I don't know whether to laugh or cry as people make confident predictions about the shape of 1999. I would have thought that economists and social analysts might have been humbled by their dramatic failures this year. But there's no sign that people are willing to recognize the range of discontinuities that face us at this point.

A year ago, we were being told that the Asian crisis would not affect the rich countries. Now the story line is that there have been some significant downsides but that we can be confident that they will be contained. As an economist by training, although I was long ago excommunicated for thinking too broadly, I find this extraordinarily naive. Asia is in the throes of a deflationary spiral due to massive overcapacity and its impacts on us will continue to be very significant.

This reality alone makes prediction extraordinarily tricky. How much will the ability of countries to supply goods more cheaply undermine production in Europe and North America? Will the near recessions in industry such as steel, oil and textiles spread more broadly? Will consumers remain confident and be willing to spend all that they earn without putting aside any savings?

There is an also an extraordinary cross-cut which makes clear thinking about the next year far more difficult. This is the impact of Y2K. As questions about this issue get closer to the surface, we are realizing that there can be no certainties and that this uncertainty will persist until the events actually occur.

This means that firms, and people, will have to make decisions without even reasonable levels of knowledge. There is already evidence that many companies will abandon just-in-time strategies which limit stocks to what is immediately needed and aim to have enough in hand to keep working through disruptions. Downward tendencies in economic systems could therefore be temporarily reversed. But they would be redoubled when systems settle down again and destocking takes place.

But the even more dramatic issue is around the behavior of individuals, families and communities. There is growing concern in many people's minds about what will happen in January 2000. A growing number of people are suggesting the need to stock up on food and to have more money in one's wallet. If these trends were contained, they would give people a sense of greater control over their lives. But if they were exaggerated through fear and panic, they could be enormously disruptive and greatly complicate the management of whatever technical Y2K breakdowns do occur.

These are the immediate issues for forecasters in 1999. They are, however, only the tip of the iceberg. We are in the middle of a titanic clash between two ways of seeing the world. One assumes that technology and maximum economic growth will resolve the problems of the world that continuation of twentieth century emphases is viable.

The other believes that we need new goals. It argues that only a concentration on social cohesion, ecological integrity, effective decision-making and the quality of life can prevent massive disasters. It emphasizes the organic over the material and believes that we must mesh the spiritual with the rational.

My recent trip to Australia showed the strength of the latter vision and the number of people who hold it. Our understanding of the strength of this current is held back by our failure to recognize the interconnections between all the challenges to the current dynamics. Those of us who want a better future need to see the many forms in which the clash is taking place.

One of the most dramatic is the difference between our ability to respond to financial breakdowns and human tragedies. We have been stinting and limited in our reaction to Hurricane Mitch, claiming that we must stick to our economic formulas. But when a financial hedge fund was in trouble, we could find $3.5 billion US without difficulty.

What should we be about at this moment in history? It is time for us to stop believing that we can predict what conditions are going to be in the future. It is time for us to live in the present affecting it as we can from whatever place we currently stand. Those of us who believe that a better and different world is possible need to use the current turbulence to share our ideas with others who are ready for them.

Y2K and the Asian crisis are indeed an opportunity. But only if we are willing and able to recognize that the emerging new world will be profoundly different from current patterns of personal and social behavior. Our criteria for success will change dramatically. We shall care about each other rather than about primarily goods and services, we shall maintain our ecological systems and we shall recommit to citizenship.

Some will dismiss these statements as millennial fever. Others will recognize that the millennium has broken us out of denial and the cultural trance in which we have been caught for so long. We have an opportunity. It is time to seize it.