This one is obvious
What common practices of today will be looked back on with horror by future generations, like slavery is today?
Everyone's all on about vegetarianism and the enviroment, but I think it's simpler than that. Future generations of Britons and Americans will look back with horror and digust at the days when we used to allow caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed to be published and tolerated blasphemy and obscenity to be published in the daily newspapers.
Is your vision dystopian or utopian?
ReplyDeleteYou might be right but I prefer to hope that in the future the job of explaining what all the fuss was about becomes a worthy subject for the writing of doctorates or popular non-fiction along the lines of "The Great Cat Massacre". It's not just that I rather like "The Life of Brian" either.
It is slightly awkward because many of the people keen on printing such things are odious hate-filled provocateurs and most of the famous cartoons are rubbish but I hope that when the dust has settled people are more suspicious of hate-filled provocateurs, more demanding of newspaper cartoonists but less upset about clumsy and unsympathetic comment on religious matters.
Coal mining. People will wonder a) why we went to all that trouble just for electricity, b) why we did so when we'd known about the effects for 100 years, c) why we were willing to make people do such a shitty and dangerous job, d) why we organised society in such a way that anyone was willing to do such a job, and e) how on earth we managed to romanticise it.
ReplyDeleteThe idea of privacy strikes me as a reasonably likely left-field guess. If you look at the evolution of the idea, it's only really come in from the 18th century onwards, and people seem to be sacrificing it on Facebook etc. with surprisingly little qualm.
ReplyDeleteIn similar vein, the National Health Service.
ReplyDelete"You just gave stuff away? To anybody?"
Alex: DO LIKE. We can mine enough coal in Australia through the use of big bulldozers and explosives to cover the UK coal industry's whole 20th century output in a decade. And by "we", I mean "it's a job I'd take for a few years if it was the only way of getting residency, which involves driving big trucks and living somewhere rubbish whilst remaining sober", rather than Orwell's "tonight thank God it's them instead of me" take on deep coal mining.
ReplyDeleteIs this the point where we re-evaluate Mrs Thatcher?
no. Or at least, I am only going to re-evaluate her from a perspective of fundamentalist Islam.
ReplyDeleteThat's a fairly quick reevaluation, isn't it?
ReplyDelete"She was a woman outside of domestic environment. Evil."
"She submitted to her husband's will and continued to do his works"
ReplyDeleteSchool.
ReplyDeleteNear-compulsory school, I mean. Home education can work - my son has married into a home ed family, and my eyes are opened.
An instructive post-war parallel is National Service.
"We can mine enough coal in Australia through the use of big bulldozers and explosives to cover the UK coal industry's whole 20th century output in a decade."
ReplyDeleteI don't think that's right - unless the 'can' is doing a lot of work - Austalian output today only about double UK peak output, I think? China manages it about every six years, however.
Also I don't like UK coal mining and am glad it's over, but surely options were rather limited in the early years, and periods such as 1940s? I mean it's still mainly underground mining today, and China worse than UK back in the day. But hard to see reassesment while still so prevalent.
Blogging.
ReplyDeleteSecond rate contrarianism
ReplyDeleteIs this the point where we re-evaluate Mrs Thatcher?
ReplyDeleteProbably not, as there were countries (like that big one about 21 miles southeast of Dover) that succeeded in doing the same thing without playing at civil war without the shooting and creating a permanent smack-ghetto archipelago, and while coming up with a sensible energy policy.
Blogging
Hey, what about journalism? People actually gave Martin Kettle money for his opinions? And in the scarcity era too?
Second rate contrarianism
ReplyDeletenah - the thing about second rate contrarianism is that the moment you get rid of it, someone will write an article saying that it wasn't all that bad.
Shortly before being lynched by an outraged mob.
ReplyDelete