![The Millennium's Greatest](millennium.jpg)
At the end of 1996, The Washington Post
published a premature list of the greatest, worst and
most noteworthy of the Second Millennium. It was an
interesting talking point for a long while, especially
for those of us interested in history. For the record, The
Post was often wrong and my co-workers always were.
Here are the correct answers...
The Greatest Time and
Place:
The Post's Answer: Titian's Venice
Titian's Venice?! Nice paintings, sure. But
folks...we can see those now. Titian's Venice
was a place where disease ran rampant and the words
"sewer" and "street" were synonymous.
Italian city-states were at constant war and the Pope and
Holy Roman Emperor were slapping each other silly.
The Correct Answer: Now, The United States
Nothing's perfect. But the twentieth century, for all
it's problems, is a far better time to live for almost
everyone. Life expectancy is way up, infant mortality is
way down; literacy, sanitation and political freedom
exist in far greater abundance right now than ever before
in human history. As for the place, there are plenty of
very nice spots on the globe. Europe, Australia and
Japan, as well as many others, are all excellent places
to live. But nowhere on Earth can you find the mixture of
political freedom, individual liberty and social mobility
that exists in The United States. And that's before you
get to drive-through restaurants and American Football.
The Greatest Book
The Post's Answer: Johnson's Encyclopedia of
the English Language
Now, that's actually not a bad answer. The Post
noted that the King James version of The Bible had a
greater impact on human history and philosophy, but that
it was a translation of a book written long before the
start of the Second Millennium.
The Correct Answer: Rousseau's The Rights of Man
This is the book that stated the principles of liberty
and equality which fueled the minds of revolutionaries in
both America and France. The ensuing tides of nationalism
and democracy forged the foundations of the modern world.
The Greatest Irony
The Post's Answer: The Re-emergence of
Intuition and Emotion
Um...I don't get it. Where's the irony? If the IRS
used Windows PCs to sue Bill Gates, that'd be ironic. The
realization that emotions are important human traits
isn't. Is it?
The Correct Answer: The Crusades
Killing people in the name of the Prince of Peace.
It's more tragic and cynical than ironic, but there is
plenty of grim irony there.
The Biggest Mistake
The Post's Answer: Invading Russia
Well, this is a heavily-contested category, and the Post's
answer has a lot of merit. But I have to go with one
suggested by a friend (hi, Bob):
The Correct Answer: Appeasing Tyrants
It never works. It just encourages them. Who will ever
forget Neville Chamberlain and "Peace in our
time"? Tyrants see appeasement as weakness. And
they're right. Clichéd though it is, the best advice is
still: "If you would have peace, prepare for
war."
The Greatest Invention
The Post's Answer: The Printing Press
The Post nailed this one. Other inventions
may be more complex or more important today, but no
invention has ever revolutionized the world like
Guttenberg's little money-maker. The free exchange of
ideas, religious freedom, financial expansion, the
advance of science and the fact that you can read these
words all owe their origins to Guttenberg.
The Greatest Painting
The Post's Answer: The Sistine Chapel
The Post got it right again. I'd like to put
in an honorable mention for "The Last
Supper".
Greatest Actor and
Actress
The Post's Answer: Bugs Bunny and Greta
Garbo
Now, I take backseat to no one in my love for Bugs
Bunny, but this is ridiculous. Not Bugs, the question. We
don't know a damned thing about the actors of nearly the
first 800 years of the millennium. Stupid category.
The Greatest Scientist
The Post's Answer: Albert Einstein
Good Answer. But I'll go with:
The Correct Answer: Isaac Newton
Sir Isaac discovered the laws of motion (even if
they're wrong at relativistic speeds). He invented
calculus as just a tool to help him solve astronomical
questions. Wow.
The Greatest
Misconception
The Post's Answer: Phlogiston
Well, it's funny. "Phlogiston" was the
theoretical substance that filled the space between the
stars and planets in a popular recurrent belief for much
of the last six hundred years. They were wrong: what
fills that space is Jell-O.
The Correct Answer: Prester John
In the earliest part of this millennium, there arose
in Europe the legend of a powerful Christian monarch
named Prester John who lived, variously, in Ethiopia,
India or China and who was preparing to bring his
enormous armies onto the battlefield and crush the
enemies of Christendom. Despite the fact that this
fabulous personage failed to appear, the rumor persisted
for hundreds of years. Apparently, he was a long-lived
old guy, too. Historians argue about the source of the
legend, but it most probably arose from badly garbled
tales of the tolerance shown by the Mongol Empire towards
the Nestorian Christians who made up a small minority of
its subjects.
The Greatest Genius
The Post's Answer: William Shakespeare
The Post got this one right, too. Disagree?
Sit down; you're wrong. Read a book.
The Greatest Musical
Composition
The Post's Answer: Mozart's The Marriage
of Figaro
Yeah, that's very nice.
The Correct Answer: Beethoven's "Ninth
Symphony"
The Post made an odd statement. They would
have chosen the "Ninth", except that it's too
esoteric for the common man. Does the category say
"most common musical composition?" No, it does
not. Greatness challenges us.
It demands of us that we strive to reach where it does.
Beethoven's Ninth Symphony is an awesome
expression of what is greatest in Man. The power of the
music, which rises from movement to movement and ends
with instruments made not by man, but (as the composer
believed) by God alone, is a testament to the power and
majesty of what we aspire to be.
The Greatest Singer
The Post's Answer: Enrico Caruso
Sigh. See "The Greatest Actor", above.
The Greatest Building
The Post's Answer: Neumann's Staircase
I can't really comment. I've never heard of it. Must
be one hell of staircase, though.
The Correct Answer: The Cathedral of Notre Dame in
Paris
There are greater buildings (Angkor Wat, the
Pyramids), but not that were built in this millennium.
Close seconds would be the Taj Mahal, The Forbidden City
and the Empire State Building.
The Most Evil Person
The Post's Answer: Adolf Hitler
Boy, that's a tough one. In terms of sheer carnage,
Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong make Hitler look like a
second-rater. Torquemada burned and tortured thousands of
Jews and dissenters for the Spanish Inquisition. Pol Pot
and the Khmer Rouge killed a staggering percentage of
their countrymen. Is it numbers that make one evil? Is
Stalin worse than Jack the Ripper? Are these leaders more
evil than their countrymen who stood by and applauded?
Still, the sheer, brutal hatred of the man, the
decision to exterminate an entire race do put Hitler well
out front. The man combined an amoral coldness with a
stunning charisma that was almost a physical force. It
does no good to think of him as other, a
monster. He is us. He is your neighbor, your friend, your
child. He will be with us for so long as we think that we
could never be him. Evil is not monstrous, not
unknowable. That is why it is so terrifying. It is human.
The Man of the
Millennium
The Post's Answer: Jingiz (Ghengis) Khan
The Post got this one exactly right. The
Thirteenth-Century founder of the Mongol Empire, Jingiz
was not the best, not the smartest, not even the most
talented of men, but he was the human being alive in the
Second Millennium who had the greatest influence on his
world. Starting off as just a warrior of a small
squabbling nomadic tribe on the steppes of Mongolia,
Temujin (later known as Jingiz) first consolidated power
over the warring Mongol tribes, then proceeded to conquer
the greatest human civilizations of the day. China,
Kara-Khitai, Qarizm, the great sultanates of Asia, all
fell before the ruthless efficiency of the greatest
military machine the world had ever known.
Less than twenty years after its founding, the Mongol
Empire stretched from the Sea of Japan to the
Mediterranean and from the Indian Ocean to the Baltic
Sea. Just as the tight discipline, superior technology
and advanced tactics of the Mongol armies conquered the
largest single nation in the history of man, so their
ruthless efficiency, religious tolerance and relatively
light taxes allowed them to rule with only minor
difficulty.
Jingiz' armies nearly destroyed in a single raid what
all the European crusaders of two centuries could not:
the military might of Islam. His tactics foreshadowed the
supremacy of maneuver and firepower over heavy defenses
that have characterized the modern world since World War
I. His brutality toward those who opposed him, such as
the doomed citizens of Samarkand and Damascus, was
unrivaled, even in that savage age, until this century.
In many ways then, Jingiz Khan was the archetype for
the Second Millennium, possessing qualities and genius
seen in both the best and worst of humanity for the last
thousand years. Let us hope that the Third Millennium
results in a better archetype. Let us try to ensure it.
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