In another 150 years

I was watching “House of Cards” the other day when Kevin Spacey’s character said — as an aside to the audience, in full creepy Richard III mode — what a ridiculous thing slavery was.

I was brought up short by this. In 2014, even the most despicable and morally reprehensible character is happy to disavow the concept of slavery. That’s how far we have come in the last century and a half.

Which got me thinking. In another hundred and fifty years, what widely accepted social/economic norm of today will seem equally foreign and repugnant? I don’t know about you, but here’s my candidate:

In 2164 people will be puzzled and amazed that the children of today who happen to be born into poor families are not given the same respect, nor guaranteed the same opportunities, as the children of the rich. Not only will this custom of ours be seen as cruel and capricious, but it will seen as bizarrely self-destructive.

After all, what nation in its right mind — particularly a nation that is in economic competition with other nations — would not throw everything it can into building up the potential of its children, its future citizens? To do anything less is, in the long run, an act of economic self-immolation.

People in 2164 will probably regard us much the way we regard people who advocated slavery in the early nineteenth century: With bemused horror, mixed with a sense of relief that civilization has advanced beyond such a state of savagery.

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