Mark Kingwell Dreams Of Millennium Summary

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In his 1996 report, Dreams of millennium: a report from a culture on the brink, Mark Kingwell discusses a spectrum of topics some of which touch on the then imminent millennium and some which seem to have very little to do with the subject. He switches from topic to topic seemingly without organization or connection. The book, although relatively lengthy, does not seem to come to any conclusions. Kingwell discusses several issues that he believes will become more problematic in the future and he discusses the millennium, as these problems will shape it. He talks about the fates that different religious group’s fear, and how maybe those without faith will be further mistrustful and disbelieving. Kingwells discussions of Armageddon reveal his …show more content…

He claims that in the past people sometimes used self-mutilation to prepare for Second Coming. When “in 1490’s Florence, Savonarola and his weepers lashed themselves in public…drawing their own blood” they pronounced that the end was near. Now, Kingwell says, that people are defacing and mutilating their bodies in an attempt to claim themselves as their own, as individual. The author describes tattoos as a reaction to society, an insult to …show more content…

Kingwells intentions were when he constructed this work. If his goal was to make any prediction for the future, he did not do much in the way of that. Alternatively, if he intended to awaken us to the actions we take and the motivations behind them, then perhaps he succeeded. The book was very descriptive and thoughtful with an extraordinary amount of research and fact put into it. Indeed Kingwell discussed several things that could predict the future of human kind with his talk of a computer overtake or a deadly outbreak of killer diseases. However, ultimately he did not discuss any real final answers. Perhaps he wanted to simply share a multitude of ideas and predictions of the millennium. The book was a mixture of personal anecdotes, factual works and often recollections of others predictions. Kingwell managed to portray a wide variety of angles in which people await the millennium. In some areas of the book Kingwell almost seems to ridicule some peoples behaviors as unnecessary and foolish. This appears to be one of his strengths, to bring mild humor mixed with fact to convey his point. As he discusses his own body he describes it with such detachment yet so personally, thus encouraging the reader to be more objective towards the subject. It almost made the author look vulnerable and of course human, enough to bond more with the reader and become more

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