PyramidHead
Contributor
What ideas do you think will be so firmly entrenched in our thinking that we'll look back 20 years from now and wonder why anybody who denied them was taken seriously? How about 50 years hence? 100?
Or have we reached the pinnacle of society, with just the right amount of tolerance and egalitarianism?
I have a few predictions:
-When prenatal gene manipulation becomes commonplace and widely available, we may consider it inhumane to let the random shuffling of chromosomes largely determine one's physiological makeup.
-LGBT people will eventually be treated no differently than anyone else, and those who hang onto the old prejudices will be thought of as backwards, as we think of the KKK today.
-One day, it may be possible to grow animal meat in labs. When that day comes, our practice of raising animals to be killed for their meat might seem barbaric by comparison.
-Whichever way the climate changes, somebody alive today is going to end up looking stupid in 20 or 50 years.
-Anyone who seriously questions the merits of some kind of universal health care system will not be labeled a moderate, or even a conservative, but a dinosaur.
And a few hopes:
-The electoral system will be reformed, either by getting rid of first-past-the-post or by some other means, and our current era will be remembered as the century of political corruption.
-Most major nations enter a post-religion phase, where instead of it being taboo to discredit someone's religious conviction, it will be taboo to profess it (some European nations are already like this).
-Similar to the above, and extrapolating to many decades, may we one day truly be able to call ourselves post-racial.
It's not a matter of actively silencing the opposition on any of these points, just a seismic shift in how much attention people are willing to afford certain views.
Others?
Or have we reached the pinnacle of society, with just the right amount of tolerance and egalitarianism?
I have a few predictions:
-When prenatal gene manipulation becomes commonplace and widely available, we may consider it inhumane to let the random shuffling of chromosomes largely determine one's physiological makeup.
-LGBT people will eventually be treated no differently than anyone else, and those who hang onto the old prejudices will be thought of as backwards, as we think of the KKK today.
-One day, it may be possible to grow animal meat in labs. When that day comes, our practice of raising animals to be killed for their meat might seem barbaric by comparison.
-Whichever way the climate changes, somebody alive today is going to end up looking stupid in 20 or 50 years.
-Anyone who seriously questions the merits of some kind of universal health care system will not be labeled a moderate, or even a conservative, but a dinosaur.
And a few hopes:
-The electoral system will be reformed, either by getting rid of first-past-the-post or by some other means, and our current era will be remembered as the century of political corruption.
-Most major nations enter a post-religion phase, where instead of it being taboo to discredit someone's religious conviction, it will be taboo to profess it (some European nations are already like this).
-Similar to the above, and extrapolating to many decades, may we one day truly be able to call ourselves post-racial.
It's not a matter of actively silencing the opposition on any of these points, just a seismic shift in how much attention people are willing to afford certain views.
Others?
