A few years back I thought that the end of this millennium and the beginning of the next one would be celebrated twice, the first time nearly a year ago, by mistake, and the second time in a couple of weeks, by way of a belated but still timely correction. But few people seem to know about this silly mistake and even fewer seem to care one way or the other. The enthusiasm surrounding the turn of the millennium has been spent already. It has been squandered a year early. By now, it is too late for a correction, except on a personal scale. How silly we will appear some forty generations from now, it sometimes crosses my mind, when the next millennium will reach its end, and when our mistake will be trumpeted in ridicule. We will appear to them like the people some forty generations ago now appear to us. But whence this trust in progress? Are not the last two millennia sufficient examples of the very opposite? Indeed, may we not already be at the pinnacle of progress? How can we be sure that people in the future will not look back at us in rapturous awe, our silly mistake mercifully included?

Addendum (May 29, 2016)

Chances are that the beginning of the fourth millennium will be celebrated in the year 3000 rather than 3001 once again. Forty generations are pretty negligible when it comes to evolution. Nothing much will change in the meanwhile, for human stupidity is very like a rock. Solid, that is. Millions of years are needed for palpable biological change. The only thing that needs to be added to this sad story is the effect of climate change, which will start in earnest in just a few decades, if not earlier. By the year 3000, it will drive the human population to lows that are difficult to imagine at present. The same holds for culture, the lows of which are nigh unimaginable so many years in advance. It may well come to pass that next to no-one will be aware of the next millennium. By then, counting to thousand is likely to befit only a handful of sages. Millennium, what millennium?