THAT WAS THE MILLENIUM THAT WAS Read Online Free PDF

more or less like me: Living in a high-technology, high-protein, high-personal-expression zone. The trivia of your life vary from mine, of course, but basically you either are, or have endless opportunities to become, a big stinkin' capitalist pig. 
    The average human on this planet is not one of the 1% that is currently and blandly clicking his or her way through the Internet. As Kofi Annan is fond of reminding people, half of this planet's six billion human interlopers have never made or received a telephone call , much less are worried about installing a permanent DSL line into the home office.  The average human on this planet is a dirt-poor farmer in China or India, and her life pretty much blows, compared to yours. And it's probably more accurate to say this: The median human on the planet is a dirt-poor farmer in China or India. Which means that underneath her, there's three billion people looking at her and wondering, why can't I have that life? Forget about your life. Your life isn't even on the table .
    So, given: The average human's life on this ball of rock isn't a great big grab bag of joy. But also consider: The average life is still a hell of a lot better than it's ever been before. The average person doesn't have a tenth of what you or I have, but he or she has better medical care, better education and a better standard of living than his or her ancestors. Even more personal freedom, if you can believe that (but generally not by much). From this point, it's a simple equation. The present sucks for most people. It is still generally better than any other era before it. Conclusion: For the average Joe, any historical era was a bad era to be in, and the present's only marginally better. 
    Now, this doesn't mean these people were or are unhappy --  billionaires can be surrounded by every conceivable thing humans have ever thought of and be suicidal depressed, while someone squatting down and sticking a plant into a muddy bog of water can be happy as the proverbial clam. Most people who are not actively starving or being hoisted on an invader's pike are usually fairly content. But being happy doesn't mean the circumstances of your life don't reek.
    The problem with history is that it's maybe one hundredth of one percent of what's going on in the world at any one point. History is rife with kings, queens, explorers and inventors. The bulk of the world's population at any time, however, is a bunch of schmoes planting crops and making horseshoes and typing code and asking you if you want fries with that. We see movement and advancement in the course of humanity's stay because we pick up individual events like seashells on the shore and string them together and call the necklace history. Meanwhile, the acres of sand at our feet stays the same. 
    "As it is now, so it was and evermore shall be" -- well, no, I don't really believe that . The average sad sack benefits from the technological and intellectual advances that make up the bulk of history, just not as much, or as often, as those of us at the top imagine (the flaw in the "trickle-down" theory is implicit in the title -- no one was ever satisfied by a "trickle" of anything). You can go to nearly every spot on the globe and see the vast majority of your brethren living essentially the same lives as their fathers, grandmothers, and ancestors, all the way back to beginning of the agricultural age, with only the occasional television or Bulls jersey thrown into to remind you that you're still here in the 20th Century. 
    Ask any of these people what historical era they feel it was best to live in, they'd probably look at you like you're nuts. They'd understand the question, of course. They just wouldn't know why you'd possibly think it applied to them.

Best Stupid Piece of Attire of the Millennium.
    It's the necktie. Codpieces and drawstring pants come and go, but over the centuries, the necktie and its antecedents persist, hanging about a man's neck like a noose