And now for something completely different?

[Guest Wellington]

Hi

Millennium could have a hard time appealing to the generation after ours. We had some kind of privilege to see and live the years 1999, 2000 and 2001, and for most of us we had some understanding of facts like David Koresh's giant barbecue and other sect affiliated events in the wake of the big day. There was a unique stage set for it, a stage set only every thousand years (so far). The strength of MM was to be a part of this picture, strongly attached to millennial fears and hysteria. But I think it will prove to be its main disadvantage too, because too tightly tied to a particular time. I can still have a great pleasure watching classic shows like The Avengers, even though I first enjoyed it 20 years after it ran first on TV. Even the X-Files could be enjoyable in 20 years from now. I am not so sure about MM. The events and characters depicted in the show will be associated with events that did not happen and that will not be scary anymore then. Of course, the fight against Evil in every twisted shape it can merge into could still be interesting, but the whole plot about the Group, the prophecies and so on have a taste that may not be understandable in the future. Maybe it is because the menace in MM is too precise, too identifyable. I am not sure, and I may be totally wrong!! But I think that the apocalypse "thing" is not frightening any more.

Then I wonder what will happen. How will the end of days be depicted? To what will it be associated to? I am even beginning to think that the apocalypse is slowly being removed from any religious link. From a divine punishment or from prophetic events, the End seems to drift more and more to man-caused facts that we feel, see, and hear (like wars, etc...). For example, I am sure that people talking about the rise of an Antichrist now have far less impact than if they did so 10 years ago. It feels like, as nothing prevented us from still being on hearth now, we have gained more or less 1000 quiet years. We can feel a great menace from bombs, but none from visions or prophecies. Is it possible that, by getting past the last millennium, we earned our own destiny? Did we need an inconscious "proof" that all this was only tales for children? Did we get it? The year 2000 has passed, and nothing happened.

I do not feel more menaced now by doomsday than I felt before 2000. Nor less, by the way. Of course, one can always say that a calendar is always arbitrary and that figures mean nothing. But will there be another feeling of uneasiness when the year 3000 comes? Or will that be gone for good? What colour will man give to his apocalypse? What meaning will it have for him? X-Files have set a launching pad for future shows by exhuming the date of the Mayan End. I would not be surprised if Carter decided to make a spin-off of X-F or MM about that. But will that appeal to an unconscious like it did before 2000?

I remember Frank's conclusion of "the Hand of St Sebastian", speaking about the first millennium: Maybe the end was there and did not happen; maybe someone saw a different future. Could we have had that luck twice? Do we deserve to forget about the beliefs that lead many people thus far? Do we deserve the right to feel safe? Do we deserve the right to think that the End will not be a divine intervention? I think I already miss the poetic sides of pre-cataclismic eras, and I think too that the last one was spoiled because of all the hype there was about y2k, parties and computer failures.

Will still man believe in a mystical apocalypse? of what kind?

Regards

[Bardo Thodol]

My thoughts on this - and my thoughts to anyone pondering such questions - can best be summed up by Mr. Johnson's words to Lara Means when he make contact with her at the John Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland in "Owls".  I have edited, cut, modified and added some to his "speech", but the thoughts are still very similar:

Having doubts?  Perhaps you should read articles and literature on... "the subject".  It's okay, ... we all have our doubts.  And we all have our certainties.  I'm certain a so called mystical, religious, or prophetic "Millennium" is not imminent.  Others in the world know this, as well.  There is proof.  We've been developing the evidence since Galileo began his work.  Events will happen, things will change. But there is a secular perspective, a scientific understanding. In the way I can predict that the sun will set tonight... and rise in the morning.  In the way Einstein's Theory of Relativity predicted Black Holes decades before anyone could ever observe such phenomenon.

How many times in history has theological apocrypha created hysteria, been used to assume power, diverted focus from actual vital concerns? How many times must "Ezekiel", "Mark:13", "Revelation", The Koran, and any other prophetic "sacred" texts be wrong?  To prove that such ideas are born, not of prophecy or devine revelation, but of human imagination.

My thoughts on this - and to anyone who insists "we must have "faith" or belief in 'something'" in order for life to have meaning - can also be summed up by Franks words to Peter while the talked on the inter-phones while in quaruntine in "The Forth Horseman".  I have also cut, modified, edited, added to this.  But the thoughts, again, are similar:

Faith fills in the holes of uncertainty. Elements that can never to be proven: God. Life after Death. Religions and imagined ideas about the supernatural create uncertainties with their "mysteries", "spiritualities", and their "can't be known"s : that's not faith... that's control. They are not seeing prophecy fulfilled... they are fulfilling their own... for the purpose of control...

Revelations is not a prophecy-- There is no millennium!!!

Just some facsimile of my thoughts spoken thru the characters of MLM.

Scott

[Guest Wellington]

Thanks Scott!

I like the way you replied and I am somewhat ashamed to have forgotten this lines from the 4th Horseman. First time I saw it, I found it so directly meaningfull that I promised myself not to forget it! Seems like age is catching me up (again)!

Regards