tipping the world economy into convulsions.

Yes, there will be job losses... accompanied by vastly improved ability to produce anything humans want.

If the Keynes era dawns, then we’ll face decisions:

- Who will own the means of production and the cornucopia that pours forth? If it is a classic, feudal pyramid, then exploitation and unfairness are guaranteed, followed by revolution. But it needn’t be that way.

- Will paychecks be replaced by UBI or Universal Basic Income? Or else by giving every citizen a “share” in these urban factories and farms, so they can live off dividends?

- Either way, how will folks spend their time?  We are already in an under-appreciated era of hobbies, pastimes, avocations and amateur sagacities. There are more blacksmiths and sword makers in the U.S. today that in the Wild West or European middle ages.  In my novel Foundation’s Triumph… and separately in EARTH… I posited an Age of Amateurs, and it is already here -- almost completely ignored by pundits, economists and jeremiad-spewing pessimists.

But… will that suffice for all people?

- If all of this happens under the guidance of Artificial Intelligence, will they help us to design better ways for a better era?  And will we agree with those super-minds about what “better” means?

== Getting better all the time...==

A living human may spend a whole life earnestly improving. He or she may become among the wisest of our wise.  Then they die.

The one thing that can improve cumulatively... and after 6000 years of feudalism, we finally did start to do it... is civilization.  We are better, stronger, more perceptive and knowing and -- yes -- wise than all our ancestors. As the best of those ancestors would have wanted!  (Indeed, if they failed to make this happen, then that indicts them as unwise! The best compliment you can pay the "Greatest Generation" is to admit that they made America even greater, and then greater still.)

This rising path is not because of some leftist historical imperative. Nor is it the right's insane teleology of so called "cyclical" history. It is the result of several Enlightenment inventions like reciprocal accountability, that foster positive sum games. Those games mean that a civilization that outlives human members can grow wiser than the sum of its parts.

Fanatics hate this concept! They want the individual human soul to be the only thing that matters.  Zero sum. You get to be a lord or a peasant. You're "saved" or spend eternity in some sadistic hell. But if there are positive sums, then there is something better, greater, more important than one egotist's soul. That more important thing is... us.

I believe that. Hey, let's admit that I have an ego the size of the sun! And yet, I avow that I'm relatively unimportant. There are things worth dying for. And we are building them. Together.

One of you reminded us of a quote  quote from Joan Vinge, in her prize-winning novel "The Snow Queen."

"Indifference is the strongest force in the universe. It makes everything it touches meaningless. Love and hate don’t stand a chance against it. It lets neglect and decay and monstrous injustice go unchecked. It doesn’t act, it allows. And that’s what gives it so much power."

== Miscellaneous items of interest! ==

Your Biases: This site offers a poster of hugely important wisdom about the ways we fool ourselves. These are somewhat different than "logical fallacies."  They overlap, but are separate things. (The same folks offer a logical fallacies poster.)

Onalytica: This site specializes in tracking topics and traffic in order to trace who are the biggest "influencers" in each of several dozen fields.  Imagine my surprise when their influencer chart of Artificial Intelligence (AI) had a familiar face at the very center of the mesh.  Oh, this isn't the first group to reach a similar metric-conclusion about my place in the discussion.  I just find it rather... well... not entirely plausible!

Still, there's a need to rock any set of comfortable assumptions, especially in such an important field. And poking is what I do...  Let's all poke away! 

Poor millennials! Here's a good story on the millennials' challenges and economic changes. More than a bit whiney, but there are legitimate complaints. And yes, the ones I have met are better people than boomers! And yes, that is to the credit of boomers and X-gens! Because we were clearly great parents.

Forget doll houses! This New York exhibition offers miniature landscapes and cityscapes with moving cars and people and a variety of techniques.

The ‘500 mile problem’ is especially acute between LA and San Francisco. It will be a decade before the Super-High Speed Train is completed… or Elon’s alternatives get traction… and the airport hassle is nasty.  So a new company is offering luxury sleeper busses that deliberately slow down to keep the ride smooth and so that you’ll get a full 8 hours.  

This Goop Shaman cleanses your wardrobe of evil spirits. Some people simply have too much money. It's our duty to relieve their burden. The bigger picture? This was “wisdom” in 99% of the societies our ancestors lived in. Enemies of the enlightenment want to bring back this darkness… and not all of them are on the mad-right.  The left has its… (sigh.)

A philanthropy prize award winner Community Warehouse sells high quality, donated construction materials and staffs the operation with ex-offenders. Taking a page from Costco, the organization is members-only and offers low-prices to members, which include landlords in the neighborhood. Through its straight-forward operation, the Warehouse serves ex-offenders, the neighborhood, and repurposes materials from construction sites all while running a business near break-even.

Separated at birth? We all run into or spot humans who look a bit like us. Lots of folks used to comment on my (I think vague) resemblance to Andre Agassi. Now some say I’ve got “a total Peter Gabriel thing going on.”  PG is a hero of transparency who has funded Project Witness for decades, so that’s cool.  I wish I had a voice like his.

Proclamations of doom are perennial flowers which have sprouted in the garden of human imagination since earliest times. Oracles appeared whenever turmoil caused nations and peoples to feel uncertain about the future. From ancient Sumer, to India, to Iceland, astrological portents used to set off recurring waves of public hysteria. In honor of the coming (or not-coming) Rapture event... may I reprint an article of mine from the last century? It seems even more relevant today. Alas.

== And More miscellany of interest! ==

Here's a very tiny sampling of past apocalypse ravings. Maybe 0.0001%.  In case you missed the reason. Here's the latest silliness. There has got to be a way to corner guys like this into making a bet on it! Better yet, go to his followers and offer pet-care contracts... we'll take care of your pets after you rapture. But pay in advance!

Yipe! There actually are “after the rapture pet care” sites! They cover a whole range. This one is hosted by (they assert) rapture believing evangelists whose apparent sincerity is only exceeded by their stunning hypocrisy. They guarantee that their volunteers are unbelievers who won’t be saved… and who will nevertheless sign up to do this – without any vetting or listing of those ‘volunteers’ by location or any guarantee they actually exist. Never mind that. The trusting folks who register (for a $10 fee, kept by the organizers) can then dismiss all worries from their minds, content that some damned-but-generous atheist or Jew will slog across the apocalypse, with blood pouring from his or her eyes, to care for your cat (when there will be vastly more urgent calls for compassion, nearby), and do all that for zero compensation. Never mind that you prayed daily for Armageddon to bring this suffering to anyone not exactly like you. Rest assured that these vetted martyr-saints will handle everything for Fluffy, while dodging seven-eyed scorpions and Beasts and lion-horses…

…as stunningly depicted in this fabulous, terrifying/hilarious web comic by Patrick Farley.   

But… wait… what did I just call those volunteers? Could that mean what it seems to mean?

Possibly less of a scam are sites created BY the non-saved, who treat it as a business venture that can be enforced and supervised by the rapture-saved folks' Jewish (and presumably left-behind) lawyers.  

On a lighter note. Some of you may recall that GLORY SEASON featured – along with feminist genetic engineering and other marvels – a rustic version of Conway’s Game of Life. Here’s one more simulator to play with.

Now... rise up and believe again! Lovely. Procul Harum in 2006 doing “Whiter Shade of Pale” with a pops orchestra.

And end on a note of enjoyment. Entertaining…. Best stunts of the year.  And we’re supposedly decadent?   Age of amateurs, indeed. We are beyond amazing. We're amazingly amazing!

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Hawking vs the Terminator! Plus BASIC at 50! Blood Moons! Americans are weird! Plus… more science!

Stephen Hawking, plus physicists Max Tegmark and Frank Wilczek and AI expert Stuart Russell, have penned an editorial -- Transcending Complacency on Super-Intelligent Machines -- urging caution in research aimed at creating artificial intelligences. As if Hollywood has not already wagged that finger at us, plenty of times, already!

To be clear, Hawking does not (as many in media have misquoted him) say that AI in itself would be humanity's "worst mistake." He very clearly states that the mistake would be paying too little attention to our responsibilities in the creation process. Taking insufficient care to get it right.

I know many members of the AI research community and this topic is widely discussed. But how do you take 'precautions' to keep new cybernetic minds friendly, when 
(1) we don't know which of six very different, general types of approaches to this problem might eventually bear fruit and 
(2) it is clear that the one method that cannot work is "laws of robotics" of Asimov fame.

I explore all six approaches in various works of fiction and nonfiction. One of the six approaches -- the one least-studied, of course -- offers what I deem our best hope for a "soft landing," in which human civilization and some recognizable version of our species would remain confidently in command of its own destiny.

At the opposite extreme is this possibility: AI might arrive that's deliberately designed to be predatory, parasitical, ruthless and destructive, in its very core and purpose. Alas, this is exactly the approach that is receiving more funding - and in secret - than all other forms of AI combined. And no, I am not talking about the military!

== How it all got started ==

Let's move back to a much earlier stretch of this road. A fun article in Time Magazine (online) celebrates the 50th anniversary of the clunky but epochal programming language BASIC. Computer pioneer Harry McCracken traces the history of BASIC, how it was designed to provide a portal for average students to access programming, and how it helped to launch both the PC revolution and the Microsoft empire.

McCracken cites my famous (or infamous) SALON article -- Why Johnny Can't Code -- about the demise of programming language accessibility in our modern computers -- how this had a tragic and harmful side-effect, eliminating from school textbooks the shared experience of introductory programming exercises that -- for one decade or so -- exposed millions of gen-Xers to small tastes of programming. Far more than almost any millennials receive.

And no, I was not praising BASIC as a language, but rather the notion that there should be SOME kind of “lingua franca” included in all computers and tablets etc. For a decade, Basic was so universally available that textbook publishers put simple programming exercises in most standard math and science texts. Teachers assigned them, and thus, a far higher fraction of students gained a little experience fiddling with 12 line programs that would make a pixel move… and thus knew, in their guts, that every dot on every screen obeys an algorithm. That it’s not magic, it only looks that way. Apple and Microsoft and RedHat could meet and settle this in a day --after which textbook publishers and teachers could go back to assigning marvelous little computer exercises, a great way to introduce millions of kids to… the basics.

For those who want the simplest way to re-access BASIC, one of the readers of my "Johnny Can't Code" article went ahead and provided a turnkey, web-accessed module that you can use instantly to run old (or new) programs.

Have a look at "QuiteBasic"… one of the coolest things any of my readers were ever inspired to produce.

Alas, word has not reached the textbook committees. In a modern era when computers run everything, far fewer kids are exposed to programming than in the 1980s and 1990s. Are you really okay with that?

== Speaking of tech anniversaries ==

John Naughton, published a fascinating article for the Observer, "25 things you might not know about the web on its 25th birthday." The big picture perspectives are important, but one especially stands out to me:

Number 18 -- The web needs a micro-payment system. "In addition to being just a read-only system, the other initial drawback of the web was that it did not have a mechanism for rewarding people who published on it. That was because no efficient online payment system existed for securely processing very small transactions at large volumes. (Credit-card systems are too expensive and clumsy for small transactions.) But the absence of a micro-payment system led to the evolution of the web in a dysfunctional way: companies offered "free" services that had a hidden and undeclared cost, namely the exploitation of the personal data of users. This led to the grossly tilted playing field that we have today, in which online companies get users to do most of the work while only the companies reap the financial rewards."

I've been working for some time on innovations that (in collaboration with others) could utterly transform the web (and incidentally save the profession of journalism) by making micro payments workable and effective. Got patents too!  That and $3.65 will get you a small cappuccino.

== Is the West - especially America - just weird? ==

A large fraction of social science research has focused on the most-accessible supply of survey and test subjects -- westerners and especially Americans -- under the assumption that "we're all the same under the skin."Hence tests that dive below obvious cultural biases ought to show what's basically human. But lo and behold, it seems that westerners and especially Americans are "weird" compared to almost all other cultures, in ways exposed by simple Prisoners' Dilemma type games and many others that study - say - individuality.

In fact, anyone who compares western - and especially American - values, processes, history and so on, compared to almost any other culture that ever existed, would have been able to tell you that. (Californians are even weirder! Ask Robert Heinlein.) The question is: "weird" as in dangerously unhinged? Or in the sense of "our one chance to escape the traps that mired every other civilization into a pit of dashed hopes and potential?" The jury is still out.

== Art and theology? ==

Speaking of cryptic time messages… Charles Smith (and some others) pointed out a fascinating aspect of The centerpiece image in Michaelangelo's Sistine Chapel paintings… "Apparently, Michelangelo placed god and various angels within what is clearly the outline of a human brain. Am I imagining this? Maybe, but I doubt it. Having dissected many cadavers, he knew his anatomy. He was trying to tell us something about the human mind and its relationship to the idea of god… the idea that man created god in his own image."

It's even better. The deity's legs are sticking out through the cerebellum and his hand of creation emerges from the prefrontal lobes.

Aw heck, let's stay with "theology" for a while, this time in quotation marks because it is the raging foolish kind. Mega best-sellers are out there proclaiming portent in the "blood moon."

Astronomers apply no significance to the way lunar eclipses - or 'blood moons" - sometimes come in groups of four or "tetrads. But that has not prevented a spate of blood moon mysticism. The four eclipses in this tetrad occur on April 15 (last month) and Oct. 8, 2014, and April 4 and Sept. 28 next year… all of them occurring during Jewish holidays! Which has provoked a bunch of Christian (not Jewish) mystical last-days mongering. Both of the ones in April occur during Passover, and the ones in October occur during the Jewish Feast of Tabernacles.

I'll leave it to you to find these sites (Google "blood moon prophecy") but at one level it is just more of the dopey millennialism I talk about here… wherein meme-pushers sell the sanctimony drug-high of in-group "knowledge" to a portion of the public who do not like the very idea of the Future and yearn for it to just go away.

In this case, the "coincidental" overlap of lunar eclipses with Jewish holidays is not "one-in-tens-of-thousands(!)" but almost one-to-one. Because the Jewish High Holy Days are defined as starting on the full moon - the exact time when lunar eclipses occur. Also, lunar eclipses always happen near the vernal and autumnal equinoxes, when the moon's orbit is most closely aligned with the Earth-Sun plane. Hence, of course clusters of full lunar eclipses will line up with those two holidays. It is not "coincidence" or a "sign" but rather a matter of deliberate design… exploited by these "blood moon" predators, preying on the gullible.

The good news? This will pass. Alas, it will be replaced by the next nonsense, then the next. Till we persuade our neighbors to stop hating tomorrow.

== Science Miscellany ==

University of Washington (UW) graduate Thomas Larson is developing a lens that will turn any smartphone or tablet computer into a handheld microscope that magnifies by 150 times.

Ten ways 3D printing could change space exploration.

Wow. A supernova that just happened to be magnified by a gravitational lens of an intervening galaxy.

Fascinating. We assumed all brain neurons needed uniform sheaths of myelin to perform well. Apparently not!

Ancient shrimp had a cardiovascular system 520 millions years ago, earlier than any other known creature. The fossil dates back to a period when the "Cambrian Explosion" was taking off. Possibly the one time aliens DID meddle with our planet… by flushing a toilet here?

Interesting question: Could playfulness be embedded in the universe?

Fascinating news about the importance of the Y Chromosome. Huh.  Maybe males aren't about to go away, after all.  Sorry about that.

On the Immorality of "Rapture"

== A final word on the "rapture" event ==

I just saw that Mr. Camping was "disappointed" after expecting 200 million to be raptured! Wow, what a liberal. When I first heard of this rapture thing, the number was 144,000 exactly, and unbaptized children need not apply! (see below) BTW that's not the number going to heaven, it's the number who are so wonderful they don't have to suffer Tribulation first.

Funny how memes mutate, under criticism. By the time the “Left Behind” series took this up, they realized that sending a billion kids into years of torment might not be the best way to pitch their story! So pre-puberty children got taken up, even from Hindu or Muslim homes! Huge change. Some flexibility! (To get a clear picture of the story they are talking about - derived from a portion of the Christian Bible that Martin Luther personally despised, and that Jesus would have reviled, see Patrick Farley's Apocamon.) So the circle of inclusion has gradually expanded - though it still encourages followers to gleefully relish their inherent superiority and the prospect of their neighbors' coming torment.

(One person writes in to explain the original 144,000 figure: "They were to be the first "fruit" and once they were "sealed" they could go forth and bring the rest of the world in, therefore allowing for many more people. But the first 144,000 were crucial, coming from the 12 tribes of Israel. "Revelation 7:3-8 - saying: "Do not harm the earth or the sea or the trees, until after we have sealed the servants of God on their foreheads." And I heard the number of the sealed, a hundred and forty-four thousand, sealed from every tribe of the sons of Israel" (12 tribes, and 12,000 from each). Jehovah's Witnesses are said to believe in this firmly, and the rest of their member will be left behind to teach."

(Ah... so what part of not harming the Earth is so hard to understand? And why have they stopped mentioning this 144,000 thing? And wasn't the Temple supposed to be rebuilt (God forbid) before all this happens, so the newly Christianized twelve Jewish tribes (including the ten missing ones) can be sealed? In which case, all we need to do, in order to prevent this psychopathic Patmos scenario from ever happening is simply NOT build a building? Okay then.)

The crucial point. This is all so self-centered and solipsistic - so totally focused on the individual's greedy urge to leave everybody else behind - that Jesus would certainly have nothing to do with the whole thing. People who pray for such an event to happen are inherently UNWORTHY of rapture because they are praying for their neighbors to suffer. That’s it. Summarized accurately. Top, middle and bottom.

Putting it all in completely Christian terms, Paul and Patmos may be vengeful cusses, but Jesus overrules them, and he says LOVE thy neighbor.

Don't pray for events that will send your neighbor into torment and hell --

-- which is what a number of leading presidential candidates openly avow to do! They avow to follow preachers who openly call more than half of all living Americans "damned souls." Pastors and congregations who pray for the coming of events that will send more than half of their countrymen into agony and eternal hell. Events that will end democracy, abolish rule "by the people" and terminate the United States of America. Events that will rain "fire from the sky."

And these folks want us "damned souls" to vote them keys to our nuclear arsenal.

This isn't just amusing, people. (Though I had hoped there'd be more stunts with empty suits of clothes left on sidewalks!) This matter is one that's relevant to politics and the rise of a new Know-Nothing movement that hates modernity, that hates science. And that hates us.

Every date of prophecies devastation has passed without event. No matter. Doom-seers are well-practiced at the art of recalculation.

I explore this further in my posting: Whose Rapture?

==And a clarification==

And now... a clarification. Satiation? I call satiability one of the hallmarks of sanity, and it is... but only if it means you shift your longings! When you get what you said you wanted, you should be happier! And need that thing (e.g. money) less) But that should not stop ambition and longing in general!

Mignon McLaughlin put it, “Youth is not enough. And love is not enough. And success is not enough. And, if we could achieve it, enough would not be enough.”

== Some Science and Cool Tidbits.==

This wondrous solar powered plane isn't a gimmick anymore! It looks so retro nostalgic... like something from the 1920s... yet it works. It stayed aloft 26 hours on just sunlight & batteries... and looks so cool. Also, it probably doesn't have much of a heat signature....

Pixar as an early propaganda wing of the Uplift Institute? Pushing the notion of non human intelligence?

The world's leading climate change research organization issued a report yesterday that has renewable energy boosters cheering, as it foresees substantial growth in alternative energy sources over the next 40 years.

The military is taking climate change seriously. A recent report for Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff, said: "We must recognise that security means more than defense” -- urging a strategy of sustainability as climate change is "already shaping a 'new normal' in our strategic environment." The military intends to adapt, as must shipping, insurance, and even oil companies…

No one has ever floated a boat on another world, but NASA is now considering doing just that, on Saturn's icy moon Titan.

Red wine turns metal compound into superconductor. Sake, beer and whiskey also work?

Red colobus monkeys in Uganda's Kibale National Park are being hunted to extinction—by chimpanzees. According to a study published May 9 in the , this is the first documented case of a nonhuman primate significantly overhunting another primate species.

Wow. Stunning video: NASA captures giant comet hitting the sun. My doctorate was for analyzing the composition and behavior of comets BTW. Put a lot of it into Heart of the Comet. And at Caltech I was a solar astronomer! Combo-interests! Amazing.

== As for generations... ==

At last! Someone takes on generational nostalgia! Bill Clinton points out that if the Boomers are worse people than the WWII "greatest generation" then those “greatest” must not have been such great parents, hm? Mind you! I do believe that generation accomplished their historical missions pretty well. Moreover, we boomers have our problems. Our inherent generational trait is self-righteous indignation, a drug high we cannot kick and that is poisoning America with "culture war." America in particular will be better when our calmer kids take over! But that, too is the point.

Looking at our kids, I have to say -- we appear to have been terrific parents.

==Brin-news==

For H+ Magazine, I was recently interviewed by Ben Goertzel: The Path to Positive Surveillance... on transparency, accountability, surveillance and sousveillance. and our chances to keep a little privacy in the coming age of light.

An example of the "big picture" perspective is this piece I did for Thomas Kuhn's PBS series "Closer to Truth." Are we living in a simulation? -- now posted online: Could Our Universe Be a Fake?

If any of you know teachers or librarians who happen to love science fiction and also live near Northern California or Nevada, clue them in that this year’s World Science Fiction Convention - in Reno this August - will feature a college credit course on the teaching of science fiction!

Whose Rapture?

In honor of the coming (or not-coming) Rapture event... may I reprint an article of mine from the last century? It seems even more relevant today. Alas.

A few extreme voices are announcing the impending end of the world. Proclamations of doom are perennial flowers which have sprouted in the garden of human imagination since earliest times. Oracles appeared whenever turmoil caused nations and peoples to feel uncertain about the future. From ancient Sumer, to India, to Iceland, astrological portents used to set off recurring waves of public hysteria.

Ambiguity is the prophet's major stock in trade. King Croesus bribed the Delphic Oracle for good news, so the priests told him what he wanted to hear. If he marched on Persia he would destroy a great empire. He marched, and the empire he destroyed was his own.

Some doom-prophecies proved devastatingly self-fulfilling. When Cortez marched on Tenochtitlan, the Aztecs were paralyzed by similarities between his arrival and the prophesied return of their god, Quetzalcoatl. That paralysis led to the Aztecs' fall. At Troy, Cassandra and Lacöon warned unavailingly against accepting gift horses, showing that all Jeremiads aren't heeded.

We remember each of these foretellings because they came true. Those that fail are seldom noted -- much to the relief of today's tabloid prophets.

Something in human nature seems fascinated by the end of all things. Is it simply an extension of the smaller death each of us faces? Or perhaps a streak of egotism is involved, for out of countless human generations, it would surely mark ours as unique to be the last. Folk myths about humanity's swan song range from the Vikings' awful Ragnarok to universal bliss, and all shades between. Often these myths foresee dividing humankind into an elect, who will experience rapture, and those doomed to eternal punishment for misdeeds in this world.

“Messianism” focuses on an awaited deliverer, who will right wrongs, settle scores, and change the known cosmos more to the liking of those doing the waiting. For example, the Zoroastrians of Persia prophesied a “third savior,” who would purify the land and resurrect the dead. North American plains Indians, inspired by “ghost shirt” magic, believed certain signs augured invincibility to their forlorn cause of driving Europeans from the continent. During the mid nineteenth century, half of China was consumed by the Tai'Ping rebellion, whose charismatic leader claimed to be the younger brother of Jesus.

Larger, more conservative religions also carry notions of divine, overpowering intervention. Buddhism awaits the bodhisattva, Maitreya, to create paradise on Earth. In orthodox Islam a prophesied Mahdi is destined to usher a new age. The celebratory frenzy which accompanied Ayatollah Khomeini's return to Iran may have been amplified by occurring almost exactly 14 centuries after the birth of the Prophet.

Christian millennialists drew inspiration from many sources, such as the promise in the gospels that Jesus would return “...before this generation shall have passed away...” to complete his messianic task. By far the most influential text is the Book of Revelation, which tells in florid, metaphorical detail about the rise and fall of characters such as the “Beast,” and the “Whore of Babylon.” In every generation, tracts have been published which analyzed that mysterious tome, line by line, showing how each obscure phrase and parable connected to events taking place in the author's own region and time. For example, during the approach to year 1800, a zealous flood of printed interpretations correlated the French Revolution and Napoleon's rise to verses of prophecy, proving to the writers' satisfaction that Armageddon was nigh.

Alas for those eagerly expecting Judgment Day, the rumblings heard in the sky were only cannon.

In the run-up to year 1000 of the common era, thousands throughout Europe divested their farms, property, the clothes on their backs, expecting an imminent end. Other episodes occurred at uneven intervals, such as in year 1260, but one could always count on a special surge at each turn of the hundreds column. Popes even proclaimed Roman jubilees, to attract predictable waves of concerned pilgrims whenever round numbers rolled along.

Our own era has seen tabloid oracles, TV evangelists and millennialist politicians, all weighing in to satisfy a seemingly inexhaustible human need for mystic hope mixed liberally with terror. And, in fairness, religion has not been the sole font of apocalyptic scenarios. New-Age spiritualists have joined in, touting everything from Aquarianism and astrology to a fleet of UFOs, due to land just outside San Diego, California. Meanwhile, the past decade saw survivalists stocking private fortresses in eager dread of a coming end to civilization, which, they were certain, would cull the virtuously prepared from the culpably week.

Books such as Hal Lindsey's runaway best seller, The Late, Great, Planet Earth, revealed to millions the “obvious” identity of the Soviet Union as the Devil's final fortress, foretold in scripture. Ronald Reagan's Interior Secretary, James Watt, declared environmentalism moot for the simple reason that the Earth was scheduled to end soon anyway, so why bother saving trees? In retrospect, these pronouncements may seem quaint, with the USSR fading into archeological dust along with Nineveh and Babylon, but one sees no retractions by Lindsey or others. The armageddon merchants simply re-arrange the details of their prophecies in order to keep up with each geo-political turn.

Will Japan or China replace Russia as the next arch-foe of Heaven's host? Will we soon hear political candidates, accusing each other of being the Antichrist?

Nearly all millennialists share an interesting premise, that the entire vast universe was fashioned by a creator with a penchant for brief experiments, foregone conclusions, petty vengeance, and mysterious riddles. During most of human history, this might have seemed a reasonable model of the world, since life appeared so capricious, so instantly and inexplicably revocable. To some extent, that age-old sense of helplessness and enigma remains. Only under a conceited gloss of modernity do we dare step forward and (without meaning any deliberate offense) attempt to pose a question or two.

For instance, even granting the aforementioned godly premise, why would a creator of universes base his doomsday timetable on a human dating system? Might He not use ticks of an atomic clock, marking off radium half-lives until -- phhht? Or, going by certain biblical passages, should we estimate how many sparrows, or shooting stars, have fallen since the Earth began?

For that matter, why count down in decimal? Why not base six, used by the Babylonian inventors of the calendar? Or binary notation? In the code native to computers, this year, 1994 of the common era, translates as 011111001010. It will be a much rounder 10000000000 on the date 2048 a.d., and a symmetrical, mysterious-looking 11111011111 in 2015. On the other hand, if prime numbers are His thing, then both 1997 and 1999 fit the bill in any notation.

Assuming the Omnipotent simply cannot resist round multiples of ten, and conveniently chose Earth's orbital period as the unit of measure, what date shall we figure He is counting from? To Hindus, a three billion year cycle of creation and destruction passes through multiple “Yugas,” of which the present is but one of the more threadbare. The Mayans believe in cycles of 256 years, based on motions of moon and planets. The most recent major shift occurred in 1954.

To certain Christian fundamentalists, the answer is plain. Obviously, the countdown began at the pivot point of the common era calendar, the birth of Jesus of Nazareth.

Unfortunately, that postulate presents problems. Regarding the actual date of nativity, biblical scholars disagree over a range of five years or more. Nor is there good evidence that the month and day assigned to Christmas under the Gregorian Calendar have anything to do with the celebrated event. (Eastern Orthodoxy commemorates Christmas weeks later.) Early church leaders may have meant to match the popular solstice festivals of the Mithraic Cult, followed by their patron, Emperor Constantine, thus making conversion of pagans easier.

And yet, every date of prophecied devastation has passed without event. No matter. Doom-seers are well-practiced at the art of recalculation. In the Nineteenth Century, one mid-western preacher managed to hold onto his flock through six successive failures of the skies to open, until at last he was abandoned by all but the most fervent and forgiving.

Here is just one of the excuses we are bound to hear --

“Of course the countdown shouldn't date from the birth of Jesus. After all, the chief event of his life, the promise of redemption and resurrection, came at the end of his earthly span.”

If so -- assuming the clock has been ticking from Calvary to Armageddon -- we would seem in for a slight reprieve, and yet another wave of millennial fever set to strike some time in the mid 2030s. Again, the lack of any specific written record in Roman or Judean archives will let enthusiasts proclaim dates spread across five or six years, but at least the season won't be vague -- sometime around Easter, or during the Passover holiday.

We've only begun to plumb the options available to millennial prophets. While some sects focus on two thousand Christmases, and others on as many Easters, there will certainly be those who consider such thinking small-scale and altogether too New Testament. After all, why should the Creator terminate His universe on the anniversary of some event which took place midway through its span? Why not start counting from its origin?

Remember Archbishop Ussher of Armagh? He's the fellow who carefully logged every begat in the Bible, then declared that the creation of the world must have occurred at 9 o'clock in the morning, on October 25 of the year 4004 B.C.

Now, there has been a considerable amount of teasing directed at poor Ussher, since he made this sincere calculation back in 1654. His results don't jibe too well with the testimony of rocks, fossils, stars, or the scientists who study such things. Still, he has followers even today, folk who believe that all physical evidence for a vastly older Earth (four and a half billion years) was planted to “test our faith.” (One might ask in reply, if the Lord went to so much effort to convince us the world is billions of years old, who are we to doubt it?)

If Ussher fixated on time's origin, the famed founder of the Protestant Reformation, Martin Luther, had something to say about its end. Luther took into account that “...a day is as a thousand years to the Lord...” (Psalms 90:4), and that genesis itself took six days. He then concluded that the Earth's duration would thus be 6,000 years from first light to the trump of doom. Further, this span would be symmetrically divided into three 2,000 year stretches, from Origin to the time of Abraham, from Abraham to Jesus, and a final two millennia rounding things off at Judgment Day. While this speculation drew little attention back in Luther's day, it is sure to appeal to modern millennialists, hoping for the good luck of witnessing the end in their own time.

Unfortunately, combining Luther's logic with Ussher's date (4004 b.c.) shows that the end should have arrived in 1996! Hell. It hardly leaves any time for me to collect royalties on the paperback edition of this book!

Perhaps we won a little breather on a technicality. Since there was no Year Zero in the common era calendar (One b.c. was followed immediately by One a.d.), the Ussher-Luther deadline shifts to autumn, 1997! Yet that date passed as well.

Fortunately, old Bishop Ussher wasn't the only one counting off from Adam and Eve. The Jews have been at it much longer, and by the Hebrew Calender it is only year number 5753, which seems special to no one but mathematicians.

What of Jewish millennialists, then? Back in the 1640s, followers of Sabbatai Zevi believed passionately that the end had come, but neither that “false messiah,” nor Jacob Frank in the 1720s, brought any New Kingdom, only disappointment. Since then, most Jewish scholars have put less faith in vague riddles of a single manifestation than in a growing maturity of human culture, or a “messianic age”... an attitude which baffles some Christian evangelists no end.

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As with UFO cults, there is no such thing as “disproof” to those who can always find convenient explanations for each failed prophecy. It is useless citing scientific data to refute the supernatural. There are methods for dealing with doomsday cant however. One is to turn things around, and confront millennialists on their own turf. In the end, the entire question revolves around symbols.

In Judeo-Christian mythology, two chief metaphors are used to describe the relationship between the creator and humankind. The first of these depicts a “shepherd-and-his-flock.” The second describes a “father-and-his-children.” These parables are used interchangeably, but they aren't equivalent. Rather, to modern eyes they are polar opposites, as irreconcilable as the tiny, closed cosmos of Ussher and the vast universe of Galileo.

A shepherd protects his flocks, guiding them to green pastures, as the psalms so poignantly portray. All the shepherd expects in return is unquestioning obedience... and everything else the sheep possess. Lucky ones are merely shorn, but that reprieve is brief. None escapes its ultimate fate. None has any right to complain.

Everybody also knows about fathers. Young sons and daughters are expected to obey, when discipline is tight for their own good. Nevertheless, with time, offspring learn to think for themselves. Even in patriarchal societies, a good father takes pride in the accomplishments of his children, even -- especially -- when they exceed his own. If there is a fore-ordained plan, it is for those children to become good mothers and fathers, in turn.

To the perennial, millennial oracles, with their message of looming destruction, here is a head-on response. Ask them this. “Are we children of a Father, or a Shepherd's sheep? You can't have it both ways.

“You preach a tale of violent harvest,” the challenge continues. “Of judgment without debate or appeal, fatal and permanent. A shepherd might so dispose of lambs, but what sane father does thus to his offspring? Would you stand by, if a neighbor down the street commenced such a program on his flesh and blood?

“Anyway, you choose an odd time to proclaim the adventure over, just when we've begun picking up creation's tools, learning, as apprentices do, the methods of a great Designer. Those techniques now lay before us, almost as if someone placed blueprints to the universe to be pored over by eager minds. By those perhaps ready soon to leave childhood and begin adult work.”

The latest crop of millennial prophets might be asked, what do sheep owe the shepherd of a cramped pasture, a cheap, expendable world just 6,000 years old, limited to one ball of dirt, one sentient race?

Personally, I prefer a universe countless billions of parsecs wide, vast and old enough for a hundred million vivid, exciting creations. An evolving, growing cosmos. One worthy of respect.


Time will tell. We, humanity, may yet thrive or fry by dint of our own wisdom or folly. The macrocosm may be, as secularists say, indifferent to our fate.

Or, perhaps some great mind out there does see, does care. If so, that spirit may be more patient than doomsayers credit, with a design far subtler, yet more honest. A truly creative Creator would surely be disappointed in an experiment which ended so trivially, or soon.

(Published in my short story collection, Otherness.