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acjohnson55

50 years ago, her actions were audacious, and the backlash probably seemed acceptable to many, if not most, people.

What things today are we going to be deeply embarrassed about 50 years from now? I have a few guesses:

- Our abysmal stewardship of the environment

- Mass incarceration

- The death penalty

- Domestic surveillance

- Police militarization and lack of accountability

- The drug war

- Transgender oppression (e.g. NC bathroom bill)

- The travel ban

- That we elected a president who bragged about grabbing unknown women by their genitals

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Once we have a suitable way to grow meat or a meat substitute, future generations will be repulsed by the way we currently treat animals in industrial farming.

It's kind of surprising that a lot more people aren't now?

If your teeth are like mine, then they are sharp at the front, designed for the cutting and tearing of flesh.

Industrial farming is about as humane as any other method for killing I've seen/practiced.

People argue that hunting keeps one more connected with the concept of meat as quarry, but the end result is the same. I shot a scimitar oryx through the heart a few years ago (before the ban) and it still ran 100 yards before it dropped. I'm pretty sure stun guns and captive bolt pistols remove the concept of pain faster.

Our teeth and mouths are shaped mostly to cut and tear fruit, not flesh.

Most of our metabolism is tailored towards fruit. That doesn't mean it has issues with meat: it'll deal quite well.

But anatomic capability and morality are totally unrelated. My body is well-designed to rape women, but I won't use that as an argument to do so either.

Lol. Comparing incisors to ability to rape. What a fucking douchebag.

When I think about the cruelty of industrial farming of animals, I'm concerned more with the way some animals are kept suffering confined to claustrophobic cages for their entire lives than I am about how they are killed. I know that some killing is done humanely.

Your oryx was able to run.

I guess if I was one to anthropomorphize my food, I'd agree.

Do you seriously believe only humans are capable of suffering? Are you not concerned about the suffering of animals other than humans?

Nope. But where do you draw the line? Mosquitos feel pain. Who cares? Why don't we care?

These moral/ethical lines are completely arbitrary.

They are unclear, but not arbitrary. I enjoy shrimp. I don't think a shrimp is capable of experiencing suffering. I feel no guilt about the treatment of shrimp raised for me to enjoy. It is completely obvious to me that higher mammals such as dogs and pigs experience suffering. I enjoy pork. I don't feel bad about a pig being humanely killed so that I may enjoy pork. I do feel bad about a pig being made to suffer for his entire life as some do on factory farms.

Just because it is difficult and subjective to know what suffers doesn't mean we shouldn't think about it.

Meh.

Edit: downvote welcome. I have lots of fake internet points to spare. I'm not going to dignify a subjective, semantic argument with anything more. Fuck, "meh" is more than 99% of HN comments deserve.

Moar Edit: Heil Trump!

I think it is a lot like the situation with the Boston Marathon 50 years ago. We were born into a world where poor treatment of animals was already happening. For those born afterward, it will be unthinkable.

I try to eat animal flesh from farmers that were nice to them.

I enjoy a lot of animal flesh. I have no idea how I can find out which bits came from nice farmers. I imagine that most of it comes from terrible places. I am eager to see a substitute.

I for one just don't give a shit and will completely admit I just eat whatever's cheap and tasty. I doubt many people will admit this, but I bet there are many in the same boat.

If we can get lab-grown meat below the cost and/or of improved taste to dead animal meat, it's likely to do very well and open people up more to the moral argument which will cement it. Right now it fails miserably on both fronts.

And I'm sure there will be pushback from the "organic"/"all natural" what-have-you crowd which exists now about how lab grown meat has evil chemicals or some equally silly thing.

Could you imagine yourself at any sort of turning point? Or are you at the point where you'd just as gladly kill animals for food yourself?

Not trying to criticize, it's how humans have existed for thousands of years — I'm just genuinely curious what a realistic "oh wait, I'm going to not do this" point is for people who eat meat.

> Or are you at the point where you'd just as gladly kill animals for food yourself?

If you're not willing to look the animal in the eyes and kill it, you shouldn't be eating it. I'll go one further and say if you haven't actually butchered a cow or chicken, you shouldn't be eating that meat. (I'll say the same about pork, bison, ostrich, snake, rabbit, sheep, etc... too but those are less common)

I grew up on a farm/ranch, I've looked cows in the eyes that I fed daily to fatten them up just for this purpose. I genuinely don't care about it, its a part of life. So for myself that point probably doesn't exist.

You can look at it in two ways philosophically, one, which seems predominant on this forum is that any human inflicted "suffering" is wrong and should be avoided.

One other view, which I think most cattle producers would think philosophically, is that you brought into the world more animals than if you didn't exist. Note, I'm just ignoring feed lots here as that isn't what I grew up around, nor does anyone I know support them.

Presupposing however that only the former viewpoint regarding suffering is correct is a bit of criticism however. Additionally, if you've ever watched how most predators take down prey, humans are vastly more humane about it.

I'd rather we separate out the feedlot question from the actual killing question. The former is an economic issue, the latter I think of in many ways as the Lakota did.

If you haven't actually poured asphalt, you shouldn't be using that road. If you haven't actually connected a pipe to city sewage, you shouldn't be using that flush toilet. If you haven't actually nailed shingles to a roof, you shouldn't be using that roof.

Oh come on. Many jobs are miserable and dangerous. I've been 20 feet away from a pig as the guts were removed, and that was more than enough odor. (the pig was full of shit)

I don't have a problem with the "look the animal in the eyes" thing though. Animals are just food. I butchered a duck. That didn't smell much, but I was a bit worried about being bitten by external parasites. A cow though... if that thing falls off the crane/hoist/lift thing it'll squish you to death. This isn't some wimpy emotion thing. Squish! Oh, and probably lots of ticks, and prior to death it may kick you or gore you. Cattle are not to be messed with unless you have special training and equipment.

> If you haven't actually poured asphalt, you shouldn't be using that road. If you haven't actually connected a pipe to city sewage, you shouldn't be using that flush toilet. If you haven't actually nailed shingles to a roof, you shouldn't be using that roof.

The reason for actually having done it is to understand the reality of where food comes from, not to try to instill a view that everyone must do everything themselves to be able to use anything in the world.

Thanks for taking the time to talk through that, it's an interesting perspective.

> Or are you at the point where you'd just as gladly kill animals for food yourself?

Just to be clear in my case as I originally responded: There is a distinction between killing animals to feed oneself and outsourcing the killing to a farm which causes those animals to spend their entire life suffering (e.g., chickens confined to a small cage). That is not how humans existed for thousands of years.

You can outsource the killing of free range chickens or cows. They live much happier lives before I eat them.

While that is possible, it is difficult to vet the supply chain.

fair point

Buy it from somewhere that you can get that information, like a farmer's market. Alternatively, call your favorite suppliers and demand that they furnish you with such information. It's your choice to find out, or not.

That only works for those who cook their own food.

> Alternatively, call your favorite suppliers and demand that they furnish you with such information. It's your choice to find out, or not.

That works just as well for restaurants.

I would be very hungry if I were to expect the staff at my local restaurants to be able to answer detailed questions about their supply chain.

Farm to table restaurants are very trendy at the moment.

Yes, there is one in my town. I had a meal there. It was a lot of fun. We ate celery. Unfortunately, the meat had to come from another farm as the proprietors had their hands full trying to grow celery.

I think the idea behind farm to table is not that the owners of the restaurant supply everything they serve themselves but know their suppliers personally, maybe have been to the suppliers farm, and can answer detailed questions about their restaurants supply chain.

These excuses are getting increasingly silly. If you want to know where your food comes from it's not that hard to find out. If you don't, that's your choice.

I don't know what it is like where you live. Where I live, there aren't many farm to table restaurants. I attend plenty of events and end up in situations (e.g., airports) where I have limited control of what I eat. I look forward to a day where cruelty to animals is illegal, so one doesn't have to believe in some free market fix.

I've been a vegetarian my entire life and only eaten meat once accidentally in a supposedly veggie burger.

But I can imagine life in coastal areas where fish is the only option.

For those who kill the animals they eat, do you ever feel attached to it? I can't imagine killing my dog for food. It's like cannibalizing my child.

Did your parents raise you as a vegetarian? Just curious because I'm a vegetarian myself and I'm not sure how I'd handle that.

I was raised vegetarian but I had freedom to choose my diet. I just preferred being vegetarian for moral and environmental impact.

This is pretty much like saying "I'm all for slavery if they treat the slaves really well". It's actually quite literally that.

Just the flesh? No muscle?

In the common English vernacular, flesh is inclusive of muscle.

Correct I nom it all.

Many are embarrassed by this today, and it's a clearly growing trend. The amount of vegan restaurants popping up all over the place evidence this There's alos laws here and there forbidding animal testing (and alike), and constant activisms on the subject.

> Once we have a suitable way to grow meat or a meat substitute

In the future what we will find horrifying is that we waited for this excuse, as if without a meat replacement the preceding abuse was justified.

I'm embarrassed by the fact that we've largely forgotten this kind of thing and by how much misogyny that I see on the internet today. It reminds me of how much we've changed in 50 years and how many people today have no context for the equality struggles that are currently going on because some of these defining events occurred in their parents generation, as if that doesn't have a huge effect on current generations.

Any time PC culture and white privilege and social justice warriors I can't help but feel sad that we almost seem to be moving backwards while many groups are still fighting for equality as if at some point (unbeknownst to any minority) we achieved total equality and now its the majority that is being discriminated against.

In 50 years they will consider our current medical treatments for the mentally ill as barely better than the ancient practice of drilling holes in their skulls to let the demons out.

That implies that we will be able to come up with much better ones. I haven't heard anything that's promising.

Right now our only tool is a hammer...

I wish I could say that I have hope that we'll be embarrassed by this, but I don't have much hope outside of marginal swings in opinion driven primarily by old people dying off and young people intentionally eschewing the ways of their parents.

I have several direct and extended family members that still think Jane Fonda should be publicly executed for treason, think the civil rights act and equal rights amendments were communist plots, and that Richard Nixon was the victim of an impeccably well executed Democratic Party plot to frame him. Amazingly, despite not being alive for any of it and despite the absurdity of the claims, some of their children have the same views. It took several centuries for western nations to realize slavery was bad, but an additional century after that to realize that institutionalized racism was bad enough to publicly address with laws, and we still aren't out of doing it in more nefarious underhanded ways. Running in a marathon was low hanging fruit and got lucky with timing. The rest of your list is going to take a few hundred years before we really feel that way as a unified society.

I think there is a distinct difference between the things that can be viscerally demonstrated, and those that people can not easily see as a yes/no proposition.

This woman set out to prove she could run marathons. Her ability to finish was visceral proof that at least some women can run marathons. The guy that tried to push here provided additional fodder to make it look idiotic to refuse them to try to run.

In comparison, many of the others things are not something you can see is wrong with your own two eyes, and can see repeated anytime you care.

It's harder to see for yourself that one race isn't better than another, especially not when you're looking at things with a biased starting point. Even when you meet nice/smart/law-abiding people of another race, you can write it off as "but not you - you're different" and hold on to the stereotypes. It takes many more examples to overcome for someone who has first gotten convinced by the stereotypes.

A woman running a marathon on the other hand, is such a simple thing to show, and it takes very few repetitions, that can be delivered in a very short amount of time, to prove that it's not a fluke or a single abnormal person. You might write it off as fake if you read about it, but not if you see a marathon go by or hear about female friends running one. And once it's happened a few times it sounds remarkable unremarkable.

But unfortunately that means a whole lot of issues are likely going to take a very long time to resolve because they are not nearly as easy to demonstrate.

We always believed that we will move forward. But we shouldn't take that for granted. Regression is also a possibility.

This is what I'm afraid of. People always bring up historical trends to show that things are great and getting better all the time. Life expectancy is up, crime is down, poverty is down, etc., and these trends all go back hundreds of years.

But what says they have to continue just because they've been going on for centuries? What if this is the peak?

Historically, the USA isthe only apex empire that hasn't regressed. So either we're literally exceptional or...

The Roman civilization went longer before regressing, depending on when you date the beginning of their fall. Perhaps the USA is exceptional because the core homeland isn't really an empire at all in that it barely includes any conquered people. Almost all of the original inhabitants were killed, either through disease exposure or intentional genocide.

The USA has regressed from the zenith of it's global influence, just not so far yet to stop being the power with the single greatest global influence.

Another possibility is moving forward but in a non-Left direction.

To be logically consistent, which things do you right now think are okay but will be regarded with horror about 50 years from now? Can you not imagine that one of your dearly-held beliefs will be widely regarded as terribly wrong in the future?

Resisting clean energy technologies in favor of coal and oil.

Equating digital copying with physical theft

Alternative reality:

* listening to animal rights advocates

* not incarcerating more

* not using the death penalty even for minor violations

* not forcing everybody to have a cam in their bedroom (of course, strictly for access by security forces)

etc...

The only thing standing between your and my vision of the future is how we act - not our wishful thinking how things should turn out.

"Domestic surveillance"

I think that could swing two ways. I can envision (but don't look forward to) a world where people wonder how we ever allowed thiefs to have a long career or murderers to kill a second time. If you RFID tag every expensive object and every human at birth (multiple times, if needed), add plenty of cameras that use face recognition to verify that tags don't move around, and implant a couple of remotely read sensors for bodily functions, it would become a lot easier to solve crimes (yes, people still could game the system, for example by committing suicide while in the company of someone they hate, but that would be rare)

- For profit healthcare

The world is a much better place than it ever was. Sure we have problems but we are generally pessimistic about the future. I have high hopes that we will make great strides to solving some of this problems.

50 years from now? A great deal of society was embarrassed by this the minute they read it.

Of a few of those, I dare say the majority is embarrassed about. Especially from outside the US.

Eating meat. I think in 50 years we'll be looked back on as savages for killing animals to eat them. I should note here that I am in no way a vegan or vegetarian and eat animals on a daily basis. But I'm still pretty sure we'll look back on ourselves in shame for doing it once lab grown meats are commonplace.

I would be very surprised if the mainstream of 50 years from now considered people "savages" for eating food the way it's been eaten since humans first started consuming meat, especially considering we don't have the technology to make lab-grown meat currently. People 50 years from now who still eat animal-grown meat might be savages, but current-day people just have a limitation.

How often do you look back in shame at people who did not use a cell phone in the 1960s? The answer is you don't. You understand that cell phones didn't exist back then and are glad technology has improved.

In most developed nations it is not a requirement to eat meat to survive, or even to be healthy. We are not physically limited in being unable to stop consuming meat in the way someone in the '60s is limited in being unable to use a cell phone.

Look at something like slavery. We look back in shame now but back then it was just the norm as it had been since ancient times.

I think much like ancient societies and slavery the judgement for meat eating wouldn't be based so much on the fact that we did it but more on the extent that we do it and methodologies we employee behind it.

No we won't. If there's one thing that has a cultural significance almost as deep as language or nationality, it's food. People will still happily consume meat 50 years from now, although more meat substitutes will be available.

Eh, institutionalized misogyny was pretty deeply ingrained in every pre-modern culture. Obviously we haven't completely gotten rid of it, but its died off pretty quickly in just a few generations. I suspect meat consumption will die off a lot quicker than that if decent substitutes become available.

(and I say this as someone who eats meat, and doesn't have any particular ethical problem with doing so.)

> institutionalized misogyny was pretty deeply ingrained in every pre-modern culture

This is an extremely simplistic view that ignores millennia of men being injured or killed for the sake of women. How many lifeboats have been recovered packed with women and children and not a single grown man? Was all that done out of hatred? If we really want to be simplistic, let's look at history and sum it up that women are indifferent toward the safety of men. That's about equally accurate.

The people who care most about that list of issues aren't reproducing biologically, and the progressive memeplex is having trouble finding new willing converts, since most of the people with a foundationally Christian belief system have already converted (and progressivism does not spread well to anyone else).

The world will be inherited by the people who show up - Amish, evangelicals, conservative Muslims, orthodox Jews, etc.

So you may be right about the 50 year time-span, but looking onto the 100+ year span, your list of issues should likely look more like:

-Public blasphemy

-Public acceptance of homosexuality

-Lack of God in government

-Allowance of abortion

etc.

Just because things have gone one way for a while doesn't mean they'll keep going that way. For better or for worse.

> The world will be inherited by the people who show up - Amish, evangelicals, conservative Muslims, orthodox Jews, etc.

This isn't supported by basically any demographic trend.

The birth rates draw a pretty clear picture. But you have to also take into account that some of those people get an education and end up with mainstream beliefs rather than propagating regressive extremism.

It's more than some. A huge number of secular liberals were raised as religious conservatives. Religion and politics are not transmitted the way genetic attributes are. Obviously there's a greater chance that you'll end up like your parents, but it's far from a given.

If being overwhelmed by demographics with higher birth rates was something that could actually happen, it already would have happened, and low-birthrate populations never would have occurred in the first place.

I'm already embarrassed by how many people don't understand the difference between a joke and actions. I really thought humans were somewhat smarter than that. It won't take me 50 years to shake my head

Unequal pay for the same work solely based on gender.

- Separate gender bathrooms

- Meat eating

These two for sure.

Immigration

I disagree with most of these, but I'll pick on one in particular: the death penalty.

I think, or at least hope, the usage of the death penalty will increase. Some people definitely can't be rehabilitated, and life imprisonment is an inhumane and cruel punishment.

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