Slouching Toward <i> the</i> Millennium : Prognostications, Prophecies and Just Plain Guesses About What the Last Decade of the 20th Century Will Bring

THE WORLD CHANGED SO DRAMATICALLY in the 1980s, particularly in the past few months, that at times one felt nostalgic about last week. The 1980s saw the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe; the diagnosis of a deadly disease--AIDS--that has escalated into a worldwide epidemic, and the ascendancy of American conservatism. Indeed, so much changed so rapidly in the waning years of the decade that the prospect of contemplating more U-turns in the 1990s makes one a bit lightheaded.

But these are vertiginous times, like it or not. The calendar dictates a new decade, ready or not. We aren’t reckless or presumptuous enough to try to label the ‘90s before they arrive, but we thought it might be wise to ask for help in preparing for the next spin of the wheel of history.

Many of the specialists we queried were ill at ease about trying to gaze into the future. Because events have a way of embarrassing horse-racing handicappers and denim salesmen, the squeamishness evoked by questions about peace, economics and environmental issues is understandable. But, with a little prodding, we came up with a panel of 14 prophets who speculated, wondered, expounded, hedged and warned about the coming years. Two main currents stand out: sweeping optimism and chilling pessimism.

So don’t expect a dull decade. And don’t blame us if they turn out to be wrong.

THE ENVIRONMENT: DAVID R. BROWER

Brower, a leader in conservation issues for 50 years, is chairman of the San Francisco-based environmental group Earth Island Institute.

THERE HAS TO be in the coming decade a major move toward restoration of the earth. We’ve got to put back together, as well as we can, the things we took apart since the Industrial Revolution. It was a big party. Now the bills are coming in: global warming, acid rain, holes in the ozone layer, loss of species and loss of hope. We’ve got to turn that all around. All we can do is give nature a chance. If we continue the worst addiction of all--the addiction to gasoline--nature won’t get that chance.

Of course we’re going to do it. All we have to do is say that’s where we want to go. We can’t restore the rain forest, but we can give it our best stab. As for global warming, it’s certainly going to be slowed down, and we’d better reverse it. The last moment--or the next to the last moment--has arrived. As somebody said, “The threat of being hanged gets one’s attention.”

Ironically, it is the pessimism of others that makes me optimistic. The very strength of Bill McKibben’s presentation in his book, “The End of Nature,” will draw attention. So will the Conservation Foundation-sponsored report on toxic chemical pollution in the Great Lakes and its threat to fish, birds, mammals, reptiles and 35 million people.

There are several great pieces of news: Mercedes is developing a car that burns hydrogen. The Valdez Principles (a code of conduct recently introduced by a coalition of environmental groups, religious organizations and investors) are suggesting what big and small investors in big corporations can require them to do to be socially responsible. The Council on Economic Priorities has put out a booklet, “Shopping for a Better World,” telling people which corporations are doing well environmentally and which aren’t. We can invest and vote with our purchases every day.

RACE RELATIONS: ALVIN POUSSAINT

Poussaint is an associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and a senior associate in psychiatry at the Judge Baker Children’s Center in Boston. He is the author of “Why Blacks Kill Blacks” and co-author of “Black Child Care.”

I’M A LITTLE PESSIMISTIC about race relations in this country during the 1990s because of the number of new immigrants, particularly Hispanic Americans and Asians. They will be competing for jobs. We already have animosity between blacks and Latinos. We still have a lot of poverty in black and Hispanic communities. A recent congressional report indicated that 50% of black children in the United States live in poverty. They are more likely than other young people to be involved in drugs and crime or to be killed.

With the general population feeling threatened, all the issues such as drugs and crime are going to come out in racial terms. There will be more segregation. And with the sliding backward of affirmative action and set-aside programs, you leave people in power who were in power before. There is more cronyism and nepotism.

There are disturbing signs that the advances since the 1960s are fading. College enrollment of blacks is declining. In the past 15 years, the number of blacks in medical schools has not gone up.

There has been the killing of blacks by whites at Howard Beach and in the Bensonhurst section of Brooklyn and the attack by black youths on a white woman jogger in Central Park. There was the battle between the police of Virginia Beach and a crowd of predominantly black students. These incidents further polarize the two groups, raising the levels of animosity and fear. After years of quiescence, there have been racial incidents on college campuses that hadn’t had any before.

The post-Martin Luther King generation, young people with negative feelings toward a lot of groups--somehow they feel legitimacy in expressing these views. Despite the success of black athletes that white kids worship, too, despite a black Miss America, despite TV shows such as Bill Cosby’s, feelings of racism don’t seem to be eradicated. People are segregated, so they’re still basically prejudiced. That may change with the next generation, but not with these kids. The polls show they still have the same attitudes as their parents.

There is one bright spot. I think we’re going to have more black elected officials, more participation in the process. That’s because there is a growing black population and a growing sophistication. As blacks gain political power, they can make things happen.

EDUCATION: VARTAN GREGORIAN

Gregorian is president of Brown University. A historian and former University of Pennsylvania provost, Gregorian revitalized the New York Public Library during seven years as its president.

EDUCATION IN America faces three crises during the 1990s: for one, a shortage of 1.1 million high school and elementary school teachers and of 500,000 professors. So where is our seed corn? And who will educate the educators? Second, 23 million to 30 million Americans are functionally illiterate. We also face a third crisis: the shortage of skilled labor, due to demographic factors; the decline of the birthrate, and high school dropouts, especially in the inner cities.

Related to all of this is that in this country we don’t have a gestalt approach to education. There is a great lack of philosophical, educational, administrative and organizational unity. As a result, the colleges and the universities are expected to solve and resolve the neglect and malpreparation of our high school students. More and more, the first two years of college resemble the last two years of high school.

During the ‘90s, our educational issues will be compounded by social issues: poverty, the breakdown of families and the ravage of drugs. Unless we’re able to solve the economic and social issues simultaneously, we will have an underclass that will drag America down economically. As Europe and Asia become strong, we will no longer be able to draw skilled immigrants--only the unskilled, compounding the problem of educating the waves of them coming in.

We have to revitalize our schools, not just give speeches. It’s going to require a massive infusion of funds for laboratories and the teaching of math and science. We must join our forces and faculties to fight the nation’s No. 1 crisis. Fortress America will not be a fortress if our foundations are corroding.

ART: RICHARD KOSHALEK

Koshalek has been director of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles since 1983, after having served as its deputy director and chief curator.

THE CASCADE OF change in the 1980s will continue into the ‘90s. To manage such change is going to be the major problem confronting cultural institutions, whether they be MOCA, a theater, a concert hall or a dance company. The most important issue confronting museums will be developing broad-based educational programs that will lead visitors to a more sensitive understanding and appreciation of the arts.

The increasing valuation of works of art is going to have an effect on museums, especially museums of contemporary art. The art market is so competitive and so inflated with regard to artists competing internationally that these museums will have to be more flexible. They can’t always have the well-known works, so they will have to look for other sources. We might see greater interest in the work of artists working within the region a museum is associated with, such as the light-and-space artists working in California, and a greater emphasis by museums in acquiring the work of emerging and under-recognized artists. The art market will continue to move higher in very select areas and in the work of certain artists, but, overall, I see a leveling off of valuation increases throughout the ‘90s.

Museums will be more international in their outlook. There will have to be a greater interconnecting of artists between the institutions, exchange programs with museums in Japan and South America, not just Europe. Curators from different continents will put together joint shows and share them. Artists will become more concerned about originality and will be influenced by a wide range of sources, such as mass communication, architecture and urban planning and new technologies such as video and high-resolution television.

FOOD: JULIA CHILD

Child has taught cooking to millions through her books and television shows. Her latest book is “The Way to Cook.”

WE’RE GOING through a very bad period when people don’t have much information about their food. They’re inclined to get hysterical about things. A good example was the scare over the use of the chemical Alar on apples. There was such a hysterical pitch that it clearly crippled the apple industry and deprived children of healthy foods. Cholesterol is another place where we’re getting into hysteria. People don’t know what all of that means. You have to have a certain amount of fat, and if you take too much fiber, you’re going to get diarrhea. The point is moderation--eating sensibly and exercising. Every fat calorie you eat should be a pleasure. You should know what you’re doing and enjoy every mouthful. That’s what’s going to happen: We will have more sense, go back to the pleasures of the table in a reasonable way. I think we’ll go back to simple foods--baked potatoes.

People keep saying, “I don’t have time to cook.” We have fast foods and all that sort of thing. I think that’s beginning to change. People are finding it doesn’t take so long to cook. You really need family life at home. It’s much nicer to eat at home than at a fast-food joint. You know what you’re eating.

There has been a great improvement in supermarket produce. That availability will continue. The influence of immigrants on American eating habits is fascinating, the tremendous emergence of all those Mexican foods and others from South America. Chinese seems to have toned down a little bit while Thai has gone up. Sichuan and Japanese foods seem to be coming up. I think this will continue. A lot of Oriental dishes are very healthy. Of course, some people are afraid of raw fish. . . .

BUSINESS: JOHN F. WELCH JR.

Welch has been chairman and chief executive officer of General Electric since 1981.

THE CHALLENGE for business people is to take advantage of broader, expanding markets. With the world so intertwined, there is very little incentive for any country not to work with other countries to sustain a consistent pattern of global growth.

The United States grew rapidly during the ‘50s and ‘60s. There was a dramatic increase in the standard of living and relatively benign global competition. Then, in the ‘70s, we focused too much on how to manage all this growth. We lost position to Europe and Japan. The ‘80s were a reaction to the ‘70s. Mergers, acquisitions and leveraged buyouts were getting some of the fat out of the corporations--a hardware restructuring. The U.S. became much more productive.

We’re going from a decade of hardware to a decade of software--the human element--as we drive to spread responsibility through companies. To win in the ‘90s, companies are going to have to increase the speed of decision making, the speed of bringing products to market and putting proposals together. Companies will move to give more responsibility, more authority and more freedom to individuals, asking them to use their creativity to increase production.

Business won’t be able to bring a product to market, build a new facility or complete a merger that won’t take into account the impact on the environment. Words like recyclable will become common terms. The massive trend toward deregulation during the 1980s will moderate and perhaps reverse--although not back to where we were.

The acquisition of U.S. businesses and property by the Japanese and other foreign investors should lead to greater productivity here, greater taxable income, a higher standard of living, more jobs and yet greater investment.

POLITICS: ARTHUR M. SCHLESINGER JR.

Schlesinger, a writer, historian and educator, is Schweitzer professor of humanities at City University of New York. He served as special assistant to President John F. Kennedy and has won Pulitzer prizes for history and biography.

THE CONSERVATIVE 1980s were a re-enactment of the conservative 1950s, as the 1950s were a re-enactment of the conservative 1920s. In similar fashion we have liberal periods at 30-year intervals: Theodore Roosevelt and the Progressive Era in 1901; Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal in the 1930s; John F. Kennedy and the New Frontier in the 1960s. If the rhythm holds, the national mood in the 1990s will be much more like the Progressive Era and the 1930s and the 1960s than like the conservative 1980s.

There is no mystery about the 30-year cycle. That is the span of a generation. People tend to be formed by the ideas that prevail when they become politically conscious. Kennedy touched and formed a political generation. That generation’s time should come in the 1990s.

It looks as if the tide is beginning to turn. The recent off-year elections in New York, New Jersey and Virginia constituted, as pollster Louis Harris put it, “a vote for activist government.” President Bush’s rhetoric on education, the environment, housing, day care and so on represents a clear departure from hard-line Reaganite conservatism.

Mr. Bush’s problem is that people will soon begin to see a gap between his rhetoric and his action. He has been reluctant in a variety of fields to mobilize the resources necessary to redeem his promises. I am afraid that Mr. Bush’s “no-new-taxes” pledge is condemning the country to impotence, both at home and abroad. We can’t repair our collapsing bridges and dams, we can’t house the homeless, we can’t improve our schools, we can’t give much help to countries like Poland struggling toward democracy--all because of the tax taboo. And polls show that Americans are quite ready to pay taxes for particular things they care about. We need to recognize that it is impossible for us to remain a great nation without paying for it.

Abortion will turn out to be a major mistake for George Bush. Nobody is wildly enthusiastic about abortion. But most people feel that the choice should be made by the woman involved. Bush’s anti-abortion stand has created special problems for the Republicans, who have become a coalition of aspiring free-enterprisers, who believe in personal liberty, and evangelical zealots, who believe in enforcing morality. The Bush line will make it harder for suburbanites and yuppies to vote Republican in the future.

RELIGION: MARTIN E. MARTY

Marty, professor of church history at the University of Chicago, is the author of “Pilgrims in Their Own Land: 500 Years of Religion in America.”

AMERICAN CHURCHES are very busy adjusting to change. Conservative religion in America was galvanized by the image of the Soviet Union as the “evil empire.” Now the revival of Jewish and Christian faiths in Russia and the relative increase of freedom in other East European nations are confusing and liberating all at once. Meanwhile, the real dynamism in Christianity is in the southern world--Latin America, Asia, Malaysia. The contest is between Christianity and Islam in some of those places, while in Latin America it is between Protestants and Catholics.

Catholicism will be marked by the shortage of priests and nuns and the continuing failure of many American Catholics to pay attention to the church on such issues as birth control. Nevertheless, Catholicism will remain America’s largest religious bloc.

As for conservative Protestants, the TV evangelists and the scandals in the movement have led the serious ones to see they have to go back to basics, not be so flamboyant and worldly.

American Jews on one hand are participating in a widespread recovery of tradition, but at the same time many are less ready to fashion their identity in relation to Israel. The debate over who is a Jew hurt the majority of American religious Jews badly. The response by Israel to the intifada has created some conscience problems. Toward the end of the ‘90s we’ll be getting close to having as many Muslims as Jews in this country, so we’ll no longer be a WASP or Judeo-Christian nation.

MEDICINE: KENNETH T. SHINE

Shine has been dean of UCLA’s School of Medicine since 1986. He is a cardiologist and former president of the American Heart Assn.

WE’RE ALMOST certain to see fundamental changes in the way health care is financed. The rate of growth in health-care costs demands some kind of solution. Both the elderly and the corporate communities will be pushing for some kind of basic health insurance that will include providing health care for the poor and uninsured. The biggest problem we have is making health care available to the uninsured. Five million Californians are uninsured. Two-thirds of those are people who work and don’t have adequate insurance.

Scientifically, I think the most exciting development in the ‘90s will be the capacity to match the genome, the genetic structure of the human body. If the genetic code for humans can be unraveled, we could eliminate specific genetic abnormalities. By the end of the decade, I would anticipate that one could identify perhaps 10,000 genes in a newborn or in an adult. This will allow the identification of predisposition to a variety of diseases and disorders. It would be possible to determine whether someone is at risk for diabetes, hypertension or a variety of things.

And it is very likely that by the end of the ‘90s there will be some genetic treatment--gene therapy. But that’s going to mean that the ‘90s will also be a time of greater concern about ethics, not only in genetic therapy but also in the area of health care and what is appropriate treatment.

It’s possible genetic therapy could be useful in the treatment of cancer and AIDS, but it won’t start there. It will start with a specific disorder where there is a known single genetic defect.

One exciting area is the expanding knowledge of cancer through the genetic regulation of oncogenes, the genes identified as causing cancer in humans. This is particularly exciting in offering a promise for prevention as well as treatment for cancer. This includes a better understanding of the way environmental agents--some of the toxins we are exposed to--alter genetic regulation and therefore predispose a person to cancer.

As a cardiologist, I’m very excited about the expanding understanding of cholesterol, metabolism and the way in which fat gets deposited in blood vessel walls. There’ll be many new ways to prevent the blockage of blood vessels by fat. People are living healthier life styles. Life expectancy has gone up over the past 20 years.

There is a good chance that a successful vaccine against AIDS will be developed in the next decade. People are beginning to get clues to the way the virus behaves. It’s a virus that changes its colors very frequently. There are some outstanding minds working on the problem, and I think they are making progress.

FASHION: ANNA WINTOUR

Wintour became editor of Vogue nearly a year and a half ago. A former editor-in-chief of British Vogue, she also has been an editor at Harper’s Bazaar, New York magazine and American Vogue.

IN LOOKING AHEAD to the ‘90s, it’s important to look at what happened in the ‘80s. First of all, there was the enormous influence of fitness. Whether you’re looking at Jane Fonda or the New York Marathon, the fitness boom has had a tremendous influence in terms of fabrics and ease of clothes--whether women were wearing sneakers in the street, with the way women were feeling much better about the way their bodies look. Azzedine Alaia is kind of the king of stretch or body-fitness clothes--sexy and fashionable and desirable at the same time. That’s going to go on into the ‘90s.

We first saw the power suit during the ‘80s. That came out of the Italian designers, kind of an aggressive look; women in the workplace. I think that was very important in the ‘80s. Another thing: It was the decade of black. Everywhere you went you saw women in black, a sea of black. We saw the enormous influence Karl Lagerfeld had at Chanel; he made women more approachable, feminine, attractive.

Looking ahead to the ‘90s--to next season, at least--I think we’ll see a move away from this power dressing, the aggressive look. The word I’m hearing is soft. Women want to look more feminine, prettier; less of a uniform approach, more of a personal style. At the same time, the athletic, more relaxed approach is going to be very important. In the most recent collections, we saw very chic jackets thrown over a kind of bicycling-jogging suit. And I think we’re going to see the emergence of very young designers such as Isaac Misrahi and Marc Jacobs and Michael Kors, which is great for my profession. We haven’t had a group of new designers for a while. This would give us an injection.

SPORTS: HARRY EDWARDS

Sports sociologist Edwards is a professor at UC Berkeley and a consultant to Major League Baseball assigned to help bring nonwhites into coaching and management. He is also a consultant to the San Francisco 49ers and the Golden State Warriors.

COMMERCIALISM IS going to be the dominant force in athletics during the 1990s. We have a situation where, owing to the money available, the number of Major League Baseball regular-season games telecast on network television have dropped to 16 for the coming year. Everything else is going to be on pay cable. That will virtually eliminate access to live baseball for vast segments of the population, including those segments that have provided tremendous player personnel resources. The rural poor white kids and the inner-city black kids--the (future) Rickey Hendersons, the Frank Robinsons, the Vada Pinsons--are not going to have access. The time is long past when kids could go peer through a knothole in the fence and watch their heroes. Eliminating that access is eventually going to hurt baseball because these are the athletes of the future.

We can expect a tremendous influx of foreign athletes with the growing internationalization of sports, thanks to the satellites. The attractiveness of bringing in foreign athletes who will be heroes for foreign markets is probably going to be very difficult to ignore. This means tens of millions of new fans, opening a tremendous market for sports paraphernalia. Right now, if you look at the NBA, Africa is represented. Russia is represented. Czechoslovakia is represented. Yugoslavia is represented. Growing internationalization could erode the tradition of American sports and the involvement of the typical American fans who find sports heroes appealing because they can identify with them. Now they’ve got to break through all sorts of cultural barriers. They probably can’t even pronounce the name of Sarunas Marciulionis, who is on the Warriors roster and is the first Russian to play in the NBA. So commercialism will remove a degree of identification with the players for the fans here at home.

Satellite communications is going to bring more sports from more places than we have ever experienced into the American living room. We are going to have to come to grips with the fact that sports can reach a saturation point. Last basketball season, on a Saturday afternoon, I turned on my satellite and had access to 13 basketball games within a five-hour period. I watched a little bit of each of them. As one got boring, I switched to something else. At the end, I not only didn’t know who had won, I didn’t know who had played whom. And I was bored by most of it. More is not necessarily better.

SCIENCE: RICHARD C. ATKINSON

Atkinson, the chancellor of UC San Diego, is president of the American Assn. for the Advancement of Science and former director of the National Science Foundation.

WE ARE GOING TO have a tremendous shortfall of scientists as we move toward the 21st Century. If corrective actions are not taken immediately, by early next century the annual supply of Ph.Ds in this country will be about 10,500--versus a demand for about 18,000. This will dramatically affect our ability to maintain our scientific leadership and economic capabilities. That’s the overriding issue that relates to the health of American science, whether we’re going to attract the talent to keep the enterprise rolling. Too many young people are going off to law school and MBA programs. Or they get bachelor’s degrees and then get recruited by industry without getting Ph.Ds. We pay such high salaries in fields such as computer science and the like that these people aren’t willing to stay on for the Ph.Ds. This will be a problem even if the shrinking defense budget causes fewer scientists to gravitate toward defense research.

In terms of science itself, on every front there are simply spectacular developments. What’s happening in the neurosciences is absolutely mind-boggling. Information that’s being accumulated about the nature of the neuron and the molecular processes involved in neurotransmission is going to open up a totally new view of the nature of the human mind and of psychological issues. Every psychological mood and condition will probably relate to some aspect of the transmitters, allowing us to research and study every facet of an individual’s personality.

Molecular and cellular biology is simply revolutionary in terms of its impact on medicine. Our neurosurgeons at UCSD, for example, are anticipating implanting into the brains of people with Alzheimer’s disease genes that would generate an increased level of certain neurotransmitters that we believe are related to the disease. There’s no question that this can happen during the coming decade.

Things are rolling at such a fast rate that to make predictions is very difficult. It’s clear that in fields such as physics, the superconducting supercollider will be a major scientific instrument. Also, I think there’s a renewed interest in nuclear fusion as a source of energy.

Then you’ve got this whole development of new techniques for visual imaging--the ability, through nuclear magnetic resonance and other procedures, to literally image the structure of a molecule or something even smaller. We can image the activities of the brain. In physics and chemistry, in the neurosciences, billions and billions of observations can be put together by a computer to provide images. We can literally see the structure of particular molecules, the form they are and why they interact the way they do. If we can understand the structure of a molecule, we can create chemicals that mimic the structures found in the body.

When the space telescope gets up there next spring, we may find ourselves with a completely new view of the universe. It will have the capacity to see farther and in more detail than we’ve ever been able to before. Everywhere along the way the excitement is spectacular.

WORLD AFFAIRS: WARREN CHRISTOPHER

Christopher is chairman of the L.A. law firm of O’Melveny & Myers. As deputy secretary of state in the Carter Administration, he was chief negotiator in freeing the U.S. hostages in Iran.

THE UNITED STATES will have to develop a whole new strategy for a dramatically changed world. With the diminished burden of the heavy cost of armaments, we have a chance to address a new agenda--and just in the nick of time. Because of that easing of arms costs, we are likely during the coming decade to have an opportunity to concentrate on environmental and economic issues to a degree that has not been possible in the past. This can lead to a better life for the disadvantaged here as well as elsewhere in the world. That’s a pretty optimistic scenario, but I hope that it turns out to be true.

For 40 years, our foreign policy has been dominated by fear of the Soviet Union and the strategy to curb its expansion. Now we are emerging from a bipolar world to confront a more complex but encouraging set of relationships. I think we are in for a dramatic change in our relationship with the Soviet Union. If you look down the long corridors of history, there is no fundamental reason that we cannot have better relations. In the ‘90s, some other power may arise as our principal adversary, probably a Pacific power--China or Japan.

Gorbachev and the end of the Cold War have changed the scene. While some Americans yearn for the simplicity of a bipolar world and urge that we cling to an obsolete strategy, we must not yield to nostalgia. Rather we must get about the task of developing a new strategy. The United States and Soviet Union are certainly not allies and not even friends in the old-fashioned sense. But we have passed the point where any Soviet advancement is tantamount to a U.S. setback. There may be setbacks, but now, increasingly often, we recognize a mutuality of interest in dealing with issues. Both conventional and nuclear-arms-control agreements are feasible to a degree previously only dreamed about. Clearly, the ‘90s will see major agreements, both in the nuclear and conventional arms fields.

In Eastern Europe, we should help each of the nations to achieve emancipation without expecting that they will join our bloc. Austria and Finland are promising “neutral” models, and we should resist the temptation to achieve the moon. We may find that we can work together with the Soviets in addressing such regional problems as Angola, Cambodia and Nicaragua.

As we replace our preoccupation with Soviet containment, we must persuade other nationsto do the same. Some of those nations are painfully poor and are focused on short-range needs. How do we convince them that they must take steps to prevent destruction of the environment through global warming and deforestation? How do we compete in a world where we are no longer dominant and where threats of protectionism are pervasive? Multilateral diplomacy with all its frustrations is the most promising avenue to cope with these cosmic and urgent problems. It is a new world--promising, but full of daunting risks.

TRENDS:

Popcorn, born Faith Plotkin, is founder of the Manhattan-based marketing and trend analysis firm BrainReserve . She advises corporations about developments likely to affect the marketplace.

WE’RE LOOKING at an era we call the “cleanup decade.” We’re going to be paying back for the sins of the ‘80s. We’re going to have to clean up the economy, the ecology, education and ethics. We’re glutted out. We’ve spent too much, produced too much garbage and lied too much. There’s a relief in the fact that it’s going to catch up with us. People are going to pare down and become more conservative about family stability, value for the dollar and so on.

The reasons are both economic and emotional. People are sick of the glut and the glitz. They want their cars to last 10 years. They want to be in their houses for 50 years. They want their kids to grow up straight. They’re tired of drugs and the threat of drugs.

The biggest thing will be the consciousness that changes from me to thee . The ‘80s were all about me and what I needed, and money, money, money. The ‘90s will be about children and community and concern for the planet and concern for people of China and Russia. Marketing will have to shift to demonstrate an ethical stance. One current example is Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream; they have a flavor called Amazon Rain Forest Crunch, and proceeds from it go toward conservation in South America.

That’s being optimistic, but we’re going to have to do with a lot less. There is a major gap between the haves and the have-nots, and the haves are going to have to start taking care of and responsibility for the have-nots.