What will future generations find weird or bad about us?

[Teaching3bears]

Which habits will change completely?

Today we find it strange the way people in the Middle Ages bathed so infrequently and in the past people brought babies in cars without car seats and nobody wore seat belts.

What will future generations think about what we do and what will they change?  Either close future generations or generations in the far-off future?

[bolt.]

Caffeine dependence (how widespread and socially supported it is).

Consumerism (how our economic system depends foundationally on everyone’s duty to buy more than we need).

Emergence of full-time screens and information access.

General narrow mindedness: possibly in our thoughts about gender, sexuality, race, culture, etc. (Basically, whatever they ‘make progress’ in will seem narrow in retrospect.)

Medical treatments (ie chemo and radiation, if they find something better) and the scarcity / high cost of medical care in some countries.

Indiscriminate use of fossil fuels for daily life, especially transportation.

Indiscriminate over use of pure water sources.

Gobal economics that relies on foreign products and workers in unethical situations (even slavery) while workers at home have protections.

[Pawz4me]

That we knew about and ignored/did little to prevent climate change for so long. Also, the general ignorance of/disregard for science.

That people voted for/empowered certain political figures and movements that are destructive (or IOW that we didn't learn from history).

That particular religious views were allowed to influence our laws so much.

That people bought/wanted garbage bags disgustingly scented like fake flowers thinking they'd disguise the smell of their stinky trash. ?

ETA: That so many believed in the "Paleo" diet.

Edited August 6, 2018 by Pawz4me

[historically accurate]

Care for mental illness.

I'm sure some sort of chemical we currently use will be proven to kill us.

Possibly the incarceration rates will be viewed as debtors' or illiterates' prisons. 

 

[Barb_]

That medical treatment presented financial hardship, sometimes catastrophic. 

The death penalty. 

The large chunk of our population in prison (.71% of the US by 2016 and that number continues to rise each year).

 

 

[Barb_]

Possibly they may find it weird the privacy and freedoms we took for granted in the 20th and early 21st centuries. Between the pervasive surveillance and demands for identification, social media and the breakdown of communication and cooperation between democratic countries, the world, or at least the US may not look a lot like it does now in 50 years. Things don’t always keep getting better. 

[regentrude]

Cars. Future generations will shake their head that in our times each family owned their own two ton metal contraption that sat idle most of the day and killed 30,000 people each year and that we found this acceptable.

Medical care not being accessible to all people

Privately run prisons

Edited August 6, 2018 by regentrude

[SKL]

• A lot of things that are too politically incorrect to say.
• Paperwork - applications and forms etc etc - the way we have to write the same fact down 600 times over a childhood so it can sit in a file and not be used ....
• Lies we get away with.  Like when people say they went to X university and held Y job, are Z age, were at Q location, and even who is whose father.
• Computer peripherals.
• Gas-only cars.
• Disposable containers - at least the volume that we use.
• Food additives, super-refined foods - the extent to which we accept them (I think they will live on as special treats / emergency stuff).
• The high cost of education, sports tickets, and basic health care services.

[Janeway]

I have a college aged relative who will not watch TV on regular TV or even on playback apps because he says he cannot tolerate the commercials. No one wants to play cards with me, so that might be a thing of the past too that future generations won't get. One of the kids had over a friend and we tried to play a board game. It was not a cooperative play game. The kid kept cheating. The kid was an otherwise nice boy with kind and good parents. I suspect because most people under 20 yrs have just been playing videos games, if you can do it on a video game, it is legal. There is no honor system expected. "Cheat codes" are ok and "cheating" is not considered ..well..what we used to think of cheating to be. 

[Carol in Cal.]

Anonymity

Abortion

Needing to consult medical staff I person

Very large and impersonal schools

Transitioning as it is practiced today

[Guest]

3 hours ago, Pawz4me said:

That we knew about and ignored/did little to prevent climate change for so long. Also, the general ignorance of/disregard for science.

That people voted for/empowered certain political figures and movements that are destructive (or IOW that we didn't learn from history).

That particular religious views were allowed to influence our laws so much.

That people bought/wanted garbage bags disgustingly scented like fake flowers thinking they'd disguise the smell of their stinky trash. ?

ETA: That so many believed in the "Paleo" diet.

This is almost my exact list.

I hope one day it will be, “I can’t believe millions of people bought water in single-use, plastic bottles when there was water available at the tap for free.” 

[Guest]

1 hour ago, happysmileylady said:

I often wonder what people will think of our religious beliefs.  We look back to ancient groupings of gods, and generally speaking, term it all mythology.  I wonder what future generations will think of the religious beliefs of today.  

Sidebar: when I was a kid, growing up in an emphatically Christian home, I did often wonder about that. Like, my parents would say something like, “They believed the world rested on a giant turtle’s back! Isn’t that crazy?” And I would think, “Well, we believe that a snake talked the first woman into sinning and God was afraid the Tower of Babble might be sucessful, so...”

[livetoread]

How badly we treated animals, especially food animals.

Edited August 6, 2018 by livetoread

[barnwife]

2 hours ago, SKL said:

• A lot of things that are too politically incorrect to say.

 

 

The number and extent of things that are too politically incorrect to say. 

 

The alarmism that is politically correct. I just heard a promo for a serious radio show that we are running out of sand, on a national or international level...

[BarbecueMom]

That the National League didn’t use a designated hitter and let the pitchers bat.

I say they can adopt the DH over my dead body, but I’m certain the Commissioner has zero plans of asking my opinion on the matter.

[obsidian]

9 minutes ago, barnwife said:

The alarmism that is politically correct. I just heard a promo for a serious radio show that we are running out of sand, on a national or international level...

 

Ok, I'm not sure if this is the radio show you're talking about, but Planet Money has an episode about an entire beach of sand that was stolen. It's actually really interesting and they go into a decent amount of depth about the problem in the episode. The problem isn't so much a sand crisis, per say, because a lot of the places the sand is going aren't critical in any sort of way (beach resorts replacing sand so that the resort looks pristine, for example). Some of it is more important because silicone for computer chips and concrete for construction both require a certain type of sand, and the sand in deserts is generally too fine.

[Monica_in_Switzerland]

- Our germophobia 

- Sugar consumption levels

- Globalism

- High heel shoes

 

[2ndGenHomeschooler]

Snapchat style face filters.

Edited August 6, 2018 by 2ndGenHomeschooler

[fairfarmhand]

Organic prepackaged junk food.

[Lady Florida.]

4 hours ago, Pawz4me said:

That we knew about and ignored/did little to prevent climate change for so long. Also, the general ignorance of/disregard for science.

That people voted for/empowered certain political figures and movements that are destructive (or IOW that we didn't learn from history).

That particular religious views were allowed to influence our laws so much.

That people bought/wanted garbage bags disgustingly scented like fake flowers thinking they'd disguise the smell of their stinky trash. ?

ETA: That so many believed in the "Paleo" diet.

I love you. ❤️ ?

[Lady Florida.]

1 hour ago, Quill said:

Sidebar: when I was a kid, growing up in an emphatically Christian home, I did often wonder about that. Like, my parents would say something like, “They believed the world rested on a giant turtle’s back! Isn’t that crazy?” And I would think, “Well, we believe that a snake talked the first woman into sinning and God was afraid the Tower of Babble might be sucessful, so...”

Julia Sweeney talks about that in her Letting Go of God video. She mentions the LDS missionaries who came to her door and how she thought their story was crazy. After they left she considered her own (Catholic) religion's story and how it sounds to those who don't believe.

56 minutes ago, obsidian said:

 

Ok, I'm not sure if this is the radio show you're talking about, but Planet Money has an episode about an entire beach of sand that was stolen. It's actually really interesting and they go into a decent amount of depth about the problem in the episode. The problem isn't so much a sand crisis, per say, because a lot of the places the sand is going aren't critical in any sort of way (beach resorts replacing sand so that the resort looks pristine, for example). Some of it is more important because silicone for computer chips and concrete for construction both require a certain type of sand, and the sand in deserts is generally too fine.

It was also discussed on 1a this morning.

 https://the1a.org/shows/2018-08-06/the-battle-for-the-beach

And the New York Times

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/23/opinion/the-worlds-disappearing-sand.html

ETA: It's not really as weird as it sounds. Sand is in fact a finite, aka non-renewable resource. And it's in high demand.

Edited August 6, 2018 by Lady Florida.

[Crimson Wife]

Corporal punishment, especially the use in schools and in some places still today for criminal punishment

Meat that comes from the slaughter of animals rather than grown in a petri dish

Organ donation from people rather than grown in a petri dish

[Jen500]

45 minutes ago, 2ndGenHomeschooler said:

Snapchat style face filters.

This made me think of another...all the fake lips/boobs/butts of celebrities and other people. Crazy.

[Guest]

44 minutes ago, Crimson Wife said:

Corporal punishment, especially the use in schools and in some places still today for criminal punishment

Meat that comes from the slaughter of animals rather than grown in a petri dish

Organ donation from people rather than grown in a petri dish

I agree with that one for sure. It already blows my mind that there are tons of schools where paddling is still an acceptable practice. 

[bolt.]

17 minutes ago, kdsuomi said:

We have no idea what people of the future will think, so it's all pure conjecture (even though the thread very quickly turned into a "conservatives are backward and must be looked upon as such" thread).

I would hope they would find legalized abortion to be in the bad category, but they may not.

They may find it odd that we didn't have socialized medicine, but they might also find it weird that people in some countries are comfortable giving a whole lot of control over their medical choices to the government. 

I’ve read lots of things on this list that have nothing to do with “conservatives” — but I’m confused about your comment about medical choices. As far as I know, there aren’t any countries where people have given medical control to the government.

I’m thinking that all developed nations have laws and oversight around the practice of medicine — is that what you mean? Or are you conjecturing that in the future the government will assume a great deal of medical control, then later in the future people might find it strange? Or is it possible that you don’t fully understand existing models of socialized medicine?

[obsidian]

2 hours ago, Monica_in_Switzerland said:

- High heel shoes

 

 

I hope the high heeled shoes one comes sooner rather than later! 

[Barb_]

24 minutes ago, StellaM said:

That people lived their whole lives in their natural bodies. No, or little, augmentation of the human with the non-human, except for medical purposes.

Good one. People are buried with knee and hip replacements but that’s about it. 

[Mergath]

1 hour ago, kdsuomi said:

We have no idea what people of the future will think, so it's all pure conjecture (even though the thread very quickly turned into a "conservatives are backward and must be looked upon as such" thread).

I would hope they would find legalized abortion to be in the bad category, but they may not.

They may find it odd that we didn't have socialized medicine, but they might also find it weird that people in some countries are comfortable giving a whole lot of control over their medical choices to the government. 

 

I don't think anyone said conservatives are backward.

If you look at the overall trend, however, each generation does tend to be more progressive and open-minded than the generation before, so it's only natural to assume, when thinking about future generations, that they would continue on that way. 

[Mergath]

I agree with a lot of the ones people have already come up with. Especially meat. I think future generations are going to be horrified that we raised animals in horrific conditions to kill and eat. I would guess that a century from now, it's going to be akin to how people think about slavery. 

One I haven't seen yet (unless I missed it) is that I think future generations will have much more flexible ideas about marriage. People change so much over a lifetime, and I've always found it odd that you're expected to find someone when you're fairly young and stay with them until you die. I think that as certain religious traditions continue to shrink in numbers, people are going to be more open-minded about marriage. Plural marriages, marriages that expire after a certain amount of time or when the kids are all adults, etc.

I don't know that it will happen in my lifetime, but I think it will happen eventually.

[Barb_]

3 minutes ago, Mergath said:

 

I don't think anyone said conservatives are backward.

If you look at the overall trend, however, each generation does tend to be more progressive and open-minded than the generation before, so it's only natural to assume, when thinking about future generations, that they would continue on that way. 

Particularly with medical care since we are the outlier in developed countries. We also have the worst maternal death rate in the developed world, close to the worst infant mortality rate and a life expectancy that has fallen for the second year in a row. 

[Mergath]

2 minutes ago, happysmileylady said:

I also wonder if there will ever be a time when paper and handwriting are really actually ancient tools.

 

Paper, probably. People will likely still write on tablet computers, though. At least for a while. Keyboards are awkward and the software that lets you talk instead of typing isn't great yet. 

[Mergath]

5 minutes ago, happysmileylady said:

Regarding marriages-I dunno.

I think marriage ideas and traditions have always actually been fairly flexible.  I don't necessarily mean in terms of US law....I mean over the course of history, ideas about plural marriages, what marriage meant and so on, have changed in various times and cultures.  I think it's likely that as the US progresses, the laws and beliefs will probably flex more......if for no other reason than historically through societies, these ideas have always flexed back and forth.

 

That's true. Rather than more flexible, I guess I should say their ideas will be different than they are right now.

[Lawyer&Mom]

When I was a kid I was hugely offended by the idea of bathing only once a year in the Middle Ages.  As a grownup?  Hey, maybe they were busy.  Maybe life was hard.  Maybe they just never found the time.  Who am I to judge?  One day at a time, there is always next year...

[Guest]

20 minutes ago, Mergath said:

I agree with a lot of the ones people have already come up with. Especially meat. I think future generations are going to be horrified that we raised animals in horrific conditions to kill and eat. I would guess that a century from now, it's going to be akin to how people think about slavery. 

One I haven't seen yet (unless I missed it) is that I think future generations will have much more flexible ideas about marriage. People change so much over a lifetime, and I've always found it odd that you're expected to find someone when you're fairly young and stay with them until you die. I think that as certain religious traditions continue to shrink in numbers, people are going to be more open-minded about marriage. Plural marriages, marriages that expire after a certain amount of time or when the kids are all adults, etc.

I don't know that it will happen in my lifetime, but I think it will happen eventually.

I agree about marriage. We already see marriages trending later. I have come to question the necessity of marriage (which sounds like a strange admission from someone going on 24 years married). It does seem to be the most convenient and secure way to give birth and then raise those babies to adulthood, and there is that nice concept in there that if I get very sick, someone else is obligated to man the fort. But we have evolved to the point where marriage is no longer necessary for a woman to expect to survive. 

I do think if I found myself without a mate, I would not marry again. I don’t see what the point would be. Even if someone else turned up in my life whose company was just beyond awesome, still I think I would be hard-pressed to see why I would marry. 

I kind of want my own bedroom even now. 

[Guest]

17 minutes ago, happysmileylady said:

This is such an interesting post.

 

Before I married DH....I did a whole lot of searching in my head about why I might want to get married.  Not why I wanted to marry DH....but why get married at all.  I already had a kid, and I was fully supporting her.  So why do it it at all.

And although there are a whole lot of other things not really relevant right now, one of the biggest things I settled on is that I wanted (more) kids and that raising kids is just easier when there are two people doing it instead of one.  And after raising the kids, dealing with the adult kids, it's just easier with a partner.  Sitting next to DH and DD22 graduated college two weeks ago.................there was just something about having that person there to SHARE with.  

Yes, but there is still that question to me - why does it have to be a legally binding contract? You can share parts of life, good and bad, with another person without being contractually obligated to the partnership. People have friends who share in their lives for many years, maybe even for a whole lifetime, without being legally committed to remaining friends. If you have a best friend, wouldn’t it be weird to go, “Hey, Dear Bestie, since we have been friends for a long time and have seen each other through good times and bad, I really think we should make it official. Let’s draw up a contract committing to remain friends until one of us dies”? 

Sex and finances end up being the only *real* reason to draw up that contract. 

[SKL]

Someone above mentioned disregard / disrespect for science.

I think about half of the stuff we believe based on "scientific studies" will be debunked by later-arriving science - as has been the case over the past couple decades, LOL.

Maybe science will figure out how to equip individuals with the ability to detect BS disguised as science.  But probably not.

[maize]

1 hour ago, Mergath said:

 

I don't think anyone said conservatives are backward.

If you look at the overall trend, however, each generation does tend to be more progressive and open-minded than the generation before, so it's only natural to assume, when thinking about future generations, that they would continue on that way. 

 

Progressive is relative--I imagine every generation since humans developed complex thought and language has perceived themselves as "progressive"--any direction is progress towards/away from something or other.

Open minded is in the eye of the beholder as well.

We are facing technological advances at an unprecedented pace, our ability to adapt to to a digitally enhanced and globally networked world in constant technological flux is being tested for sure.

[Farrar]

Single use plastic. They'll be able to see it everywhere. They'll wonder what the heck we were thinking.

[Guest]

7 minutes ago, happysmileylady said:

I don't know that sex and finances are the only "real" reason.   I think parenting really is a very major issue.  Generally speaking, Best Friends don't have kids together.  There's a real.......thing...regarding kids and marriage also.  My sister married a man who had been previously married with children.  She has dealt with a heck of a lot of "other parent" issues.  On the other hand, I entered my marriage with a child, and DH adopted here because the "other parent" was never present.  My brother married a women with a kid, who's "other parent" never appeared either, and he adopted my niece too.

 

I agree that marriage isn't necessary to parent children.  I also agree that parenting children isn't a requirement of marriage (my DH's sister has no kids and won't.)  However....human biology being what it is.....a mother and a father are generally required to create a child, even through IVF.  And a substantial number of marriages (most?) do result in kids.  

 

And from experience..........................parenting those kids is SO SO SO much more easier, even just from a practical standpoint, when there are two parents involved.  Yes, other family support is great.  Had it, been there, done that.  I will take sharing the getting up in the middle of the night with my child (of all ages...we have certainly done this with our oldest as well as our youngest and all in between) with that child's other parent......than with anyone else, including my own mother whom I love dearly.  

 

SO.....I think I might say, "sex, finances, and the next generation" are the major reasons for such a contract.....and I think they are all a really big deal.......and sex is only the least of them.  

Well, true, but I said that in my first post - that rearing kids as part of a partnership is easier. But, let’s just play Devil’s Advocate a moment. Rearing kids could make a good argument for communal living or polygamy. Living communally is probably even superior to the typical western model of all our little individual dwellings where two parents have to provide everything those smattering of kids need. 

Sex is the least of them, I agree, but do people remain faithful to one partner because they have a marriage contract? Or because they have a mutual committment that transcends the contract? When someone cheats maritally (and by this word, we mean “had sex with someone else” 99% of the time), is their nagging concern, “but I made a contract” or is it, “but I committed to this person”? Clearly it isn’t the existence of a marriage contract that keeps people from stepping out; lots of people remain faithful to one partner for a long time without such a contract. 

That said, I do think raising children is a good reason to be married. But eventually it is no longer necessary. And many people do get divorced once the kids are grown. 

[Farrar]

1 minute ago, happysmileylady said:

He He, I actually sometimes wonder if they will have figured out how to recycle it well and will feel like they have found some sort of treasure.  Like a gold rush or something....but with plastic lol

I hope so. The optimistic part of me thinks so. I mean, the reality is that a lot of the big environmental issues we're facing now may be so dramatically better that we'll have trouble understanding it. World population is about to dip big time. We're on the verge of a lot of big leaps in terms of alternative fuels. I really could be better. Unfortunately, we likely screwed up some key things without enough time to fix them.

[SKL]

Oh they will figure out how to recycle plastic in an affordable way.  When I was about 20 I worked for a company that was already recycling "non recyclable plastic."  It's more a question of efficiency than possibility.

[Barb_]

11 minutes ago, happysmileylady said:

Not to address you specifically but your post reminded me of another one.

 

I think future generations to find some of our current thoughts on climate science to be silly.  I think that we will eventually begin to recognize that although humans of course have an influence on the climate, that we cannot CONTROL it and that our ideas about "stopping" climate change are mostly really ego centric.  

This thread isn’t about climate change but if humans negatively influence the climate, it stands to reason we can also stop influencing it. 

[Barb_]

Just now, SKL said:

Oh they will figure out how to recycle plastic in an affordable way.  When I was about 20 I worked for a company that was already recycling "non recyclable plastic."  It's more a question of efficiency than possibility.

I read recently that a large percentage of recycled plastics are actually going in the landfill because the market for recycled plastics is so weak. China used to take 2/3 of the world’s recycled plastic but recently banned importing it.

[scholastica]

6 hours ago, Quill said:

Sidebar: when I was a kid, growing up in an emphatically Christian home, I did often wonder about that. Like, my parents would say something like, “They believed the world rested on a giant turtle’s back! Isn’t that crazy?” And I would think, “Well, we believe that a snake talked the first woman into sinning and God was afraid the Tower of Babble might be sucessful, so...”

Did your faith really tell you that was literally what happened? Not that the first 11 chapters at least of Genesis are allegorical? Wow.

[Barb_]

1 minute ago, happysmileylady said:

I don't think we have enough control to "slow it down to a livable level.'"  I think we have to come to a realization that it happens anyway, and we have to live within the confines of the Earth, rather than try to control Earth to be what we are comfortable with.  

Well by definition, if it isn’t liveable, humanity is doomed to perish. 

[Tsuga]

50 minutes ago, SKL said:

Someone above mentioned disregard / disrespect for science.

I think about half of the stuff we believe based on "scientific studies" will be debunked by later-arriving science - as has been the case over the past couple decades, LOL.

Maybe science will figure out how to equip individuals with the ability to detect BS disguised as science.  But probably not.

We actually do have a way to do this.

A lot of the worst offenders are sponsored by people who need to graduate or need to sell something or get published.

There is a very reasonable solution which would be to have professional review boards and fill disclosure of all funding and not to consider corporately sponsored studies as science without an exceptionally rigorous vetting process. 

Alas, that costs money and would have to be... Gasp... Publicly accountable... A public good.

And that would require sharing. Cooperation. Hope.

So, nope.

But it's not a science issue. It is a transparency and public infrastructure issue.

[SamanthaCarter]

Bad/barbaric: abortion, CAFOs, overeliance on corn and petroleum products, a future discovery that our building materials are harmful. And some too politically incorrect to dare mention here. 

Novel: cars, the size of our houses, handwriting, edible ocean caught fish possibly. 

Edited August 7, 2018 by SamanthaCarter

[Barb_]

12 minutes ago, Tsuga said:

We actually do have a way to do this.

A lot of the worst offenders are sponsored by people who need to graduate or need to sell something or get published.

There is a very reasonable solution which would be to have professional review boards and fill disclosure of all funding and not to consider corporately sponsored studies as science without an exceptionally rigorous vetting process. 

Alas, that costs money and would have to be... Gasp... Publicly accountable... A public good.

And that would require sharing. Cooperation. Hope.

So, nope.

But it's not a science issue. It is a transparency and public infrastructure issue.

And also to a certain extent a PR issue, or maybe I should say a communication issue.

[Pawz4me]

I think future generations probably will find abortions barbaric, but it will be because the very idea of needing one will be unfathomable to them. There will be multiple foolproof, non risky (and non-messy) ways of controlling conception for both women and men, and they'll be easily available to all w/o cost. It will take planning and consent of both parties for procreation to occur. 

Edited August 7, 2018 by Pawz4me

[Barb_]

Just now, StellaM said:

I think it's interesting that some people assume we are heading for a progressive utopia. I see zero evidence of such a thing. Y'all are a heck of lot more optimistic than me. 

I hope you are wrong but fear you may be right.