We'll be knock-kneed with sexual exhaustion

SOME OF us can see it now. As 1998 limps away into the past - an odd, aching, restless year with a peculiar talent for unhappiness - the reason for it all becomes clearer. It was not global warming, nor the collapse of the Southeast Asia tiger economies: nor is it the defeat of socialism at the hands of the enterprise culture, nor the effects of El Nino, as many have argued. It is all much simpler than that. Those of us with the time to worry about such things - that is the whole of Western society - are simply in the early stages of a group mental breakdown caused by acute calendar anxiety.

The author of a book called Millennial Prophecies, Stephen Skinner, has tried to reassure us, pointing out that, 1,000 years ago, a similar social phenomenon, which he comfortingly describes as mass hysteria, was occurring throughout Europe. "Some men forgave each other their debts; husbands and wives rashly forgave their infidelities; convicts were released from prisons; poachers made truces with their liege lords."

While some of these processes are already taking place - prisoners being released throughout Northern Ireland, the former paymaster-general throwing money at any political colleague who is short of a bob or two - the problem facing us is simple: it's all going to get a lot worse over the next 12 months.

The new honesty between husbands and wives concerning past and present infidelities, for example, may be thought to be a healthy development in this age of apology, but already it has posed a problem in some marriages. Sociologists estimate that a small but significant proportion of married couples - perhaps as high as 12 per cent - are still being faithful to one another on a regular basis, and therefore have nothing to confess.

This is likely to change over the coming year. The end of a millennium is a powerful social reminder of the passing of time and the inevitability of death which will act, to all but the most libidinally challenged, as a sexual wake-up call. Like a group of animals under severe stress, or like pilots due to fly into action on the morrow, we shall experience a powerful, all-embracing urge to mate with virtually anyone. Noting the universal contagion of fast, angry, tearful sex between strangers, trivial-minded journalists may, from force of habit, describe this social process as "casual sex". This is to miss the point completely: the more meaninglessness the chance encounters they experience, the more meaningful they will be to the participants.

The usual Daily Mail columnists will bleat and bray about the decline in moral standards, resisting for as long as possible the demands of their own lower natures, before they inevitably succumb in a messy, psychologically complex way. Many will follow the example of the famous blood-and-thunder moralist who this year was revealed to enjoy being put across his mistress's lap and spanked with a deluxe leather-bound edition of the St James Bible. We can expect exceptional sales of the Holy Book during 1999.

Yet, as we become increasingly obsessed with sensual pleasure (the feverish, decadent obsession with food is likely to tighten its grip on the television schedules), a great spiritual yearning will also become evident. It will be the year of the public therapist. Bishops will do a lot of talking, and may even be taken seriously on occasions. Creative artists will become moral and spiritual arbiters. Politicians and journalists will be replaced on Question Time by the new heroes of the age: Beryl Bainbridge, Pam Ayres, Robbie Williams and Sir David Hare. The new poet laureate, Andrew Motion will become a regular guest for Anna Raeburn's share-your-pain phone-in on Talk Radio, dispensing gentle, and occasionally lyrical, views on matters of commitment, kids and co-dependency.

Because, as is already becoming clear, we have entered an age in which thought has surrendered the field to feeling. The new taboo, replacing sex (now regarded as a banal, everyday appetite to which we all have a right), is caring and compassion, about which no commentator or satirist will dare to joke. The past year has shown how any memoir treating illness or suffering in a frank, autobiographical manner, will be praised as a masterpiece by critics terrified to be thought heartless. Such will be the new addiction to sentiment that, in the coming months, an Insensitivity Act will be amended to Jack Straw's Crime and Disorder Bill and announced in the Queen's Speech, during which Her Majesty will break down. Budget Day will be delayed because the Chancellor is feeling depressed, and in the autumn, a talented and charismatic five-year-old from Hackney will be appointed the new Minister for Children and Animals. This time next year, the Christmas hit will be What Was My Name Again, a number sung by Alzheimer sufferers, backed by a choir of primary schoolchildren, and arranged by Sir Paul McCartney.

I can see that the later stages of our global crack-up may not appeal to everyone, but the advice of pundits is that to fight these pre-millennial impulses is like trying to resist history. Remember that, at this time next year, as we face the next 1,000 years, bloated, tearful, knock-kneed with sexual exhaustion, our prisons groaning with those who have not cared enough, the feverish nightmare of our breakdown will be almost over, and that normal life will soon resume once more.