Generation X are heavy, risky drinkers. Will anything ever persuade us to stop?
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
Improvements in society, job prospects, meaning of life, and community?
(In other words, don't hold your breath)
I wonder what other things we are doing today that future generation will realise that was bad idea. I think social media will make that list.
What the article highlights is not Gen X, but how things have 'regressed' since then. I purposely say 'regress' because I think Gen X, and I'm one of them, was the last free and easy-going generation.
No, we'll grow meat cheaply in labs, and the companies who produce it won't have much trouble blackening the reputation of real meat. Most people, even today, like to dwell neither on the death of the animals we eat, nor the cleanliness of the factory farms that provide us with our meat.
It probably will appall people in the future that we killed animals just to eat. They won't have first-hand experience of our time. They'll know, on a cerebral level, the technical reasons that fake meat was impractical, but, on an emotional level, our habits will disgust them.
That's extrapolating from the future distancing from nature and sterilization and abstraction imposed over life.
It's also possible that people in the future will get their meat if and when they find it, and fight like crazy to secure it, under more dystopian conditions. If they're not lucky, there will always be ground worms and bugs, seaweeds, and Soylent Green.
Or the population has stabilized quite lower, after climate change impact, famines, wars, water conflicts, etc., and the rest can grow and eat their meat in a more sustainable way...
This mostly points to the lack of freedom in the over-regulated 21st century state...