The last century found that, willy-nilly, it had goals aplenty. There was always the social goal of ending unemployment, a purpose that fired people as varied as John Maynard Keynes and Adolf Hitler. There was the goal of spreading capitalism or building socialism, depending on which side of the fence you were on.
Later, there was the goal of defeating fascism and, later still, communism. Then there was the goal of ending war and the creation of a United Nations. Not least, there was the goal of spreading democracy and, hard on its heels, ending colonialism. Finally, and most recently, there was the goal of spreading human rights.
What goals are left for this century's new generations? It would be hard to make a list to rival the above for substance. But that is understandable. As the Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard wrote: 'Life must be lived forwards, but it can only be understood backwards.' Still, one unfinished task stands out head and shoulders above all others: to end poverty.
There are about 800 million people living in poverty, a large number but not an overwhelming number when one considers how fast the world's population has grown in the last 50 years and how most of those have found a way through life without falling into poverty.
Yet poverty is as misunderstood as any subject can be. We don't even understand what causes it. John Kenneth Galbraith, in his essay 'The Nature of Mass Poverty', asks if it is because of differences in natural resources. Obviously not, or Japan would be among the poorest in the world. Is it the legacy of colonialism? But many of the former English-speaking colonies are now better off than the mother country, while uncolonised Ethiopia and Nepal remain poor.
Poverty is enormously difficult to put one's finger on. Poverty at one extreme we can recognise - no clothes, no food, inadequate shelter and bad health. But a notch above the bottom level, it can become an elusive phenomenon.