Those who remember the transition from the 20^th to the 21^st century will remember what was then dubbed, ‘the millennium bug’. Nobody quite knew how it would manifest itself. Would it crash the world’s computers because their clocks had not been told about centuries? Would aircraft be stranded in the sky until they run out of fuel and fall like stricken angels?

As it happens, nothing happened…or did it? Perhaps we should have been more prudent because on September 11^th 2001, something momentous and unexpected did happen. The two towers of the World Trade Centre and two other buildings were attacked using hijacked aircraft.

Was this the millennial disaster foreseen in Mayan calendars? Perhaps the millennial bug laid an egg at the end of the year 2000, which hatched nine months later? Whatever the timing, stay with me, because this speculation becomes more intriguing.

In the murder scene on a theatre stage, a door opens and the victim enters. The other actor on stage raises a gun and shoots the victim dead. All eyes are on the murderer and the rest of the play runs it’s course. However, the play would have been a lot shorter, if the detective had shrewdly asked this question;

Who opened the door to let the victim-to-be in?

This is a sure fire way to investigate tragic events and find the conspirators supporting the shooter. In the case of the twin towers, the door was opened by whoever ordered the fighter jets to be on exercise hundreds of miles from the city they normally protected. In the case of the death of the Princess of Wales, the door was opened by whoever ordered the CCTV cameras to be disabled and the ambulance to stop on the way to the hospital.

Whoever conceived and executed these and similar tragic events is not the subject of this essay. What interests me here is the question of what happened to the collective consciousness of mankind after 9/11, that is, as we pivoted into the new millennium?

Suddenly, the United States of America changed status from being free from the horrors of global terrorism to being a perceived victim of global terrorism. Whatever you believe happened what is more important here is what is perceived to have happened, on the world stage. The revenge game that followed was then ‘justified’. Certain countries and their dictators were delivered a dose of ‘shock and awe’ by the mighty USA armed services and their allies. This of course, continues in Afghanistan and several countries to this day.

How ironic, it seems to me, that Saddam Hussein’s summer palace looks out over the present ruins of Ancient Babylon.

Looking back in time, you might still be wondering what has been achieved by the various USA and coalition invasions of sovereign states? Suddenly the cowboy in the white hat is doing things only the black hats try to get away with. Who are the good guys and who the bad guys? Why is Saudi Arabia, (a state run by medieval Wahhabi clerics with the nod of royals) still an ally of the USA? We all know the reason for that question but see little offered in answer.

The world has tipped on it’s head. Shadows have been filled with light and light has filled with shadows. Everything and nothing can be believed as ‘true’. We don’t trust each other any more.

It is the area of ‘communication’ that this confusion is most evident today. The Tarot card from the Major Arcana depicts an uncanny picture of the Tower;

Think back briefly to the story in the Old Testament when man developed new technology. In ancient Babylon the early mighty towers or Ziggurats were built from unbaked mud bricks. Then something extraordinary was discovered. The verses specifically state;

‘and they said to one another, go to, make brick and burn them thoroughly. And they had brick for stone and slime had they for mortar.’

This new technology was specifically conceived by human rather than Divine consciousness. This was a fatal transgression from God’s will. God conceived that an already proud human race would become uncontrollably self centred and conceited, or as Flavius Josephus put it in the 1^st century A.D, man committed the deadly sin of pride.

The Tower of Babylon was proposed by academics to be an attempt to connect humans with Heaven, but in my view the opposite is more likely. Towers, or pyramids were built by corrupted nations in order to commit ritual sacrifice of humans, as in the Mayan and Aztec civilisations. The towers were for black, not white, magic. The smell of blood was to attract power from other dimensions in the same way sharks converge on a meat feast in water.

This evil was countered by the Almighty very subtley, so the Bible tells us. Before the building of the Tower of Babel humans spoke and thought with ‘one voice’. They understood each other using a common language for the common good. The ‘correction’ for the sin of pride delivered to humanity by God, was for them no longer to understand one another.

Start examining our recent history from the same perspective. What happened after 9 September 2001? The new technology of computing and it’s changeling*, artificial intelligence, has introduced multiple forms of communication to the common man. Whether in the grasslands of central Africa or the underground stations of New York, people can talk to each other using micro computers posing as telephones.

Note: *definition of changeling; ‘in pre-modern European folklore an infant or magical creature that was secretly exchanged for a human infant…the exchanged infants were thought to be those of fairies, sprites or trolls…demons, devils or witches’.

The potentiality of this freedom of communication however, has not lead to a ‘greater good’ in my view.

The rise of rival messaging, speech and video communication applications is changing humanity radically. Young people are checking their phones on average every ten minutes. Their ‘reality’ is entering syberspace.

Typed messages replace face to face communication between friends over a relaxing cup of coffee. Misunderstandings on a colossal scale now haunt humanity every second of the day. You cannot switch off your phone even when you asleep.

‘I sent you a message, didn’t you see it?’

‘Where was that? A text?

‘No’

‘An email?’

‘No’

‘Oh, Messenger?’

‘No’

‘WhatsApp?‘

‘Did you check your answer phone?’

‘I have two phones, which one?’

‘The one in my contacts…I can’t be sure.’

Compounding this floundering potential for constructive communication is it’s opposite, so called ‘fake news’. Not only pictures and speech can be altered for malign purposes, but now videos of well known figures talking, can be convincingly created using artificial intelligence. Who is telling the truth?; is the question on everyone’s lips. AI just smiles devilishly at the camera.

The result of all of this, is a level of stress and anxiety probably never experienced before… except perhaps after a large construction project in ancient Babylon was reduced to rubble by a freak thunder storm.

Thunder bolts descended from anvil shape thunder clouds turning fired clay bricks into dust. From that time, people entered a thought scape of confusion.

Today, are our small voices more powerful than the technology that is overtaking us? Are we all currently being churned into dust by the real Millennium Bug?