"Is Everything Worse Than It Was In 1900?"
by John Wilder
"For large chunks of human history, things didn’t change all that much from one century to the next. Oh, sure, there were innovations and social changes and cyclic government transformations (Roman Republic to Roman Empire, for instance) but life was such that in many cases, dropping a Frenchman from Paris in 1300 A.D. into Paris around 1400 A.D. would have been a fairly comprehensible change for the resident, except he would probably have had to get a different color beret.
Let’s go back to 1900, though. What changes might have seemed like science fiction (dystopian or otherwise) to a time traveler from Fort Wayne (let’s call him Taylor) if he showed up in the year 2024? Lets start with . . .
Social Changes:
• Elevation of sexual fetish to that of a sacrament rather than that of a criminal offense.
• Unromantic sex with large numbers of partners for unmarried teenage girls and women is the norm.
• Sex changes for children are not punishable by prison time.
• Universal, free availability of pornographic images and videos.
• Women working. Sure, some worked, but it wasn’t the norm.
• Women voting. Yes, it was allowed in some places, but certainly not all.
•Criminals being treated with non-judgement, except when it comes to “hate crimes” – the concept of saying a “bad word” as being worse and less forgivable than murder.
• Rap music. I still can’t believe it exists.
• The fall in popularity of churches.
• Staggeringly low birthrates in developed countries.
• Credit scores as a primary measure of suitability coordinated by large, faceless financial companies.
•Working for large corporations as the norm, rather than a rare exception, like the dude who worked for the railroad.
My grade on how Taylor would rank these? Utterly dehumanizing for most of them. I think he’d be shocked at the collapse of the morality required to run a just society in the absence of tyranny.
I think the sexual stuff would be the most shocking. Sure, humans have been boinking each other in all sorts of ways since Adam’s third night with Eve, but the celebration of things that were called degenerate (or worse) in nearly every Western civilization for thousands of years would be the most shocking.
The criminal change would be a big thing for Taylor, since he was probably used to speedy justice of a trial followed by a fairly quick hanging.
World Power Changes:
• The complete dissolution of the British Empire into a proto-Islamic Caliphate.
• The complete collapse of the Major Power colonial system leaving many colonies adrift in a state of partially collapsed civilizations that can’t care for themselves.
• Western government essentially declaring war on their own citizens in order to import aliens who don’t really assimilate, and importing those aliens in staggering numbers.
• Near universal, real-time information gathering on nearly every citizen from cameras and tracking devices that they buy and carry with them.
• A very small number of very large companies control what news people see.
• Drones in modern warfare cutting down the ability of troops to be sneaky, at all.
• Nuclear weapons which can devastate cities of a larger size than existed in 1900.
• Intercontinental ballistic missiles, which can reach any area of the Earth and devastate square miles in less than an hour.
• Jet fighters which, although nearly obsolete, can move at multiples of the speed of sound and destroy people and planes and things hundreds of miles away.
• Centralization of the financial systems of the world into a near-monolithic system where billions in capital could move easily from one continent to another in seconds.
• World hunger as less of a problem than world obesity.
•The staggering number of laws and rules from the federal level covering every aspect of life.
• Identity theft.
The set of changes was bad, but this may be thought of as more chaotic. In Taylor’s time, colonies certainly exploited the natural resources of a region, but in many places they also gave order and governance to areas that had (until that time) were at the mud and straw hut technology level, and are rapidly regressing back to the mud and straw hut technology level. Warfare went from Teddy’s charge up San Juan Hill to remote controlled impersonal warfare that has the capacity to kill billions in an afternoon. I’m pretty sure that would be horrifying to him.
General Technology:
• Modern cars, including partially self-driving cars are amazing pieces of technology, and combined with modern highways provide a dream transportation system – coast to coast, in a car, in a couple of days.
• Air travel from nearly any part of the world to nearly any other part of the world is possible in hours.
• Humanity has travelled to the Moon. The Moon!
• Instantaneous communication with people all around the world is possible.
• Instantaneous video from anyplace in the world is possible.
• Most of the knowledge accumulated by the human race is available nearly instantaneously.
• Organ transplants are a thing.
• Modern architecture has become ugly and soulless, with no space for beauty and humanity.
• Creation of industrial “food” which incorporates large numbers of components that were created in a chemical plant rather than a growing plant or cow or pig.
What would Taylor say about these? He’d probably be impressed by the first part of the list, but the last two would be very troubling. In the last two weeks I ate a “pretzel” with cheezefoodsauce®, and it was tasty. But compare it to a freshly grown garden tomato? I’d rather have the tomato every time. Wow. I don’t think he’d like to swap his steak and eggs and butter for Cheeze-Itz™ and Doritos©, but they seem popular.
So, what color beret kufi do you think the Frenchman be wearing in 2124?"
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