considering what moving into the next Millennium will really mean.

Aside from those who have not prepared for the Y2K bug and for those suffering from excessive celebration the night before, the morning of January 1 will be little different from the last day of 1999.

The idea of preparing for the new Millennium, the new century or even the new year has always rung a little hollow. High-minded statements about how things need to be changed for the new millennium often sound like either an excuse not to do something now or as a way of getting something done which would be unpopular otherwise.

Leaving aside the question of whether 2000 or 2001 marks its start, the whole dating of the Millennium has always been somewhat arbitrary and, according to the latest Biblical research, out by between five and ten years.

Nonetheless, dates and numerical eras are convenient milestones by which humankind can measure progress and make plans for the future.

And there is no question that much progress has been made in this century, let alone in the last thousand years.

The fight for Parliamentary democracy and universal adult suffrage is largely won. The technical progress of this century is extraordinary by almost any measure. Advances in education, health, psychology and social services have been wide and thinking on social mores has been revolutionary.

Against that progress, the world has been exposed to the horrors of what man can do in the name of progress and political beliefs. Two world wars caused suffering among civilian populations and casualties on the battlefield which would have been inconceivable in 1900.

The Cold War and the nuclear threat which overshadowed almost all international politics from 1945 until the collapse of the Eastern Bloc a decade ago saw the world on the brink of mass destruction.

Today, the mass murders committed in the names of Nazism and Communism have been replaced by the smaller, but equally horrific examples of ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda.

Even as the ravages of diseases like cholera have been eradicated, more potent forms of malaria and new illness such as AIDS have arisen, while the drugs trade remains a brutal killing machine.

And the march of progress and technological advances -- even prosperity -- has seen the degradation of the environment to the point where that may be the greatest threat to mankind's survival in the next century.

Bermuda is a microcosm of the world and faces many of the same opportunities and problems -- as well as those unique to this society.

But Bermuda, through its history, has shown its ability to adapt to economic and social change and make it work to its advantage. Its ability to continue to recognise change and to benefit from it will be the great test of the future.