A New Millennium's Resolution.

A millennium is a period of 1,000 years. Think about just one of those years and we start considering needed changes in our lives, making resolutions. But a thousand years--that's big! So why not think big, big changes, six billion big.

This new year, instead of one individual making a personal resolution and the next individual another and so on, why don't all of us, all of humanity around the world, make one resolution, the same resolution, a New Millennium's Resolution? I propose that this resolution take the form of a World Pledge.

Why do we need a World Pledge? A thousand years ago humanity was in the Middle Ages. Today, with runaway population growth, throwaway species, and fly-by wars, we could be entering the Last Ages. Like some pervasive auto-immune disease, we are attacking our own tissues.

The litany of woes we bring upon ourselves and our planet stem from forming attitudes about ourselves as separate: separate as a country, a habitat, a race, a creature, whatever. And anything we feel is not part of us is fair game, open season for exploitation. Indeed, history is about exploitation backfiring. But it is also about changing attitudes.

People have often used short affirmations to remind themselves and their children of what is important in their lives and to guide behavior. Thus we have formalized numerous oaths and prayers. We have memorized them, recited them, and raised monuments to them. More effective, however, are the values we internalize. Instead of fighting myriad injustices one by one, we can foster the mindset that tolerates none.

The World Pledge is designed to be expressed daily with a cadence similar to the Pledge of Allegiance:

   I am a part of a vital unity linking me with all humanity and humanity with
   all life, and I resolve to act in accordance so that each may prosper and
   all may continue.

What better time than a new millennium to curb short-term thinking and cultivate long-term fulfillment. Millennium fever has captured our collective imagination. Let's do something with it that will last.

Bill Sander is a retired chiropractor from Pacific Grove, California. Under the pseudonym Will Sand he has had a dozen science-fiction stories published both on- and offline (the latest at www.neverworlds. com). His e-mail is worldpledge@yahoo. com; his websites are www.redshift.com/ ~wsandtt and www.geocities.com/world pledge/worldpledge.html.