A few hundred years ago
Discussion
A few hundred years ago slavery and burning people for witchraft were commonly accepted practices. Only a few outspoken souls spoke out against them. Today, almost everyone would oppose them and consider them barbaric.
What do we do today that is commonly accepted but a few outspoken souls speak out against and that in a few hundred years time our descendents will consider barbaric ? (The only thing I can think of is eat meat).
What do we do today that is commonly accepted but a few outspoken souls speak out against and that in a few hundred years time our descendents will consider barbaric ? (The only thing I can think of is eat meat).
I think they will shake their heads in disbelief at.....
People moaning about cloned milk, meat and GM food.
We give money to lazy work-shy layabouts to be work-shy lazy layabouts.
That we believed in man made climate change.
That we let a one eyed, maladjusted, mental ever became leader of a country.
That anyone believed Tony Blair.
Ok the barbaric part is difficult for the last two, unless you include nasty painful deaths for Brown & Blair.
People moaning about cloned milk, meat and GM food.
We give money to lazy work-shy layabouts to be work-shy lazy layabouts.
That we believed in man made climate change.
That we let a one eyed, maladjusted, mental ever became leader of a country.
That anyone believed Tony Blair.
Ok the barbaric part is difficult for the last two, unless you include nasty painful deaths for Brown & Blair.
I don't think eating meat will ever go out of fashion - if anything a nice piece of steak will become more of a luxury in the future. i think leaving families on benefits will be considered a form of cruelty in the future. Also prisons, as we know them, are rather low-tech form of punishment.
fido said:
I don't think eating meat will ever go out of fashion - if anything a nice piece of steak will become more of a luxury in the future. i think leaving families on benefits will be considered a form of cruelty in the future. Also prisons, as we know them, are rather low-tech form of punishment.
mmm - tomorrow's dinner... I hope steak doesn't go out of fashion.Prisons are an interesting case - maybe future generations would have some form of treatment (e.g. a psychiatric treatment that actually works) that they could use to turn criminals into law abiding tax paying members of society rather than having to send them to prison (and probably see them descend into a cycle of reoffending).
purplepolarbear said:
A few hundred years ago slavery and burning people for witchraft were commonly accepted practices. Only a few outspoken souls spoke out against them. Today, almost everyone would oppose them and consider them barbaric.
If you are talking about the UK, we didn't burn witches, we hung them, not many of them, and they were both male and female. Our involvement in slavery was short-lived, too.What will be considered barbaric?
- circumcision, male and female
- our slash, burn, and poison approach to cancer treatment, and probably many more of our medical treatments
fido said:
I don't think eating meat will ever go out of fashion - if anything a nice piece of steak will become more of a luxury in the future.
Nah , fresh meat will remain a reasonable expectation - though tthe source may change!Put smply, several hundred thousand years of hominid evolution, type O blood groups and pointy teeth will not stand being denied....
Edited by Huff on Friday 6th August 23:34
surgery isn't barbaric though - it's the best we have. Think about amputation without anaesthetic two to three hundred years ago... very primitive medical treatment but in many cases it saved lives. If you do something with good intentions to help prolong somebody's life, it's not barbaric no matter how primitive it is.
and also, in many cases I can't really see alternative to current surgical practice. Think about orthopaedic surgery - if you have a badly broken leg, how else are you going to realign the bones and position them so they can heal?
and also, in many cases I can't really see alternative to current surgical practice. Think about orthopaedic surgery - if you have a badly broken leg, how else are you going to realign the bones and position them so they can heal?
Edited by DangerousMike on Saturday 7th August 11:20
DangerousMike said:
surgery isn't barbaric though - it's the best we have. Think about amputation without anaesthetic two to three hundred years ago... very primitive medical treatment but in many cases it saved lives. If you do something with good intentions to help prolong somebody's life, it's not barbaric no matter how primitive it is.
and also, in many cases I can't really see alternative to current surgical practice. Think about orthopaedic surgery - if you have a badly broken leg, how else are you going to realign the bones and position them so they can heal?
I think you're misconstruing the principle meaning of barbaric, which is primitive, I would argue that today surgery with anesthesia is primitive, it wasn't at the time, but that's kind of the point.and also, in many cases I can't really see alternative to current surgical practice. Think about orthopaedic surgery - if you have a badly broken leg, how else are you going to realign the bones and position them so they can heal?
Edited by DangerousMike on Saturday 7th August 11:20
also +1 for the war on drugs, I think society will look back on the madness of prohibition and wonder why we made a vulnerable subset of society criminals.
We'll also laugh at the time we extracted oil from the ground at great cost, instead of getting micro-organisms to make the stuff for us
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