i’m talking about the mundane stuff, like how we still carry around a bunch of plastic cards or wait for water to boil in a kettle instead of instantly. or maybe just our collective obsession with short form video? keen to hear what makes you shake your head thinking about the future.
Alcohol consumption. It’ll likely be viewed similar to how tobacco products are viewed today.
Also, pollution. How everyone was apparently just cool with it, even though we knew better. Dealing with it won’t be optional for future generations if they want to survive, and I imagine they’ll be cursing our generation for not doing more when it’s relatively easier.
I think comparing it to tobacco might be a bit limited. Tobacco has had some stints of popularity, but the history of tobacco doesn’t even compare to the history of alcohol. There are theories that we’ve been drinking alcohol longer than we’ve been human coming from some interesting adaptations one of our pre-human ancestors developed with the ability to metabolize ethanol. It’s not a perfect theory, but it’s an interesting one.
Plenty of historical cycles too where society has pushed away alcohol and it always seems to come back. It’s interesting that prohibition was around 100 years ago and the temperance movement started about 100 years before that. Kinda feel like we’re just in one of those downturns and the next generation is going to have some serious ragers.
Maybe. I think the difference is that prohibition and the temperance movements were based on top-down authoritative control (at least as I understand it). Folks in charge forbade it, and people found ways to circumvent it–because they still wanted it. The younger generations today simply aren’t interested. It’s not being outlawed, it’s being left behind.
Add current research on top of that (and the messages young people receive based on that), and it might be in a serious decline for good. Or it could go the way of vinyl–a niche interest preserved by a dedicated community, but not mainstream. Or any number of things, who knows?
The old expression “the solution to polution is dilution” is fucking horrifying. Bioaccumulation and environmental persistence were known well even in the 50s with mercury and things like ddt but the industrial lobbies were just real good at preventing meaningful legislation or regulations. Now we get all the downsides.
In regards to alcohol consumption, I’m glad you raised that. I’m also glad it’s going away.
I kind of follow these things a little bit, a bit of a nerd in this regard lol
I’m 51, and now I’m 10 years sober, so I have a longer view, and I have my own multiple viewpoints now that I’ve gone from a drunk to a sober dude.
I have definitely noticed a massive shift in attitudes from the younger generations now, compared to when I was young.
It seems the generation just reaching legal age now has almost no interest in alcohol whereas when I was young, drinking was almost a given. It was just what we did at every opportunity and all the socializing happened on Thursdays and Friday nights where we get mutually blasted at various locales.
And our federal government here in Canada has finally clued-in how hopeless it is to generate revenue with alcohol sales and taxation. They ran a study called the Canada Alcohol Deficit which showed that when you factor in all the social ills of alcohol consumption, we lose money on it by like billions. I can’t link it because I’m fooling around with mobile, but it’s an easy search.
But I think that attitude is across all the generations now, even the people who were hard drinkers in my group are not really interested as much. Our provincial government saw a precipitous drop of alcohol sales, and panicked and expanded sales across our province in so many ways.
So yeah I think it’s on the way out the door for good soon. People don’t want to anymore when there’s better and less destructive mood-alteration, and the government has seen the futility of booze.
Thanks for sharing. I haven’t followed it as closely, but I understand the latest research suggests that any amount of alcohol isn’t really worth it. Similar to tobacco, how it was pretty much a given for one age, my generation grew up hearing about all the negatives.
Factor on top of that young people aren’t primarily socializing in drinking spaces anymore. Between COVID shutting that down for a while, and people having less money, there’s less reason to go out and get smashed.
I personally still enjoy a drink once in a while, but it’s not something I’d terribly mind seeing disappear, especially for how destructive it can be.
also…(hopefully)…lead water pipes. like jesus fucking christ, we know the romans used lead water pipes even they knew lead was bad…and we still used lead waters ourselves