You can easily generate your own list of examples, I’m sure. Mine would include the likes of Archimedes, Lao-Tze, Rumi, Caravaggio, Newton, Freud, Gould. My list, you’ll notice, is all singles. That’s because I’m pretty much a loner.

Some people’s lists would include group efforts such as Athenian democracy; the Niña, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria; the Manhattan Project; the Apollo Program.

After all this time and clever effort, isn’t about time we got down to business and focused on THE continuing problem of us on earth, the problem that if we don’t solve it soon may well lead to the cessation of us on earth?

I mean the problem of human violence.

As the old chronic odometer clicked around to a "2" followed by some zeroes, there was talk of "the end of history."

Ho-ho.

Such talk, coming at the end of the bloodiest of our unbroken string of bloody centuries, came from somewhere way, way beyond the realm of wishful thinking.

Look at us now, how the violence and the preparations for "defense" against violence continue.

No list, please. It would be so long, so familiar, so depressing.

Just one number:

400,000,000,000.

That, as you may know, is how many dollars are budgeted this year for the United States Department of Defense. Four hundred billion.

We’re so used to hearing such big numbers in the news that we really don’t pay much attention, and we certainly don’t think much about what they really mean, or about what can be done with even a tiny, tiny fraction of that much money.

$400,000,000,000 dollars?

    >With that you could BUY and run FIFTEEN HARVARDS.

   >You could BUY EXXON and have enough left over to give an
   SUV to every adult in America—and pay for their gas for a year.

   >God only knows what the beneficial effects might be if we applied
   just a TENTH of that amount to the schools of America.

And so on.

The point is, we continue to spend inconceivable amounts of money every year on armament because we spend almost nothing trying to figure out 1) why the armament is still necessary, and 2) how to stop its being necessary.

Millennial focus time:

In World War II, we got well-focused, created something called the Manhattan Project, and—boom—four years later here came the first atomic bomb. Pretty clever.

In the Cold War, we got well-focused, created something called the Apollo Program, and—whoosh—six years later there was Neal Armstrong cavorting on the moon. Also pretty clever.

Why not, my friends, a new focus?

Call it "The Millennium Project."

Throw a tiny fraction of the Defense Department budget at it (two, three billion, whatever—it’s pocket change, really), give the project a deadline—six years sounds about right, and get to work.

Work? I forgot to mention the purpose, didn’t I? Simple: to find a solution to the problem of human violence.

What’s to lose? A couple of billion a year? My goodness, the Defense Department currently WASTES more than that every year.

What’s to gain?

Peace, peace, peace.

Or at the very least a giant new, a bold new step in that direction. Surely, such a step is far worthier of America than the imperialist adventures and pre-emptive wars in which we are now single-mindedly engaged.