But the third millennium will also be special in one sense. More than the first and second millennia it will bring to the fore the great paradoxes in the emerging global civilisation. We outline ten such paradoxes. There may be many more. They all reveal the colossal contradictions that challenge life and living in our age.
Democracy is supposed to empower people.
But people will be less and less powerful. Mega global forces related to money, market, machine and media will control and dominate the lives of billions and billions of ordinary women and men. They will render the citizen in a democracy as impotent as the digits that made up authoritarian societies of the past. But there will also be tremendous poverty. And the gap between the very rich and the very poor will grow.