Dreams of Millennium

In his 1996 report, Dreams of millennium: a report from a culture on the brink, Mark Kingwell discusses a spectrum of topics some of which touch on the then imminent millennium and some which seem to have very little to do with the subject. He switches from topic to topic seemingly without organization or connection. The book, although relatively lengthy, does not seem to come to any conclusions. Kingwell discusses several issues that he believes will become more problematic in the future and he discusses the millennium, as these problems will shape it. He talks about the fates that different religious group's fear, and how maybe those without faith will be further mistrustful and disbelieving. Kingwells discussions of Armageddon reveal his own lack of fear; he does not seem to fear the future as a millennium, but as something else. Kingwell seems to reject all the predictions of others that he talks about and concentrates on his own view that essentially nothing will really change because of the millennium. He talks about all kinds of people in groups and how they will react as the new age approaches. He cannot predict their fate, but he does a good job of clarifying how they have prepared. Mr. Kingwell talks of how in hundreds of years past, people believed in superstition, spirits, and psychic abilities. The author new watches as society turns back down that road. Unfortunately, Kingwell seems to talk at length about everything for an end result of nothing. His arguments and facts are well thought out and researched, but they do not clarify any explanations about the preparation for the millennium.

To capture Kingwells work in a small space is difficult. With his long and drawn out explanations of why millennium is, for many, the beginning of the end, Kingw3ell states that "almost every century since the 1100's has... brought increased anxiety...at its close." Shortly after stating this, he goes on to describe many events in the past that support this statement. He talks of calendars and their significance in the past and relates them to those of today. For example Kingwell tells us that, "it wasn't until the 1290's...that the centuries began to take on the shape they have now for us." He then adds that, "not until the 1690's ...people began to see themselves as products of a given century." From these facts we could conclude that the millennium issue didn't even occur to people until less than 500 years before it.

In our lifetime whether we are 60 or 20yrs old, we have been in a kind of "training" for the millennium. Kingwell makes this clear many times. He talks about several religious groups who have awaited the millennium as Armageddon and the end. Either that or they see it as the beginning of the end. The "false prophet" David Koresh is mentioned several times in the book talking about peoples "desire for a leader" during the road to millennium. Kingwell believes that people are searching for knowledge in everything. He himself visited psychic fairs in an attempt to find something. What he found were all kinds of people buying into it, even one of his own students.

The book talks about our growing worldwide need for technology and how it will effect different people. Kingwell discusses the fascinating invention of the Internet and how it is segregating us further. He tells of an interview with Scott Adams who predicts that computers will be a major segregator for people in the new age, dividing those who can use them and those who cannot, the successes and those who fail. Dr. Kingwell poses the questions of computers and technology changing roles with people. When people become less and less valuable in the workplace and instead, computers, more efficient and with less maintenance, become all-powerful.

Kingwell also suggests that people feel trapped and confined within their bodies, he uses examples from the past and the present to describe how they have attempted to change this. He claims that in the past people sometimes used self-mutilation to prepare for Second Coming. When "in 1490's Florence, Savonarola and his weepers lashed themselves in public...drawing their own blood" they pronounced that the end was near. Now, Kingwell says, that people are defacing and mutilating their bodies in an attempt to claim themselves as their own, as individual. The author describes tattoos as a reaction to society, an insult to conformity.

Kingwells book reveals many issues about the millennium and his seem to be mainly concerned with AIDS and Ebola and their taking over the world. Although he shares his ideas about their coming millennium, he does not come to any conclusions, leaving the reader with a variety of emotions and no real answers.

It is difficult to understand what Dr. Kingwells intentions were when he constructed this work. If his goal was to make any prediction for the future, he did not do much in the way of that. Alternatively, if he intended to awaken us to the actions we take and the motivations behind them, then perhaps he succeeded. The book was very descriptive and thoughtful with an extraordinary amount of research and fact put into it. Indeed Kingwell discussed several things that could predict the future of human kind with his talk of a computer overtake or a deadly outbreak of killer diseases. However, ultimately he did not discuss any real final answers. Perhaps he wanted to simply share a multitude of ideas and predictions of the millennium. The