Societal Evolution

[BlueDan91]

Not sure if the powers that be will merge this with any threads they see fit but this is something that interests me greatly.

What are your thoughts on Society at current and where it evolves from here?

There seems to be an ever increasing split between left and right, radicalised on both sides with hardly any ground in the middle. Where does society go from here to de-escalate or unify?

Has society, in the UK, evolved past the need for A Royal Family? How does this play out in the future? Does there come a time when the people demand a referendum on the unelected royalty? Or do we stick with it?

What about internet? Should that be included as a utility and be available in every household as standard or will the internet age burst?

Looking for rationale debate, thoughts and insights into your ideas on Societal Evolution. What does society look like in 10/20/50/100 years time?

 

[Rascal]

Great question.

If you look backwards to look forwards, we would all have flying cars and hunger and disease would be eradicated. That has not happened of course nor is it likely to happen. We might get the Flying cars but hunger and disease are profitable and as long as their is profit the Capitalists will have hegemony. They may supply the flying cars and everyone will hail the success of the Capitalist system, but there will still be hunger and disease.

Public opinion changes of course, we are currently though in an era that is dominated by the narrative of the right, funded by the wealthy through think tanks and until that is challenged this country faces a further generation of the Overton window be pushed rightwards and ideas that 20 years ago would have been dismissed as the ideas of cranks are becoming more mainstream. 20 years ago you would struggle to find anyone who described themselves as Classical Liberal, now they are like rats, you are never further than 5 feet from one who is willing to preach their sermon of individual freedom meaning more than collective responsibility.

If society develops along the lines of the Classical Liberal/Libertarian thought process then Thatcher's famous saying "there is no such thing as society" becomes reality. 200+ years of working class advancement will be undone in an orgy of vindictiveness that will roll back those advancements in the name of Capitalism. This has already begun, but expect it to gather pace.

Socialism, Liberalism and Conservatism will all fade away to be replaced by Oligarchism, power will be centrally held by those with wealth and society ordered to provide those with wealth more wealth. The rest will be left scraps and fed diatribes of nonsense so that we blame each other rather than our overlords sat in their Ivory Towers.

To answer your minor points

The Royal Family will still exist as a symbol to ensure that the subjects of the Oligarchy remain patriotic towards the state.

The internet will be free, but the Oligarchy will control its content.

The state as we know it will cease to function, it will function only to serve the interests of the Oligarchy. It will be Hayek's Road to Serfdom in the actuale, rather than its true essence.

We will have flying cars though, well the Oligarchs will and we can point at them and stare.

 

[metalblue]

I don’t think society has fractured any further along left and right than it ever was in my lifetime, probably the opposite but the internet has given a mainstream platform for the minorities on the extremes to be heard by the majority in the middle. There is however a huge part of society who is politically disenfranchised and I think that is more prevalent on the left and I’d probably say the primary cause for that is lack of opportunities and poverty (ie too busy trying to survive to give a shit).

I don’t think it’s a question of left or right - I’m a little more positive than Russ on this at least in the short term - I think we will observe a greater understanding and compassion for our fellow humans. However this will need to find a political home and voice and by that I mean a party needs to come out and offer this. And this isn’t labours “how shit your life is vote for us, it won’t get any better but we will stop saying how shit it is so you might forget” approach or the tories one nationism. It’s about rebalancing our social care systems to make them more accessible and equitable.

Medium term will go one of two ways; the short term will not happen as we will go back to only giving a shit about ourselves or we will have a better society. If the former this country will likely descend into increasing levels of violence as the disparity widens and the anger spills over into rioting and the such.

A lot can change though- from pandemics to weather to natural disasters to conflict. The geopolitical state of the world is as bad as it has been since the USSR collapse. India and China will wrestle for influence in South Asia.

Internet as a utility? I think for VAT purposes that’s a good idea. I’d not mandate every home needing it however (in the same way we still have cesspits). It’s not going away any time soon

Royal family. I’m a fan so yup keep ‘em

 

[urban genie]

Humatity does what humanity does, we just adapt to new technologies and situations

Since the first time a civilisation decided to dominate it's neighbours or some deciced to dominate others, because they were stronger or had more wealth and power, people will will be cunts to each other.

We like to think we are more enlightened than generations of the past, but deep down we are still the same animal.

Same old story

People are people. And will rationalise their shit behaviour as it being necessary for the good of the community/world or because faith tells them it's right or for silly loyalty to piece of cloth etc.

Going forward we will be be just as destructive for some while other will just get on with life as best they can.

We won't evolve until we don't see the planet the species on it and our fellow humans as commodeties to use

 

[PannickAtTheDisco]

I would say it's regressing rather than evolving. To evolve you take your core fundamentals, values, successes and innovations and build upon them and improve them, not use revisionist history and ideological bigotry to try and desecrate them and destroy them.

 

[Mr Kobayashi]

I would say it's regressing rather than evolving. To evolve you take your core fundamentals, values, successes and innovations and build upon them and improve them, not use revisionist history and ideological bigotry to try and desecrate them and destroy them.

What do you mean by these terms? What exactly are you referring to?

 

[metalblue]

We like to think we are more enlightened than generations of the past, but deep down we are still the same animal.

Very true. I’m sure future generations will look back on us and say WTF!

 

[Rascal]

What do you mean by these terms? What exactly are you referring to?

Statues?

 

[Ban-jani]

The monarchy is going nowhere soon, it’s one of the most consistently supported things within politics in this country.

The Monarchy and the NHS sit side by side as untouchable.

Regarding where we evolve, I think the longer the left are out of power in Britain, the more ridiculous they will get and they’ve become a parody of themselves now. The right have issues on the extreme fringe but the softer right have actually become more liberal as time has gone on, which annoys me.

The centre is still the area most sit in, they just don’t realise it. Starmer and Johnson agree on the vast majority of their politics and most people are aligned or in between them.

The biggest thing with UK politics is apathy. People believe, posting on this forum and Twitter, that their views are really important and everyone is either agreeing with them or is an enemy, out there in the outside world.

Neither is true. This is a small corner of the internet that most people couldn’t care about and even with Twitter, the vast majority aren’t arguing politics on there.

 

[Deleted member 77198]

Not sure if the powers that be will merge this with any threads they see fit but this is something that interests me greatly.

What are your thoughts on Society at current and where it evolves from here?

There seems to be an ever increasing split between left and right, radicalised on both sides with hardly any ground in the middle. Where does society go from here to de-escalate or unify?

Has society, in the UK, evolved past the need for A Royal Family? How does this play out in the future? Does there come a time when the people demand a referendum on the unelected royalty? Or do we stick with it?

What about internet? Should that be included as a utility and be available in every household as standard or will the internet age burst?

Looking for rationale debate, thoughts and insights into your ideas on Societal Evolution. What does society look like in 10/20/50/100 years time?

Too much emphasis is being given to this so called split in society. This split between left and right is the same as it’s ever been, it’s just getting more attention at the moment. I think this over-exposure is purposeful from people in the background in the mainstream media and social media simply to try and manufacture a greater split than already exists, and has always existed, between left and right.

Political media is no different to talkSPORT with its tactics of picking a hot subject at any time, having one presenter take one view and the other the polar opposite, talk shit about each extreme and then wind up the listeners enough to get them to phone in. This is all the political media, political parties and political activists do but, instead of calls, they use the same tactics to get votes.

The thing is, most of the sports fans in this country don’t listen to talkSPORT, just like people don’t care about politics and don’t have a political standpoint.

A huge group of people don’t give a shit about politics. 15.5m registered voters didn’t vote in the hottest General Election for years, in 2019. And there’ll be others who aren’t registered. What does that tell you?

Most of my mates have absolutely no interest in politics whatsoever and never vote. They’re not even lapsed Labour voters, I would describe them as un-political people who are aligned to no wing or ideology at all. They think I’m a sad **** for having an interest in politics, they think that nearly everyone’s lives are exactly the same no matter who’s in power or what’s going on in the country, and they see anyone really into politics as extremist bell ends no matter what party they vote for.

If ever politics comes up in conversation when me and the lads are in the pub (ah, remember going to the pub?!), the words “shut the fuck up you boring ****” are usually shouted at whoever brings it up!

When you see that Labour got 10.3m votes in 2019, and the Conservatives 13.9m... and there were 15.5m registered voters who didn’t vote... they’re a much larger chunk of this population than either the left or right! And when you think that these peoples’ views aren’t everywhere in the mainstream media and social media like the left+right’s are, you start to realise that this “split” is exaggerated, and massively given over-exposure. Most of this country are normal people who don’t care about the left and the right, with the left and the right being minority groups. Especially when you consider that the majority of Labour and Consverative voters are moderates, lying either Centre-Left or Centre-Right either way, and some float their votes depending on what’s going on either in their life or in the country at the time of an election. These people don’t hold an anti-left/right split view.

In my experience, moderates and people who aren’t into politics are the most laidback, non-confrontational, non-problem causing, least-busy-cunts in society. And they outnumber the left and right, by a mile.

And people would wake up to this more if they turned the news off for a bit, stopped reading the papers, sacked off social media, and lived in the real world talking to real people for a bit. Everyone would start to realise that most people they came across were perfectly normal people who don’t bring up left or right politics at all.