DEFINING THE DECADE
But to refer to these as challenges of the 21st century presumes that we know a lot more about what will happen during the next 95 years than we really do. Imagine somebody attempting to define the 20th century in January 1905. He would know nothing about the rise of Soviet communism and German fascism, and therefore nothing about the butchery of Stalin and Hitler. He’d know nothing about mass production of the automobile. He would never have heard of Albert Einstein or his theory of relativity. He might resist having his home wired for electricity, out of the common fear that it was more dangerous than gaslight. He would likely consider the United States to be a lesser world power than Great Britain and France. He’d have no idea that the airplane would soon become an instrument of war and, eventually, a vehicle commonly used for ocean crossings. He would never have listened to a radio, or watched television, or gone to a movie theater and heard the actors speak. If he visited Philadelphia, he’d be dazzled by its wealth and sophistication. He would, in short, have none of the information he needed to describe accurately the coming century. He might give you a decent description of the aughts. But he’d have to know what to call them. Interestingly, he might demonstrate the same difficulty avoiding the phrase “20th century” that we currently show avoiding the phrase “21st century.” That’s because (at least according to some historians) the term “aughts” was mainly a retrospective term applied after that decade was over. Assuming that’s true, there’s no reason we should make the same mistake twice.
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