The Student Room Group

What will our generation frown upon, that our grandchildren will find acceptable?

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Original post by Quady
Not tipping

Tipping is an American ideal to top up wages of underpaid waitresses regardless of whether they did a good job. Rarely will you find people tip outside of the US, aside from Americans.

As a tourist to the US, I'll always tip but that purely because it's expected whereas if I'm a tourist to Europe/ME, no chance of a tip.
Reply 21
Original post by tomclarky
Isn't it also our nature to f*** as many people as possible, even though a lot of us manage to live pretty monogamous lifestyles? I have an animalistic desire to eat meat, but have managed to overcome it for alturistic purposes along with millions of others.

We're not knuckle dragging monkeys anymore driven only by basic primal drives. Humans have huge capacity for cooperation and kindness, which we show on a daily basis despite living in a world that encourages fear and rewards greed. If it's possible for us to show these qualities on a moderate level, then it's possible to create a world where these ideas pervade our global idealogy.


How do we encourage fear? I know for a fact that I and many other people will never be content to live in a world where all I have is what everyone else has, it defeats the point of working hard and educating myself. We tried communism in early human civilisations, it didn't work. Other countries have tried communism more recently, surprise surprise it didn't work


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Reply 22
Original post by tehFrance
Tipping is an American ideal to top up wages of underpaid waitresses regardless of whether they did a good job. Rarely will you find people tip outside of the US, aside from Americans.

As a tourist to the US, I'll always tip but that purely because it's expected whereas if I'm a tourist to Europe/ME, no chance of a tip.


When you pay on card here in a restaurant a lot of them have an option to add gratuity and I'm sure they know if you do or not because I always get filthy looks from the person taking the payment


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Original post by nexttime
I've very little doubt that eating meat will be seen as an abomination.


We can but hope.
Reply 24
Original post by anosmianAcrimony
We can but hope.


I don't see why people think something that's been the norm since the very first humans will suddenly be gone in forty years


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Original post by Wade-
When you pay on card here in a restaurant a lot of them have an option to add gratuity and I'm sure they know if you do or not because I always get filthy looks from the person taking the payment

Where in the US? I know and I think it's outrageous as it's spread here to London and the odd spot in Paris, I tend to tip those in Paris that does more than their job description in terms of making sure I'm well look after.

In the US, it's a disgraceful practice but I'll partake there because those people that you're tipping aren't paid enough by their employer so you need to in order to ensure that they can make it through to the next pay cheque.
Original post by ClickItBack
Within ~50 years? I'd definitely take the other side on that. Pepperoni pizzas are going nowhere fast (except down American gullets).


Maybe they'll make synthetic meat which tastes just like the real thing.
Reply 27
Communism:biggrin: we will definately have a communist global super-state in the next 100 years. Maybe even bionic implants and we will become a planet of Borg:crazy:
Original post by Wade-
How do we encourage fear? I know for a fact that I and many other people will never be content to live in a world where all I have is what everyone else has, it defeats the point of working hard and educating myself. We tried communism in early human civilisations, it didn't work. Other countries have tried communism more recently, surprise surprise it didn't work


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You may not be able to, but some people can. And if that small amount of people grows, the culture changes and people born in the future will be more accepting of cooperative ideas. I'd agree capitalism couldn't be shedded if any acts of alturism and cooperation were non existent, but we know humans can behave in such a way, the only thing up for debate is whether it could become the prevailing ideology. To say that it will never happen is a pretty pessimistic. I'm sure there was a time when humans were much much more individualistic, and some people back then would've said it would be impossible for us to be as alturistic as we are now.

How does our culture encourage fear? Capitalism is driven by fear. Greed and fear are interlinked. Fear is constantly stimulated with the idea that we're not good enough we don't even notice it anymore, and consumerism is put in it's place to fill that void they create. Why do people worry so much about what they look like? And spend so much money to make ourselves feel better? Obsessing about our appearance is a relatively unnatural behaviour encouraged by a culture of fear, which we all fall for (me included).
Elite classes who control the information we receive inculcate our tribal fears, making us all hate immigrants and benefit scroungers, as a way to diverting our attention away from people at the top, keeping horrifying inequality the way it is.

I'm not promoting communism. Look up the Venus project. Jacque Fresco has designed a resource based economy and proposes that people are only greedy because of scarity of resources. If it rained gold we would hoard as much of it as we could, but if it kept raining gold, eventually we'd be sweping it away. He says it's entirely possible to have a world where humans have access to everything they will ever need and that such abundance, accompied with a large amounts of advanced technology machine automation, will motivate people to contribute to society.
Reply 29
Original post by Wade-
Having a system doesn't allow humans to be selfish and greedy is against our nature. Take communism for example, as it's the most commonly used opponent of capitalism, it never allows people to be better than any other individual in terms of the material things they have and that's really not going to work


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Feudalism ticks the box, as do others that pre-dated capitalism. In the days of feudalism, capitalism wasn't even a concept, how can you discount the idea that there is another system we don't yet know of that we would move to?
Reply 30
Most babies will be test tube babies or through ivf as most people in the modern world freeze their eggs. I wouldn't frown upon this I just think this may happen and it will be a good thing :biggrin:
Original post by Wade-
You do realise we've moved past polygamy? It used to be acceptable but now it isn't


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Homosexuality was acceptable, unacceptable and is now acceptable again.
Reply 32
Original post by tehFrance
Where in the US? I know and I think it's outrageous as it's spread here to London and the odd spot in Paris, I tend to tip those in Paris that does more than their job description in terms of making sure I'm well look after.

In the US, it's a disgraceful practice but I'll partake there because those people that you're tipping aren't paid enough by their employer so you need to in order to ensure that they can make it through to the next pay cheque.


No in England, I've noticed it in a few restaurants and the hairdressers I used to go to. Tipping is a bit unnecessary considering that most of the time the employees are only doing the job that they're already paid to do.

Original post by tomclarky
You may not be able to, but some people can. And if that small amount of people grows, the culture changes and people born in the future will be more accepting of cooperative ideas. I'd agree capitalism couldn't be shedded if any acts of alturism and cooperation were non existent, but we know humans can behave in such a way, the only thing up for debate is whether it could become the prevailing ideology. To say that it will never happen is a pretty pessimistic. I'm sure there was a time when humans were much much more individualistic, and some people back then would've said it would be impossible for us to be as alturistic as we are now.


So you think we'll revert back to a time when people all contributed and reaped equal benefits? That's delusional. Capitalism drives innovation and development, I doubt its a coincidence that most of the biggest breakthrough inventions of the last 200 years have come from people living in capitalist countries. Sure capitalism has its draw backs but were yet to discover a better system, much like democracy. Even if people do become increasingly concerned with the welfare of others I very much doubt that will come about within the next two generations.

Original post by tomclarky
How does our culture encourage fear? Capitalism is driven by fear. Greed and fear are interlinked. Fear is constantly stimulated with the idea that we're not good enough we don't even notice it anymore, and consumerism is put in it's place to fill that void they create. Why do people worry so much about what they look like? And spend so much money to make ourselves feel better? Obsessing about our appearance is a relatively unnatural behaviour encouraged by a culture of fear, which we all fall for (me included).
Elite classes who control the information we receive inculcate our tribal fears, making us all hate immigrants and benefit scroungers, as a way to diverting our attention away from people at the top, keeping horrifying inequality the way it is.


So you think that if we lived under a system that wasn't capitalist we wouldn't care what we looked like or what others thought about us from the outside? Again that's delusional. Worrying about what other people think about how we look is completely natural, plenty of animals also do it. I don't hate immigrants and nor do most people and hating benefit scroungers is completely justified. Inequality often comes from certain people being better than others, more intelligent or better at something that people value i.e sport or acting. You can moan all you like about an upper class of people who own huge companies but no one forces you to buy the things that they sell.

Original post by tomclarky
I'm not promoting communism. Look up the Venus project. Jacque Fresco has designed a resource based economy and proposes that people are only greedy because of scarity of resources. If it rained gold we would hoard as much of it as we could, but if it kept raining gold, eventually we'd be sweping it away. He says it's entirely possible to have a world where humans have access to everything they will ever need and that such abundance, accompied with a large amounts of advanced technology machine automation, will motivate people to contribute to society.


Its quite funny that the Venus project is a for profit organisation but yet what you've described essentially sounds like communism under a different name. Like it or not there is a scarcity of resources, things are usually valued based on how rare they are. People aren't content with the things that they 'need'; all you'll ever 'need' in life is water, shelter and basic food and clothing. Again its something demonstrated throughout nature and is not exclusive to humans.

Original post by Quady
Feudalism ticks the box, as do others that pre-dated capitalism. In the days of feudalism, capitalism wasn't even a concept, how can you discount the idea that there is another system we don't yet know of that we would move to?


Perhaps I was too definitive in my wording, I'll rephrase 'we will never move to a system that doesn't allow people to indulge in their selfish and greedy desires' - better?

Original post by minimarshmallow
Homosexuality was acceptable, unacceptable and is now acceptable again.


That's largely thanks to the rise and decline of traditional religion, traditional religion is more suited to polygamy than modern religion and modern society
Reply 33
Original post by tehFrance
Tipping is an American ideal to top up wages of underpaid waitresses regardless of whether they did a good job. Rarely will you find people tip outside of the US, aside from Americans.

As a tourist to the US, I'll always tip but that purely because it's expected whereas if I'm a tourist to Europe/ME, no chance of a tip.


Tipping is pretty much taken as red in the UK. At 10% rather than the bordering on 30% level of the states, but still done whether the service was good or not.

It makes zero sense to me.
Reliance on technology; its not great now but I don't look down on it yet. Its gonna get a lot worse before it gets better.
Original post by Wade-
Having a system doesn't allow humans to be selfish and greedy is against our nature. Take communism for example, as it's the most commonly used opponent of capitalism, it never allows people to be better than any other individual in terms of the material things they have and that's really not going to work


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In a true communist system people are still paid different wages (wages of various professions are democratically decided) so that's not true
Reply 36
This thread very much seems to assume that our grandchildren will simply be more extreme on what are currently slight fringe issues- e.g. vegetarianism will eventually convert everyone etc.

What our generation thinks is fine, previous thought was immoral and vice versa. I have no idea what that will be, but our grandchildren will probably support some truly horrible stuff (to us).

Additionally, we'll probably all be known as monsters for something we find trivial- best guess is eating meat, but maybe we'll get condemned for not taking up cryogenics quicker and saving some lives. Who knows?
Reply 37
Original post by jimbo007
In a true communist system people are still paid different wages (wages of various professions are democratically decided) so that's not true


A. That would still create a class system. Doctors would have more than road sweepers which would keep the same envy that leads to communism.

B. How do you democratically decide a salary? Does everyone write down an amount of money and you take the average?

C. Where does this idea of yours come from? No country which has or does practice any sort of far left system has that in place


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Original post by Wade-
A. That would still create a class system. Doctors would have more than road sweepers which would keep the same envy that leads to communism.

B. How do you democratically decide a salary? Does everyone write down an amount of money and you take the average?

C. Where does this idea of yours come from? No country which has or does practice any sort of far left system has that in place


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I didn't say it was perfect, or even practical. I was just correcting a misconception.

A. Yes perhaps it would, but surely less of a class system than we see today? This system would ensure that wages are fair, reduce the disparity in wages between professions and encourage people to pursue a profession they would enjoy, rather than purely for monetary gain.

B. Possibly something along those lines, although maybe democratically establishing a sort of formula for wages where wages are decided based on what society views as deserving of higher wages e.g. danger of labour, benefit to society of labour etc.

C. No system thus far has been truly 'Marxist' which is, as far as I know, where this idea stems from.
Original post by Quady
Not tipping


thats pretty acceptable already in some places

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