The jail cell of the last King of Kandy, condemned by the British. Ceylinco Parking Lot
There’s an ongoing discussion about what future generations will condemn us for, like we condemn the past for slavery, sexism and racism. Kwame Anthony Appiah says they will judge (Americans) for their prison system, industrialized meat, treatment of the elderly and the environment. Ross Douthat (the NYTimes token Republican) calls this provocation and says future generations will judge us for abortion. It’s an interesting question, though these are somewhat Americentric answers. In the Global South people still practice sexism, racism and even slavery. In predicting the future, Will Wilkinson (the Economist) is probably right to say “we will tend to mount our personal hobby-horses and congratulate ourselves for getting on the right side of history before the right side of history was cool”. But, to mount that hobby horse, I have my own opinion as to what history will condemn us for.
Before beginning, Appiah set out a framework for what may look bad in reverse:
First, people have already heard the arguments against the practice. The case against slavery didn’t emerge in a blinding moment of moral clarity, for instance; it had been around for centuries.
Second, defenders of the custom tend not to offer moral counterarguments but instead invoke tradition, human nature or necessity. (As in, “We’ve always had slaves, and how could we grow cotton without them?”)
And third, supporters engage in what one might call strategic ignorance, avoiding truths that might force them to face the evils in which they’re complicit.
Following that, I think history will condemn us for 1) discrimination against homosexuals and 2) industrialized meat (via Appiah). The first because gay people are obviously people and they deserve to be treated well. The arguments are out there and the arguments against have been like ‘marriage has been between a man and a woman’ or along traditionalist lines. Finally, opponents of gay rights avoid the truth that gays can serve in the US military, that gay marriages don’t destroy straight marriages, that gay people are not pedophiles, etc. The last century has seen a womens rights movement and a civil rights movement but the gay rights movement has only just begun.
The process of farming and killing animals too, I think, will look barbaric in hindsight. We know the arguments for vegetarianism, but most people (self included) say ‘meat tastes good’, hardly a moral argument. We avoid the truth that killing animals is bad (we feel bad doing it ourselves, or seeing animal sacrifice) and avoid the truth that there is an alternative. I don’t think people will turn vegetarian though, I think we’ll just start eating in vitro meat.
Aside from those issues, I think future generations will merely look down on things like our barbaric medical practices (chemotherapy, invasive surgery), crude technology (plugging things into walls?) and household drudgery (no self cleaning houses?). In a more local context, I think future Sri Lankans will condemn the current culture of having servants, of common discrimination against women, and I think we’ll have a child abuse scandal either generally or within the Buddhist clergy. But that’s all I can think of off the top of my head. You?
Cool. This post reminds me of Childhood’s End by Arthur C. Clarke. It talks about a worldly way of life rather than organized religion (in time). I think they’d also be flabbergasted on how we ruined the earth for fossil fuels, it seems so primitive! If we’re still around that is. :S
ps- hasn’t there already been child abuse scandals? only hidden so well. :/
We’ll be condemned for sparing Sarath Fonseka’s life.
More than anything they will condemn Sri Lanka, and the world in general of how they handle ‘terrorism’. They massacred them over a seperate state? geez.
no they won’t. What happened here will be foot note in history and possibly part of some lesson in some military academy somewhere.
Dee is right. One of the major topic of conversation about this generation will uncountably be how we handled the climate.
Andawane muruga!!! No, history will celebrate the death of Prabhakaran and his scum followers.
Not too far in the future, we’ll be looking back at the prevalence of child abuse and neglect. Children of expatriate working mothers and estate labourers seem the most vulnerable. Quarter of a million children do not attend school. The govt. sets aside only Rs. 20/- per day per child in an orphange. Parents driving children too hard to excel in studies and extra-curricular activities will result in a high proportion of maladjusted adults in the future.
We’ll probably also wonder about the number of unsolved crimes and how police brutality went on unchecked. Of all cases of murder only 4% are solved. Brutal beatings are the common method of interrogation.
Yes future will blame us for boarders that keep people apart! and progress down. Mostly they will blame us for our way of pricing everything, including human beings.
Meat I blame on personal development, I am not developed enought
Why don’t we farm and eat gays instead this would solve both problems!
Indi’s hypothesis presumes the decline of Christianity and Islam, both of which condemn homosexuality and actively authorise the eating of meat. It would be a start. Indeed, my shot across the bow is that future generations will look back at our primitive adherence to religion by accident of birth and stand dumbfounded at our superstitions, irrationality and the excuses we make for the pious.
Of course we may be forced into Indi’s changes. Once the changes are made, it becomes the norm and moral indignation follows. Should we allow the world’s population to grow at the current rate, we’ll all have to be vegetarian (it is very inefficient to get sustenance by way of farming animals). Further, to reduce the population, but not curb the sexual appetite, broad genetic conditioning of homosexuality (a la Forever War) would provide a neat solution.
President Mahinda> Gay Rights movement? What the hell is that? Is there also a Gay Left movement. Hah hah. I prefer North South North South North South bang North South.
aw…yawn…hate to bore myself, but history will remember you for a colossal miscalulation – siding with China.
Will it be a bigger embarrassment that the 2010 commonwealth games?
@jcnars
You fucked the swimming pool, right?
We hear that CWG 2010 ended on a spectacular note. Maybe we are dreaming