Thu 7 Feb 2008
We have the advantage of looking at history as history — what happened 50 or 100 or 300 years ago is done, and the uncloseable distance of time gives us the luxury balking at how things used to be. Scientific beliefs; social mores; government practices: all fair game in hindsight.
So what about today’s world will earn the scorn of those looking back 50, 100, 300 years hence? What will the march of progress have made to look bad?
Posted by Josh Millard10 answers so far!
Okay, let's hear it.
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There was a time when women would have saline-filled plastic bags implanted into their bodies for “aesthetic” reasons.
There were once people who believed in invisible sky wizards with such fervor that wars were fought over whose sky wizard was better.
People once stated in all seriousness that global corporate capitalism could work hand-in-hand with representative democracy.
Once English was used instead of Chinese as a common global language.
Creating life in a laboratory was seen as an ethically dicey exercise instead of the unfolding of a universal imperative.
Once computers were considered mere machines instead of autonomous beings with rights.
Private ownership of commonly-held property, like land and mineral rights, was considered normal and actually encouraged.
Same-sex couples were denied permission to marry.
We let monied interests poison our atmosphere instead of employing sensible energy solutions.
They’ll know more about food…and they’ll wonder why, when it’s so obvious, why we were poisoning ourselves (or giving ourselves cancer, etc.)
It’ll be obvious to them, but unclear to us at this point.
The War on Drugs will look as silly as prohibition.
They’ll wonder at treating water to drinking quality standard and then spraying it onto the ground in massive quantities. Often more was poured right out of the tap onto the ground than was consumed by humans.
Same-sex couples were denied permission to marry.
Definitely. I’ve said it before: in 50 or 100 years, people are going to be watching crappy-quality archival video of all these pols standing up in public and proudly waxing eloquent about “preserving holy matrimony” and “defending the family,” and it’s going to be just like how we feel now when we watch film clips of the notorious segregationists of the 50s and 60s spewing their pious corrosive bile.
Also, they’ll be horrified at much of what we consider modern medicine — cutting people open with knives, practically them people to death in order to kill cancer cells, jolting them with defibrillators and ECT, and so on.
And of course, they’ll nod at the commonplace that every historical empire’s time from rise to fall (Rome, British Empire, US, whoever’s next) is significantly shorter than the previous one.
er, practically poisoning people to death
I’m still waiting on flying cars so they can laugh at us driving on roads.
I agree with what’s been said about same-sex marriages.
Not so sure about modern science and even 100 or 300 years down the road looking crazy. For instance, creating organs from scratch to use in human bodies via stem cells is decades away. And then comes the trials to actually use them inside us. At first, only the very wealthy will be able to afford it anyways.
Uncontrolled human population growth.
Using petroleum for fuel.
“Twitter”, the TV show.