Counter Culture

By With much fanfare and Parisian fireworks, the dawning of the year 2000 has been celebrated. So what?

I remember thinking about the year 2000 when I was a kid expecting the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and instead I get a 24 hour Peter Jennings marathon on ABC. Right now I find myself questioning why the year 2000 was ever such a big deal.

Of course there are the religious implications of the date. Two thousand years after the birth of Christ seems like a nice round number to usher in the second coming. However, I guess we need to take into account that besides the fact that Christianity isn't the only religion in the world, there is also the fact that leaps and bounds have been made in the world of astronomy since the first calendars were made. We could be off the mark by 30 years for all we know.

Then of course there is also the conditioning we, as Americans, have been subjected to by pop culture. For George Orwell it was all over in 1984. Countless other writers and filmmakers also decided that there was some special significance to the number 2000. With brainwashing from "Lost in Space" and other sci-fi masterpieces, we have come to expect an age of uniform silver jumpsuits and cars that fold up in to the size of a briefcase. How disappointed we all are.

I guess we shouldn't take things to heart so much. Even a hundred years ago you may have been paddling up and down the coast in a canoe eating squirrel meat. Remember watching "Inspector Gadget" as a kid? We all thought that it was so amazing that Penny had a computer the size of a book or that some people had phones in their cars. Maybe the book of Revelations can wait a little longer. The year 3000 sounds like a pretty good number too.

Liz Helman is a senior English/theater major.