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“What Is Acceptable Today That You Think Won’t Be Acceptable 100 Years From Now?”: 35 Predictions Shared By Our Community
“Every man is the creature of the age in which he lives; very few are able to raise themselves above the ideas of the time,” wrote Voltaire.
Many institutions, attitudes, actions, etc. that people of previous generations found perfectly acceptable are frowned on today. Racism, child labor, blood sports - all of these are generally unacceptable today. So I asked the Bored Panda community to share their thoughts on what they think will be impermissible 100 years in the future. Here are all the answers!
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Climate change denial
Certain cultures being allowed to do bad things because it’s part of their tradition
"Just because you've always done it that way doesn't mean it's not incredibly stupid." -despair.com
Religious exemption of medical care for minors.
Plastic packaging.
Celebrities being paid so much more than teachers and caregivers
Hopefully, sexual harassment and victim blaming
And stop excusing 'historic sex crimes' with - it was a different time. No it wasn't wrong was wrong. Just because there was a lack of prosecution years ago, that didn't make it OK. Prosecution is still far from good enough, and 20 years from now todays offenders might get tried and they will all cry and say 'but every one was doing it'
'9-to-5' jobs in offices. Maybe not 'unacceptable' per se, but I expect future generations to focus more on each person's individual productive hours and remote work (even more than now).
Absolutely. This whole nine to five is a joke. Do your best work when you're at your best.
Pay differences based on gender, trans/homophobia
Schools punishing kids for getting beat up and trying to fight back.
Or just generally schools using punishment for emotional issues at all. Consequences have their place but rewarding positive behaviour works a lot better. We don't teach our kids to negotiate properly either from an authority/ education perspective so the can also ask questions and understand why we are asking for specific behaviour to change, so they can't then do their own thinking and problem solving as well as self risk management (I work with young people in the criminal justice system and the stories I could tell you.. 🙃
I really hope it doesn't take anywhere close to 100 years! Wasting precious Helium on stupid inflatable single-use balloons or to make your voice higher. We have a limited supply on Earth that is rapidly running out and once it's gone, it's gone. The only other source is literally the Sun and it's not like we can mine that! And when it goes you can kiss goodbye to MRI machines (which use liquid Helium to work) and our ability to look inside your bodies and diagnose medical problems and save lives without requiring dangerous, time-consuming and often life-limiting or life-threatening invasive exploratory surgeries.
Mass treating mentally ill patients (especially schizophrenia) with dumbing-down medication so they just suffer in silence and not bother "other people" with the "noisy symptoms". I'm a medical student and all antipsychotics have their place and indeed are lifesavers but in my opinion, they are over-used and not ideal for long-term therapy. They do not solve the root of the problem, they just make it temporarily more manageable -which is great but we should not leave behind the end goal. TL;DR: subduing problematic mentally ill patients with medication for decades instead of searching for / researching other options.
I'm a licensed counselor with 25 years of experience, and this is inaccurate. Nobody wants to quiet them or dumb them down,they want them to be as healthy and productive as they can be in life,and that means taking away or muting the voices that tell them to hurt themselves or how awful they are. Would you prefer people suffer from their disorder?
Medicine not tailored to the person's DNA. Medicine, food, housing, education being a luxury item.
Unhoused individuals. People will be treated with dignity, housed, rehabilitated if it occurred is needed, taught skills, etc.
Their are perfectly fine small housing developments in Seattle I thought they were finally taking care of the HUGE homeless population. Guess what, they were for sale
Buildings and public places being inaccessible for disabled people.
Absolutely! There is literally NO excuse for not making buildings and places accessible
I very much hope the Prosperity Gospel will be frowned upon in future generations.
The treatment of my neurodivergent learners and students will evolve. In 100 years, forcing neurodiverse children to suffer, struggle, and undergo forced change will be over. We will focus on creating a more equitable school system that asks neurotypical people to support all students, as they are.
Yes please, I hope everyone can find the same care and learning environment as my brother .
"Cancelling" people and ruining their careers based on a rumour or allegation. There's nothing wrong with exposing sexists, rapists, abusers and all that lot, but at least put in some effort to fact-check the allegations and rumours before lynching the "offenders". People put in years of hard work to build a career and it just takes one attention-deficient psychopath to ruin all of their work. Also: ignoring victim statements because of the social position and wealth of the accused person.
Actually it might become wrong to expose the latter because it comes before a fair trial. Law is law and just because one person does a heinous act against humanity and caught red-handed, the law cannot just be exempted for one person and not another. There's already problems with people wrongly accused for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, or mistaken identity or just situations taken out of context. I feel it's going to be unacceptable to stick a camera in a man's face accusing him of preying on children at a park when he's just with his son because some vigilante is itching to catch a predator.
Tolerance of attention-seeking deliberate stupidity (ie. flat-Earthers, anti-vaxxers, etc.) is likely to go down. Real, verifiable and researched information is widely available on these subjects and will only become easier still to access as time goes by. Such mindsets will be seen as intentionally being difficult as the ability to say that you've never had access to said information becomes more and more impossible to claim.
Idk I mean I sure hope this becomes unacceptable someday but I feel like there will always be someone who has "opinions" like this ya know?
Absence of universal healthcare and discrimination of people based on nationality, ethnicity, skin color, social status, etc.
I feel it's getting worse but might level out in 100 years. There may be another major pandemic. Universal healthcare has become threatened in some nations.
Hopefully, homophobia and transphobia won't be socially acceptable. I know so many individuals who have to hide who they are because their parents won't accept them, and could risk being disowned.
How people twist religion and take it a step too far. I hope that ends
Food wastage
How in the hell is this not up voted for? There is NOTHING wrong with freeganism. Okay not for he faint of heart but the sheer waste of food from high profile restaurants? There are more than enough persons who could easily be fed.
Personal freedom, free air and water (I'm a pessimist)
Free water is definitely on the list. Most natural resources are teetering on the brink, and I think water will be the first big divider. I am glad I am old and won't have to be here for the cataclysm. The planet can't go on as it is, and the change will probably only come with violence, and may well be too late even then. I still hold hope that we'll wake up, but then we get the donald trumps of the world...
The Republican and Democrat parties.
HOPEFULLY:
Racism, sexism, sexual assault, abusive relationships and HAVING TO PAY FOR MENSTRUAL PRODUCTS!!!
So... what, you want companies to just give you menstrual products for free? You know if they do that they'll go out of business, or just stop making menstrual products altogether. Then what will you do?
The glass ceiling. It is still around, although not nearly as obviously as it once was. When I was growing up, women were housewives and mothers. If they HAD to work, they could be teachers, nurses, secretaries, or any of the other 'women's work'. Now, women can choose any career, but in too many institutions, the good ol' boy network is as strong as ever, and actively screening out women and others. There are too many law firms, financial institutions and other corporate structures where promotions are based, not on ability, but on being 'one of the boys'.
My grandfather didn’t let me open a jar for him because I was “threatening his masculinity.”
Controversial one but: The death penalty
Of course these are based in the U.S. because it's where I am. But some are universal
People going hungry,when just down the corner is plenty..
Native American People on reservations or anywhere else they don't want to be.
Education being priced so far out of the range of anyone, that is a basic need to a majority.
The fact that if your grandma's grandpa was very very poor, and then so on, until the most recent generation, one is doomed to have to fight harder, and longer, for everything you get. Rich or even middle class privilege isn't even realized by those who have it, but the lack of it is glaring to those who don't.
Animals being allowed to breed into feral colonies, and go without homes.
Nursing homes that are paid by the state being so substandard.
Female centric birth control
Plastic overused until it comes out everywhere
Oil rigs, and transport ships
Police brutality
And this I hope is no longer tolerated
Hate.
Anything that a private company can do, the government can, and will, do worse, and at greater cost.
Media companies asking people to make content for free.
Eating meat from dead animals. I bet on artificially grown meal-like substance.
The little privacy we have left
People will keep selling their privacy for internet points, one moment of fame or a "free" worthless and useless item they could by for a dime in a shop.
Hopefully: An education and medical system - or a society - that denies the importance of sexuality for most people's well-being.
- Repressing art through outrage of a minority of Social Media users
(due to the current ruining of the western entertainment industry)
- Hydrogen to be considered a good fuel alternative for vehicles (only 40% energy efficiency compared to using electricity right away)
- Using plastic products created from mineral oil
- Blaming anything on race, gender or sexuality (No matter if it's "POC"/whities, Man/Female or Homo/CIS)
- Ignoring violence when it comes from the "correct" side or if it doesn't fit the own view
- Politicians being voted on popularity instead of skills
With our pandemic experience, I expect our current Rube Goldberg-esque just-in-time supply chains will evolve to include more resiliency. We can't keep having this kind of chaos every time a pandemic rolls around. I HOPE also that we stop cancelling people for something stupid they said decades ago and recognize growth and change is possible. I hope in vain that business and economic models that rely on the exploitation of a group of people will be a thing of the past.
Religion, or at least using religion as an excuse for war and division
Short (or entire absence of) paternity leave.
YES. I don’t want kids but if I had a baby - why would you make me raise it without my husband? Cause you might miss out on a few dollars of capital? Go f yourself, don’t forget that this is planet earth - human society rules mean nothing to this planet/universe. We’re just a bunch of naked monkeys on a floating rock in space, and that’s all we’ll be when we die - I would want my husband here to experience our newborn child. F**k your budgets and reports.
Owning guns without a license. I really, really hope so.
I mean most people who are law abiding citizens do. It's the criminals that don't give a s**t, which is why gun laws only do so much. You aren't going to prevent gangs from getting them, and that's one of the biggest, if not THE biggest, gun death causes in multiple US cities. Not saying no laws, but we need to address the other issues that can influence that sort of thing too. Homelessness, drugs, no family, abuse... so many things can cause people to have the potential to go down a darker path.
Terms and conditions that take days to read.
And that basically give all the rights to the company and make it impossible to object
Gas powered anything.
Treating pets as property.
It’s hard for a pet to self-advocate though. Hoping not to seem like I consider my pets objects and I understand my responsibility to them and their health, but I think I need more clarification. Is this a no one has the right to keep an animal in their home thing?
Influences.
As supposed to say influenceRs! Hopefully in 100 years, my spelling will improve.
Car commercials that tell you nothing about the car.
Indian women allowed to live after their husbands die . 100 years ago , if a woman's husband died in India , According to the sati pratha , She was burnt with her husband's body , or she was called devil and mean words and was only allowed to wear white clothes . Widow women ate simple food , No sugary , salty , or spicy foods. They wore white clothes and were totally bald. They weren't allowed to go out of their houses. Nowdays , things are much better in India , But in olden times , Very less people actually helped women
A hell of a lot more than that needs to change about how women are treated in India!
Shipping food from overseas
In Sweden, we get green beans from Afrika in the stores. So crazy
Capitalism
Capitalism as it's practiced in the USA is unsustainable. There need to be balances. The income inequality that results from unchecked capitalism can be seen not only today, but in the early days of industrialism, when the rich lived in literal castles (Andrew Carnegie had a 100 room castle shipped to America from Europe) while their workers lived in windowless tenements with no benefits. There has to be a middle ground that encourages individual initiative without sacrificing the safety and well-being of the workers. In America, you currently have a situation where banks are buying up property to drive up property prices so high that middle-class Americans can no longer afford their rent.
Gasoline powered engines.
Especially in leaf blowers. Must we screech detrius off our sidewalks like cavepeople?
Circumcision. The barbaric procedure will, one day, be made illegal.
Anonymous social media and coupons. I just have this feeling.
That America ever chose an obnoxious, unbridled malignant narcissist to be our 45th President, and that one of two reigning political parties at that time enabled him and sought to destroy any members of that party who had the courage and integrity to stand up against him.
When John McCain died, I believe he took just about the last scrap of integrity that party had left, and sadly, I don't see many rising to try and fill his shoes. A lot seem to prefer to support cheeto to further their careers.
Being able to breath without paying money. We already have to pay to eat and drink.
Standing elbow to elbow in the mens' room
With the ever-expanding human population, men will be sharing urinals in 100 years time.
Having more than one child. A hundred years from now the world will be so over-populated and habitable areas and resources so reduced, having more than one child will be viewed as an abhorrent felony, twins and such excepted.
Actually reproduction rates are below replacement rate in most of the world now, only a handful of Asian countries and most of Africa are still growing. The thing that is increasing our overall population is people getting older. The population of the planet was naturally set to increase when the average age leapt from 50 to 80, but that sets a very hard limit on the number of people. Once the baby boomers start dying off, there will be a drop. In fact many western governments are so worried by the low rate of reproduction - there literally won't be enough native workers in the future - they are considering ways to encourage couples to have more children.
Possibly drag queens, when straight men dress as woman and mock the worst stereotypically negative qualities of woman being vain and bitchy . I think people may view it with the same negativity that blacking up and blackfishing are viewed with today.
As I transgender person I have an issue with drag. I know it's supposed to be fun, and a lot of the queens are quite talented, but I just find it to be mean and misrepresents what it means to be trans. I'm not saying that drag queens are trans, but the popularity of shows like that almost make things tougher for someone trying to transition, as if there is some expectation of how I'm supposed to behave or look. That's not me, but that's what people expect when they find out I'm transgender. It hurts and has honestly really slowed down my transition and shredded my confidence. Even if it doesn't go away I just hope people will start to learn the difference between drag and transgendered people.
Entering someone else's house with shoes you have worn in the street. It still happens in many countries, but it is unhygienic.
Writing and cashing checks.
I think this is a typical American problem. European countries don't use them anymore, even cash is on the way to extinction.
Calling First Nation People's "Indians".
My wife is half American Indian and she and her relatives all prefer that general term to any other. More specifically, she uses her nation's name.
In 100 years, all Karens will be banned but if the still tend to exist, the children and teens will turn them to ducks
Eating animals
I hope so, keeping them in crowded feedlots, jamming them full of antibiotics, feeding them food they wouldn't naturally eat. forcing them to lactate for years on end...there's plenty of nutrition to be had elsewhere without torturing the people and animals involved in animal slaughter
Bras. They should be viewed in the same light as corsets: very unhealthy and uncomfortable.
This article is not accurate at all. It should be "What do you hope won't be acceptable 100 years from now"
I was thinking that. We have no idea what they'll think or do. And history says that a lot of what we currently believe ferverently, they will find either hilarious or horrifying.
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This article is not accurate at all. It should be "What do you hope won't be acceptable 100 years from now"
I was thinking that. We have no idea what they'll think or do. And history says that a lot of what we currently believe ferverently, they will find either hilarious or horrifying.
Load More Replies... 