What aspects of today's society will we be ashamed of in sixty years?

[Ego]

The world has changed a lot in the last sixty years. If you were transported sixty years into the future, what are some of the things you would be ashamed of?

[jacob]

Alternatively ... what aspects of current society would have been shameful 60 years (1956) ago?

[C40]

There are things I hope we will become ashamed of:
- Throwing so much stuff away
- Producing, buying, using, and discarding cheap, disposable items that could and should be durable and long-lasting
- Getting drunk and acting like an idiot
- Smoking cigarettes
- Being fat
- Living in a house that is more than 500 square feet per person
- Not being able to fix things or start a fire
- Not being able to cook food that you're happy enough to eat regularly
- Being stupid or ignorant


What will actually happen is a much harder question to answer (and more interesting)
- Not owning a fuel efficient car (but no one will car about how much or how efficiently you actually drive it)
- Not owning some other trendy "environmental" gadgets. (other solutions that you buy instead of actual simplicity or overall efficiency)

?? this is a lot harder than the way I answered above!

[Chad]

60 years from now:
The drug war and how we jail/sentence people.

Agree with cigarettes.
Not so much with getting drunk and acting like an idiot...there are harmless idiots!

60 years before...so many.

[RealPerson]

Probably social issues. Racial prejudice and bigotry of various kinds. People will be shocked that we allowed the government to legally take human lives through application of the death penalty ("They trusted the judicial branch to do WHAT???")

Agreed with the number of people in jail, useless war on drugs,... Also agreed that the incredible waste of resources of the 20th and early 21st century will be viewed with disbelief.

There will almost certainly be a new world order by then, so the many wars the US has fought or started overseas will look embarrassing and useless. Just like today many Germans presumably find it incredible that they had a leader that planned to take over the world.

[thrifty++]

Hmm I hope these could be possible:

- shame over the millions of lives ruined through deaths, injuries, accidents, disabilities, diabetes and other health problems, environmental damage. and suburban sprawl, all caused by the love affair with cars and a failure to cater sufficiently for alternative forms of transport.
- insufficiently nourishing the environment and thrashing its resources.
- allowing inequality to grow to the enormous extent it has.

[chenda]

These answers all suggest a very positive believe in the future

Maybe it's more what we hope society will one day be ashamed of...

[almostthere]

Obesity.

[Bankai]

Causing suffering of billions of animals crippled and tortured on animal farms and slaughtered every year for pleasure of humans' taste buds.

I'm actually a bit surprised by the amount of meat eaters on this forum. Are you simply ok with causing unnecessary suffering or do you use some elaborated justification for your actions?

[BRUTE]

diet-heart hypothesis
military-industrial incentive trap
financial-consumerist incentive trap
social media
centralization (media, politics, industry, science, culture, education)

[BRUTE]

Are you simply ok with causing unnecessary suffering or do you use some elaborated justification for your actions?

the former

[7Wannabe5]

I would hope that 60 years from now we would be further along the continuum, or perhaps even experienced a paradigm shift, that would render the concept of "shame" as archaic. First step, perhaps, being wide-scale distribution of this book:

http://www.amazon.com/Everyone-Turtleba ... 0613685725

[7Wannabe5]

From " Bioshelter Market Garden: A Permaculture Farm" by Darrell Frey

" Today the dominant world culture is barely beginning to recognize the relationships that make up the web of life. But our educational systems teach ecology as a "personal value" rather than a science. The "environmentalist" is described as a special interest rather than a person with special understanding. Concern for the natural world is viewed as a philosophy rather than a scientific reality."

I also wish the idiocy of racism would be recognized in my lifetime, but I think it is unlikely. Although, when I think back to the apartheid like situation that existed in my childhood in my region, there obviously has been a good deal of improvement.

[Ego]

1. Torture. Confounded by my continued ability to entertain rationalizations for committing it.
2. The way we eat animals. Same confounding ability.
3. Our use of the full powers of science to exploit human weaknesses for immediate gain over long-term damage. In other words, the ways we use technology to manipulate. Confounded again.

@jacob, #3 puts us at a strange place where we would (I hope) be equally ashamed sixty years ago as we will be sixty years from now. OTOH, I could imagine us becoming increasingly blind to it as well.

[phil]

As already mentioned by several others above: waste, pollution, factory farming, criminalizing drugs. In addition:
- Advertising aimed at children
- Giving children labels such as ADHD and prescribing them psychoactive pills
- The widespread use of toilet paper. I mean, seriously, it is impossible to clean properly without water. When your hands are dirty you also don't just wipe them off with a piece of paper, right?
- Men peeing standing up by default.

[chenda]

These answers all suggest a very positive believe in the future

Maybe it's more what we hope society will one day be ashamed of...

And also the hope/belief that ones own opinions and views will inevitable be vindicated and accepted by everyone in the future...

[henrik]

- The widespread use of toilet paper.
- Men peeing standing up by default.

I really hope these will not have become societal issues in sixty years (or whenever) ...

[Dragline]

I'd hope we'd be embarrassed by the relatively paltry use of modern technology in law enforcement, especially body cameras on police officers (which ought to be required) and DNA testing, which is still not used as extensively as it ought to be. There is no reason we should be guessing about what happened in most instances.

[BRUTE]

- The widespread use of toilet paper.

I really hope these will not have become societal issues in sixty years (or whenever) ...

brute has to second phil. how human societies can call themselves "civilized" yet continue to wipe feces around their butts with little pieces of paper is astounding. this is a solved problem, humans! look at other cultures on how to do it like adults.

[Ego]

We had a twelve hour layover in Tokyo. Inside the airport Toto created a functional gallery to exhibit all of their state-of-the-art toilets.

http://www.toto.co.jp/gallerytoto/en/

Over the course of the day I tried every single one just for the hell of it. I had never, you know, used one of those before. They are fabulous.