By Michael Patrick O’Brien–
I have great memories, from age 7 in 1968, of listening to the radio with my very cool older sisters. I particularly remember a hit song that predicted the future in 2525, 3535, 4545, and so on. As 2020, another numerically-balanced year, arrived last week, the same song bounced around in my head.
One hit wonders Danny Zager and Rick Evans wrote and performed the music, which despite a rather upbeat tempo, paints a dark and apocalyptic future of “a billion tears.” The lyrics speculate that daily pills will dictate what we think, do and say, that we won’t need arms or legs thanks to machines, and that we will choose our children from the bottom of long glass tubes. (You can listen to the song here: In the year 2525 by Zager & Evans.)
The song ends on a somewhat soothing note, however, lyrically escaping from a dystopian future that is “so very far away” by hoping “maybe it’s only yesterday.” The conclusion poses a fascinating philosophical question—do things get better or worse over time?
I cannot foresee the future, so I tried to answer the question with an inverse Zager/Evans analysis. I looked backwards at what happened in some other numerically-balanced years—55, 1010, and 1515—and compared them to today.
The year 55 AD was good for Nero, new Emperor of Rome, but not for his stepbrother Brittanicus, whom Nero poisoned to ensure his throne’s security. And despite the benefits of the Pax Romana (27 BCE to 180 AD), 55 probably was not a great year for the heavily-taxed 50 million people subservient to Rome. The Jews of Israel, for example, would watch the Romans destroy their Jerusalem temple just 15 years hence.
It certainly was not a good year for Christians, who would not be accepted in Rome for another 250 years. Nero soon would blame them for the great fire of Rome and start a widespread wave of persecutions. The only ray of light for Christians came from an obscure but prolific letter writer named Paul, who had just completed a long epistle to his fellow Christians in Corinth, Greece explaining, “So faith, hope, love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.” (1 Corinthians 13)
The year 1010 is more difficult to categorize. The Song Dynasty, known for innovations like paper money and using a compass, was ruling China. The new world was stirring to life, as Vikings tried to establish a settlement in North America. And scholars also believe someone wrote Beowulf that year.
Yet, the Nile River also froze over in Egypt, which has only happened twice in recorded history. The Danes continued to raid England. Uzzah, a citizen of Judah, died, believed to have been smitten by God for violating divine law by touching the Ark of the Covenant. (Sorry, that last one was 1010 BCE, but it still is interesting.)
What about 1515? Francis I was crowned King of France. He was a Renaissance King who encouraged the arts, provided Leonardo DaVinci with a pension, and acquired the Mona Lisa, which I saw at the Louvre 503 years later (see: The Mona Mosh) At the same time, another great artist, Raphael Santi, was designing tapestries for the Sistine Chapel at the Vatican in Rome.
At least two remarkable women were born in 1515. One was St. Teresa of Avila, a Spanish Carmelite and poet. Another was Anne of Cleves, one of the few women to survive marriage with King Henry VIII. The same year, someone who would not survive a relationship with the very same Henry—Thomas Wolsey—was invested as a Cardinal and Lord Chancellor of England.
It is hard to draw too many definitive conclusions from the mental exercise outlined above, but having done it, I think I’d rather live in 2020 than in another numerically-balanced year. It seems to be true, as Martin Luther King has said, that the “arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” (King paraphrased 19th century clergyman Theodore Parker.)
J.R.R Tolkien sees the arc of history in a slightly different way. In The Fellowship of the Ring, when ring-bearer Frodo Baggins bemoans the troubles of his particular era, his friend the wizard Gandalf advises: “So do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”
In other words, I don’t have to wax nostalgic about the past, or fret like Zager/Evans about the future. I can just try to bloom where I am planted, right here in 2020.
*Mike O’Brien is a writer and attorney living in Salt Lake City, Utah. He is writing a book about growing up with the monks at the old Trappist monastery in Huntsville, Utah.
