it's so half-assed, why just tack a zero onto the Christian year? in the Yoruba calendar it's 10,067 -- use that and it puts things in a real perspective. We're ten thousand years from the beginning of civilization, not two thousand. Now THAT gives some perspective on the "long now"
Maybe more like twelve thousand years from the beginning: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6bekli_Tepe. The real crucial question is whether we're two years from the end of civilization or two trillion.
