In the past, we’ve had issues with women suffrage, slavery, and sanitation, among many other things.
Today we have gun control, AI, intended/unintended false information, vaccines, etc. as consistently hot topics.
In a few decades’ time, what views do you have now that may spark major social debate in the future? What conservative and/or progressive stances do you take today that might be too far on either extreme in the far future?
A person’s right to assisted suicide.
A few countries have this already, and I think 1 or 2 states may have it decriminalized. But I wish it were less of a taboo subject.
It’s ok and even seen as being responsible when we make these decisions for our pets, yet if you want to make the same decision for yourself, you must not be thinking straight.
I have not had and do not have thoughts of suicide, but I have been caregiver to several family members and been witness to the end of life stage.
We should be able to decide for ourselves at a certain point that it’s time to go.
The right to privacy. Just because I don’t want someone watching me 24/7 doesn’t mean I’m up to no good
Obesity is unhealthy
I love fishing recreationally but I could totally understand if it became totally taboo in the future.
Circumcision is immoral, religion can be a serious social harm, the use of AI in art should be prohibited or at least frowned upon
Here’s an issue that people won’t talk about that they need to: the right to commit crimes. Just because something is illegal doesn’t mean it’s immoral, and the growing belief on multiple fronts that a criminal justice system should be “perfect” is what’s driving a lot of the erosion of privacy rights, among other things.
Disability rights, equal access to nutrition (not just edible items but actually nutritious food), equal access to electricity especially for cooling.
I suspect the resource wars will ramp up with climate change, driving a lot of international conflict of all types.
I fervently believe that the best if not only way to reliably reduce crime (including that committed by abusive cops) is restorative justice, but the vast majority of people still consider the necessity of penal justice (and in some places like the US even penal SLAVERY) to be so absolute that it might as well be a law of nature rather than the system that best serves the rich and powerful.
You habe to have both. People mold their behavior around incentive structures. If you give them the incentive to commit crime, they will commit crime. If you give them the incentive to do better, they will do better.
Then again you also shouldn’t have bullshit laws that punish people for things that hurt no one but themselves, like the war on drugs. If they do something to hurt someone while doing drugs, that’s what we have all the other laws for.
You really don’t have to have both, though.
Incarceration and (in especially barbaric jurisdictions) penal slavery, torture, and state-sanctioned murder are largely ineffective disincentives against doing bad or otherwise undesirable behaviour that do nothing to incentivise good or otherwise desirable behaviour.
In fact, they often directly or indirectly CAUSE more of the former while making the latter much more difficult if not impossible.
By taking drugs, people are teaching children that drugs are cool, incentivizing them to ruin their lives. And they give money to drug dealers, who try to get as many people addicted as possible.
Some drugs can help people and heal them physically, emotionally, spiritually, and some drugs will destroy your life in a downward spiral of physical addiction.
Kids reading this: don’t do heroin, meth, cocaine, opioids, random prescription meds, alcohol, or cigarettes.
Do however do pot and magic mushrooms. Buy federally legal hemp flower if you live in non-legalized pot state and grow your own mushrooms from spores. DARE and the war on drugs was a failure, use your own judgment and be responsible adults.
Bit late to this, but I have a couple of big ones:
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Once brain uploading becomes a thing, the code/data of an uploaded person should be sacrosanct. You can’t look at it, you can’t fuck with it, unless they give you consent to do so.
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Once it becomes a possibility, every human should either move off-world or revert back to a hunter-gatherer existence. Humans in general have been a disaster for the biosphere, but especially once we started settling down and farming, and even more so once industrialisation became a thing. Earth needs time to heal from the damage we have done to it, and that means most people + all our industry and technology fucking off into space. Namely into space colonies, big rotating cans of steel the size of large islands, filled with dirt, air, water and artificial biospheres.
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Stance: Progressive global taxation of all wealth
Social issue in the future: If the planet’s ecosystems and the capitalist trends permit it, the vast majority of humans will demand global taxation of all wealth. Some extractive and regressive pockets will fight to the death for that not to happen.
Religion gas to go. The way we rarm animals is barbaric. People should be able to pull the plug if they don’t want to live anymore.
Once lab grown meat is common, farms will seem even more cruel to people of the future.
I know religion seems like an obvious scapegoat for a lot of problems, but gassing them seems a bit extreme 😜🤣
I think in the near term there will be a lot more discourse about fatphobia/body types as a protected class.
In the longer term, I think history will look back at current factory farming as absolutely barbaric.
Honestly, not that far into the future I think more and more people will be consuming various forms of media acknowledging in very scientific and real terms the end of the human race.
All the attempts at curbing global climate change will finally be acknowledged as being a pipe dream and even the ultra wealthy will come to see that they won’t survive in their bunkers and instead will die like the rest of us.
I also hold a very dark view that the end of human existence is not the end of human suffering, but that’s a tale for another day.
Personally I’m the opposite, I feel like even if we can’t stop CO2 emissions fast enough, there is always geoengineering to counteract it, and human brain uploading will probably be a thing by the start of next century? At which point humanity can basically live until the heat death of the universe, because of how durable electronics can be compared to squishy human flesh.
I also hold a very dark view that the end of human existence is not the end of human suffering, but that’s a tale for another day.
And today’s that day! Go on…
I believe that the suffering you impart on other beings during your lifetime is directly experienced after death.
Oh, so karma, Buddhist style?
More or less, but not so direct. The dark part is that I don’t believe you have to have had a direct involvement with the suffering, it can be very indirect and you’ll still go through the suffering anyways.
My hope is politicians and, overall, rich people and corporations getting away with everything. It’s crazy what money ans influence can do to cover up/minimize the damages that people and corps should receive for doing the shit they do just for profit and personal interests.
Seems like conspiracy statutes tend to cover lying pretty well, and lying under oath is perjury. What other ways could lying be covered?
