4 ms·

It's really amazing how certain writers wax on about the future but are unable to describe the social change which is quite more fundamental. Many social chang

by jariel 7y ago

It's really amazing how certain writers wax on about the future but are unable to describe the social change which is quite more fundamental. Many social changes that have happened were basically unthinkable in the 1950's, the words literally did not exist to describe them.

dsfyu404ed 7y ago
They never thought we'd be poor enough that both parents would need to work to maintain a middle class standard of living.
- jariel 7y ago
  This isn't fully true though. 'Middle class' means something vastly more dramatic than it did in 1959. Homes are 2x bigger, 2x nicer, they are fully automated (washing machine, dishwasher, microwave), we have internet, cellphones, 2.5 cars per home instead of 0.8, we travel farther and more often, there's infinitely more variety in food and every other commercial product etc.. Aside from real-estate - a family could live on one income if they wanted to give up all of those things. I'm not entirely disparaging your point, other than to say the entire system has changed, it's not like 1950's standards now cost 2x. But yes, surely it's a weird artifact of classical liberalism that 'freedom' is somehow implied to be 'now you have to work for money or starve'. Edit: I should add, that by any economic definition, if during one era only 'one parent' is working, and during a different era 'both parents' tend to be working, it's just a mathematical reality that those with only 'one parent working' will move down the economic ladder relative to others. This would be true before a single sociological artefact contextualised the fact.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- irrational 7y ago
  I don't know if that is true. I would say we are solidly middle class (our neighbors on our street include a paramedic, an elementary school teacher, a hospital receptionist, a paralegal, a yoga instructor, a non-profit office manager, etc.). My wife is a stay-at-home mother to our 7 children (though the 2 oldest are away at college) and hasn't had a paycheck since we were in college. We have 2 cars, a house with all the automated amenities, etc. I just work as a programmer making about $100k a year. After taxes, we live on about $4k a month.
  - irscott 7y ago
    7?!
    - rimlicker 7y ago
      Doesn't want his wife to upstage his ability to humblebrag on internet forums about his salary.. gotta keep her tied up with umbilical cords
  - nohuhu 7y ago
    When people ask me what my wife does for a living, I tell them she's working as a full time mom to our 4 kids. She likes that a lot more than being a "housewife". :)
  - fallingfrog 7y ago
    Ok, but as the median salary for an American citizen is $31,099 per year, you’re at least one, maybe two standard deviations above what a typical American makes.
tzs 7y ago
I remember reading something by, I think, either Asimov or Heinlein talking about how many people think that the utility of science fiction (beyond just transitory entertainment) is to predict what technological changes are coming. The author disagreed with that, saying that predicting future technological changes is not really important. What is important is predicting the social effects of those changes. That's what a good science fiction writer should be figuring out. They gave an example that went something like this. Imagine someone writing a science fiction story in say 1890 (although I suppose it might not have been called science fiction yet) set 100 years in the future in the United States. Predicting that people in 1990 would have horseless carriages instead of horses, and they would be widespread enough for nearly everyone to have one is interesting, but according to author not really insightful. The useful and insightful prediction would be for the writer to figure out, say, what affect that mobility would have on teen dating. In 1890, most of a teen's social life would involve other teens who lived within easy walking distance plus maybe some farther away that they met at school and either only socialize at school or at activities that are close enough to be in reasonably walking distance for both. But in the future, when families have more than one horseless carriage and that teen has easy access to one, their social life can involve anyone in town, or in neighboring towns. Also that 1890 teen that has to walk everywhere might have limited opportunity to get of parental supervision long enough to be alone with their boy/girlfriend. 1990 teens with their much greater mobility can much more easily get away from prying parental eyes and get up to things that would be scandalous in 1890.
- ip26 7y ago
  I think we've been learning people had no trouble getting up to scandalous things in 1890. It was just swept under the rug more carefully. (For example, see 23andme saga)
- novok 7y ago
  I think that also depends on city design too. A teen living in a dense city in 1920 with a working metro had a lot more options than the teen stuck in 1960s american suburbia or the 1990s teen living with helicopter parenting. And in the end, it didn't really matter that much, since most teens only dated people in the same school, church or other social institutions they attended anyway.
jdsully 7y ago
Its really hard to go back and look objectively too. The movie Philadelphia is now really hard to watch because of the aggressive homophobia, and yet that is how most of the US felt about gay people at the time. It almost seems unrealistic in how blatant and evil it was - yet nobody watching it at the time would have felt that way since those sorts of conversations were happening in bars and workplaces everywhere.
- jariel 7y ago
  Mores will change and change again. 'Sem sex' activity in Rome would have been even more normal than now for most citizens (the term 'same-sex' would have no analogy), but 'same-sex marriage' would have been nonsensical and/or scandalous. We think we are now 'very moral' but I'm doubtful of that. If you want to play the devil's advocate it's not hard to point out obvious hypocrisies in much of our current social line of thinking. During any era of 'change in one direction' all arguments in the opposite direction or all arguments that have nuance and don't 100% back the current populist trend are utterly oppressed as 'vile'. Alcohol is an interesting one that goes through phases: prohibition was hand and hand with women's suffrage because 66% of men were wasted every day or every few days and either not coming home, or beating their wives. Without that social context, we look at alcohol differently. So there's comment here about 'how technology changes people' which is exactly right. The big one is not how 'horse and buggy' affects dating, it's how contraception has affected us. 50 years ago - sex almost instantly led to children - period - no debate. If your daughter was sexually active, she would be pregnant almost immediately. Your son would technically be a father. This has vast, vast social consequences that affect every part of life. We now have a lot of 'sex positive' people who're ideology wouldn't really even be fathomable just a generation ago, let alone popular. Contraception is as big as the combustion engine.
  - svara 7y ago
    No doubt that contraception yes a big deal, but it's not actually that new a thing. This article has a lot of interesting detail, going back to antiquity. It really started to pick up steam in the mid 19th century. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_birth_control https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_birth_control One interesting detail is that the sudden drop in birth rates that happened around the introduction of the pill also happened in countries where that never became a very popular method of contraception, Japan being an example.
jansan 7y ago
Snowflake had only one meaning in the 50s.

by jariel 7y ago

dsfyu404ed 7y ago

They never thought we'd be poor enough that both parents would need to work to maintain a middle class standard of living.

jariel 7y ago
This isn't fully true though. 'Middle class' means something vastly more dramatic than it did in 1959. Homes are 2x bigger, 2x nicer, they are fully automated (washing machine, dishwasher, microwave), we have internet, cellphones, 2.5 cars per home instead of 0.8, we travel farther and more often, there's infinitely more variety in food and every other commercial product etc.. Aside from real-estate - a family could live on one income if they wanted to give up all of those things. I'm not entirely disparaging your point, other than to say the entire system has changed, it's not like 1950's standards now cost 2x. But yes, surely it's a weird artifact of classical liberalism that 'freedom' is somehow implied to be 'now you have to work for money or starve'. Edit: I should add, that by any economic definition, if during one era only 'one parent' is working, and during a different era 'both parents' tend to be working, it's just a mathematical reality that those with only 'one parent working' will move down the economic ladder relative to others. This would be true before a single sociological artefact contextualised the fact.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
irrational 7y ago
I don't know if that is true. I would say we are solidly middle class (our neighbors on our street include a paramedic, an elementary school teacher, a hospital receptionist, a paralegal, a yoga instructor, a non-profit office manager, etc.). My wife is a stay-at-home mother to our 7 children (though the 2 oldest are away at college) and hasn't had a paycheck since we were in college. We have 2 cars, a house with all the automated amenities, etc. I just work as a programmer making about $100k a year. After taxes, we live on about $4k a month.
- irscott 7y ago
  7?!
  - rimlicker 7y ago
    Doesn't want his wife to upstage his ability to humblebrag on internet forums about his salary.. gotta keep her tied up with umbilical cords
- nohuhu 7y ago
  When people ask me what my wife does for a living, I tell them she's working as a full time mom to our 4 kids. She likes that a lot more than being a "housewife". :)
- fallingfrog 7y ago
  Ok, but as the median salary for an American citizen is $31,099 per year, you’re at least one, maybe two standard deviations above what a typical American makes.

tzs 7y ago

I remember reading something by, I think, either Asimov or Heinlein talking about how many people think that the utility of science fiction (beyond just transitory entertainment) is to predict what technological changes are coming. The author disagreed with that, saying that predicting future technological changes is not really important. What is important is predicting the social effects of those changes. That's what a good science fiction writer should be figuring out. They gave an example that went something like this. Imagine someone writing a science fiction story in say 1890 (although I suppose it might not have been called science fiction yet) set 100 years in the future in the United States. Predicting that people in 1990 would have horseless carriages instead of horses, and they would be widespread enough for nearly everyone to have one is interesting, but according to author not really insightful. The useful and insightful prediction would be for the writer to figure out, say, what affect that mobility would have on teen dating. In 1890, most of a teen's social life would involve other teens who lived within easy walking distance plus maybe some farther away that they met at school and either only socialize at school or at activities that are close enough to be in reasonably walking distance for both. But in the future, when families have more than one horseless carriage and that teen has easy access to one, their social life can involve anyone in town, or in neighboring towns. Also that 1890 teen that has to walk everywhere might have limited opportunity to get of parental supervision long enough to be alone with their boy/girlfriend. 1990 teens with their much greater mobility can much more easily get away from prying parental eyes and get up to things that would be scandalous in 1890.

ip26 7y ago
I think we've been learning people had no trouble getting up to scandalous things in 1890. It was just swept under the rug more carefully. (For example, see 23andme saga)
novok 7y ago
I think that also depends on city design too. A teen living in a dense city in 1920 with a working metro had a lot more options than the teen stuck in 1960s american suburbia or the 1990s teen living with helicopter parenting. And in the end, it didn't really matter that much, since most teens only dated people in the same school, church or other social institutions they attended anyway.

jdsully 7y ago

Its really hard to go back and look objectively too. The movie Philadelphia is now really hard to watch because of the aggressive homophobia, and yet that is how most of the US felt about gay people at the time. It almost seems unrealistic in how blatant and evil it was - yet nobody watching it at the time would have felt that way since those sorts of conversations were happening in bars and workplaces everywhere.

jariel 7y ago
Mores will change and change again. 'Sem sex' activity in Rome would have been even more normal than now for most citizens (the term 'same-sex' would have no analogy), but 'same-sex marriage' would have been nonsensical and/or scandalous. We think we are now 'very moral' but I'm doubtful of that. If you want to play the devil's advocate it's not hard to point out obvious hypocrisies in much of our current social line of thinking. During any era of 'change in one direction' all arguments in the opposite direction or all arguments that have nuance and don't 100% back the current populist trend are utterly oppressed as 'vile'. Alcohol is an interesting one that goes through phases: prohibition was hand and hand with women's suffrage because 66% of men were wasted every day or every few days and either not coming home, or beating their wives. Without that social context, we look at alcohol differently. So there's comment here about 'how technology changes people' which is exactly right. The big one is not how 'horse and buggy' affects dating, it's how contraception has affected us. 50 years ago - sex almost instantly led to children - period - no debate. If your daughter was sexually active, she would be pregnant almost immediately. Your son would technically be a father. This has vast, vast social consequences that affect every part of life. We now have a lot of 'sex positive' people who're ideology wouldn't really even be fathomable just a generation ago, let alone popular. Contraception is as big as the combustion engine.
- svara 7y ago
  No doubt that contraception yes a big deal, but it's not actually that new a thing. This article has a lot of interesting detail, going back to antiquity. It really started to pick up steam in the mid 19th century. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_birth_control https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_birth_control One interesting detail is that the sudden drop in birth rates that happened around the introduction of the pill also happened in countries where that never became a very popular method of contraception, Japan being an example.

jansan 7y ago

Snowflake had only one meaning in the 50s.