I was reading a book on social life of the upper-middle class and new rich of the American 1920s and realized so many things we now do proudly were considered socially taboo back then. This was especially the case for clothing, makeup, women in certain public spaces, etc. What do you think will be different in the 2120s? Or maybe even the next 50 years?
I am going to operate under the following assumptions:
-the current global trend towards authoritarian governments will continue and become more prevalent
-balkanization will be the new norm: an atlas will show more numerous and smaller countries
-climate change (extreme heat, extreme humidity and sea level rise) will make large regions functionally unfit for human habitation by reasons of lethal heat and/or humidity, loss of coastal access, lack of potable water and/or loss of sustainable agriculture.
-we’ll be well into the technological curve for AI and robotics. We’ll have gone past the early stage where people over-estimate technological capabilities and far into the later stages where people will under-estimate technological capabilities
-if cash is still legal, it will be useless for all legitimate transactions because no institution wants it. If it still exists, it will only be useful for peer-to-peer illegitimate transactions: crime, drugs and sex.
-whatever is bad now will be worse
So: social taboos that exist today that will not be taboo in 100 years?
-slavery: we already see slavery in all but name in the form of privatized prisons and wage-slavery (work a soul-killing minimum wage job, or die/be homeless). What if the cost of being able to emigrate from a country or region that is uninhabitable is slavery, whether real or de facto? It’s the cheapest form of labor.
-murder: being deemed outlaw will make a comeback. An outlaw is outside the protection of the law, so killing an outlaw is not a crime.
-extortion: governments and government proxies (militias, death squads, religious sects) will exercise sanctioned extortion
-hoarding: if you are living in an unstable balkan state or are an unpopular minority in one, hoarding will not be pathologic
-civilian ownership of firearms
-racism and nationalism; best way to keep out undesirable climate refugees is to de-humanize them
-corporations being into every piece of the pie: a logical extension of the trend to privatization or “wanting government to be run like a business” is the replacement of nation-states by corporations or zaibatsu-like alliances of multiple corporations
No offense intended, but I sincerely hope you are wrong on all accounts. I doubt it, but one can hope…
Final stage capitalism promises the future they describe. What’s left to do when all resources are tapped and people are controlled to be sold? It only makes a future for a select few who sit on the ocean of the populous blood, the bed of ashes that is the earth and it’s depleted resources.
Sadly, I think many of those things will come true.
I personally think corporations are going to kill each other off (most likely culminating in a global corpo-war where the last two duke it out) with only one surviving and becoming something akin to the catholic church in the medieval period, plunging the world into a new dark age.
How is this not more of a thing? All these countries that didn’t exist until Europe organised them have grown and matured (in a way). But plenty of countries complain about how the boarders were made, why don’t they sort them out and change things?
Like nothing is stopping them from doing it. Blaming it on someone 100 years ago that is long dead isn’t stopping anything from happening.
That was a well thought out and utterly terrifying take. I believe many of the points you’ve made will indeed be true, much to my chagrin.