We should still dare to hope

EVERY New Year's Eve celebration is a triumph of hope over experience.

People greet the chimes with scenes of exultation that even Christmas seems unable to evoke.

For anyone who has done well, a sense of achievement or even complacency is reinforced. For those who have suffered, a new beginning beckons.

Of course, from a strictly logical point of view, it's all nonsense. The continuities of history go on grinding away, irrespective of the lines we draw through our calendars.

This year, moreover, optimism seems utterly inappropriate - washed away, with scores of thousands of corpses, by a tidal wave. People are unsure whether to celebrate - whether it's decent to do so, even if they feel like it.

It's characteristic of human nature that once we start getting gloomy, all our thoughts darken. The Indian Ocean tsunami seems to symbolise the intractability of nature and the inevitability of disaster. Neither God nor humans seem capable of getting the planet right. We are equally powerless in the face of catastrophes we cause for ourselves: wars and genocides multiply.

Progress is stalled, at best: hardly anybody still believes in it.

Technologies improve, but their main function seems to be to enable us to kill each other more quickly or to empower new Frankensteins.

Morally, we are - let's face it - no better, as far as we can tell, than our ancestors.

I have to admit that I am a congenital pessimist. I recommend pessimism to everyone: it is the only indemnity against disappointment.

Optimists - people say - are happier than pessimists. That may be true, but, if so, it is in spite of their optimism, not because of it. Optimism condemns you to disillusionment whenever things go wrong, whereas the pessimist is gratified with even modest little successes and improvements.

So I don't want to consign anyone to misery by dispelling their pessimism or exciting their optimism.

STILL, I think we do have good grounds to be upbeat about our prospects in 2005. Here's why.

None of the fears that worry people today is well grounded. Top of most people's list would be terrorism.

But, looked at dispassionately, it is a minor problem, which the terrorists' own propaganda has grossly exaggerated, with help from the fraught reactions of governments.

Terrorists are few, marginal and badly organised. Their outrages - though terrible enough when they occur - are mercifully rare. Our political and economic systems have proved amazingly robust in coping with the effects. The worst terrorist horror in history - the deaths and destruct ion of 9/11 - hardly disturbed democracy: in fact, it reinforced it. The world resisted the threatened economic effects. Even the firms occupying the tops of the Twin Towers were back at work within days.

Complexity doesn't make our world fragile: it makes us strong. When one link fails, we can bypass it and carry on.

Even if the terrorists were to have deliverable chemical or biological weapons - which so far they have not managed to wield effectively - democracies are well-equipped to survive if they keep their nerve.

People's next big fear is eco-Armageddon. That's not going to happen in the foreseeable future, either. The tsunami - if there's anything reassuring about it - reminds us how little power we really have over nature. Our ruinous record in polluting the biosphere and depleting the Earth looks, at last, like going into reverse, as awareness spreads of the necessity of conservation.

Most of our overexploitation of the environment has been driven by the historically exceptional population explosions of the past couple of hundred years. As global population growth slows and begins to show signs of reversal, we can relish a gleam of optimism.

Thirdly, people worry about the so-called "clash of civilisations". That isn't going to hapdoompen, either. Islam and Christendom, for instance, despite the way their history is routinely misrepresented, have a long record of peaceful coexistence; in many ways, they constitute a single "Islamo-Christian civilisation" with shared roots in ancient Judaism and classical Greek and Roman thought.

Most people, in all civilisations, have far more interests in common - above all, a common interest in peace - than causes of conflict. We do have to be vigilant against fanatics and fundamentalists of all religions and none; but the best way we can frustrate them is by keeping our cool and maintaining our faith in our common humanity.

But what about our apparent inability to stop wars? It is true that we seem to have no workable institutions of collective security, and we have to rely on the rather unpredictable beneficence of the United States to supply us with a global police force. But, frustrating as the current situation is, it is probably better than ever before in history.

At least some institutions of global governance are being advocated: the International Criminal Court is actually getting under way. And unsatisfactory as the USA may seem in the role of global policeman, we have to ask ourselves whom we would rather have had. Of all the powers that might have emerged from the conflicts of the 20th century as the unique global superpower, we have been spared the hegemony of Nazi Germany, militarist Japan, Stalinist Russia or Maoist China.

FINALLY, there are perennial gripes: health and wealth.

In those respects, we are so much better off than ever before that our whinging is a historic scandal. The healthscares we shock ourselves with nowadays are a luxury no previous age could indulge.

A new plague could surprise us - but, so far, we have found countermeasures against just about everything the microbes can throw at us. Economies may wobble in 2005 if George W's gamble on growth fails.

But we shall still have unprecedented prosperity and the opportunity to share it more equitably. It is right to be outraged about ill-regulated globalisation and irresponsible capitalism, but, with reforms, globalisation and capitalism can be forces for good.

So, celebrate the New Year, even as the old ends on a sombre note. We we can grieve for the victims of 2004 and work to make 2005 better, in justified confidence about the outcome.

(c)2004. Associated Newspapers Ltd.. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved.