(by Eduardo Galeano)
The New Millennium Is Already Upon Us,
Though The
Matter Shouldn't Be Taken Too Seriously.
After all, the year 2001 for Christians is 1379 for
Moslems, 5114 for Mayans and 5762 for Jews. The New
Millennium starts on January 1st only because one fine
day the Senate of Imperial Rome decided to end the
tradition of celebrating the New Year at the Beginning
of Spring.
The Number of Years in the Christian Era comes from a
whim as well: Another fine day the Pope in Rome
decided to put a date on the Birth of Jesus, even
though nobody knows when he was born.
An Invitation to Flight
The millennium will come, the millennium will go, a
good opportunity for orators of inflated eloquence to
spout off on the destiny of humanity, and for the
agents of God's ire to announce the end of the world
and other assorted calamities, while time itself
continues its long tightlipped march through eternity
and mystery.
The truth is, who can resist? On such a date,
arbitrary though it is, everyone is tempted to wonder
about the time to come. And just how is anyone to
know? Only one thing is certain: in the 21st century,
if we are still here, we'll all be people from the
last century and, what's worse, we'll be from the last
millennium.
If we can't guess what's coming, at least we have the
right to imagine the future we want. In 1948 and 1976
the United Nations proclaimed long lists of human
rights, but the immense majority of humanity enjoys
only the rights to see, hear and remain silent.
Suppose we start by exercising the never-proclaimed
right to dream? Suppose we rave a bit? Let's set our
sights beyond the abominations of today, to divine
another possible world:
- the air shall be cleansed of all poisons except those
born of human fears and human passions;
-
in the streets, cars shall be run over by dogs;
-
people shall not be driven by cars, nor programmed by
computers, nor bought by supermarkets, nor watched by
televisons;
-
the tv set shall no longer be the most important
member of the family and shall be treated like an iron
or a washing machine;
-
people shall work for a living instead of living for
work;
-
written into law shall be the crime of stupidity,
committed by those who live to have or to win, instead
of living just to live like the bird that sings
without knowing it and the child who plays unaware he
or she is playing;
-
in no country shall young men who refuse to go to war
go to jail, rather only those who wish to make war;
-
economists shall not measure "living standards" by
consumption levels, nor the "quality of life" by the
quantity of things;
-
cooks shall not believe that lobsters love to be
boiled alive;
-
historians shall not believe that countries love to be
invaded;
-
politicians shall not believe that the poor love to
eat promises;
-
earnestness shall no longer be a virtue, and no one
shall be taken seriously if he can't make fun of
himself;
-
death and money shall lose their magical powers, and
neither demise nor fortune shall make a virtuous
gentleman of a rat;
-
no one shall be considered a hero or a fool, for doing
what he believes is right instead of what will serve
him best;
-
the world shall not wage war on the poor, rather on
poverty, and the arms industry shall have no
alternative but to declare bankruptcy;
-
food shall not be a commodity, nor shall
communications be a business, because food and
communication are human rights;
-
no one shall die of hunger because no one shall die of
overeating;
-
street children shall not be treated like garbage
because there shall be no street children;
-
rich kids shall not be treated like gold because there
shall be no rich kids;
-
education shall not be the privilege of those who can
pay;
-
the police shall not be the curse of those who cannot
pay;
-
justice and liberty, siamese twins condemned to live
apart, shall meet again and be reunited, back to back;
-
a woman, a black woman, shall be president of Brazil,
and another black woman shall be president of the
United States;
- an Indian woman shall govern Guatemala
and another Peru;
-
in Argentina, the crazy women of the Plaza de Mayo
shall be held up as examples of mental health, because
they refused to forget in a time of obligatory
amnesia;
-
the Church, holy mother, shall correct the typos on
the tablets of Moses and the sixth commandment shall
dictate the celebration of the body;
-
the Church shall also proclaim another commandment,
the one God forgot: "You shall love nature, to which
you belong";
-
clothed with forests shall be the deserts of the world
and of the soul;
-
the despairing shall be paired and the lost shall be
found, for they are the ones who despaired and lost
their way from so much lonely seeking;
-
we shall be compatriots and contemporaries of all who
have a yearning for justice and beauty, no matter
where they were born or when they lived, because the
borders of geography and time shall cease to exist;
-
perfection shall remain the boring privilege of the
gods;
- while in our bungling messy world every night
shall be lived as if it were the last, and every day
as if it were the first.