The world in 2026

[belamyi]

What will it be like?

 

[Harke the Boeotarch]

Nine years older.

 

[DantheManFL]

 

[eastofeden]

View attachment 1241546

 

[belamyi]

Nine years older.

 

[Willie Boy]

For at least 6 years it will have looked something like this:

 

[Thad1527]

You know, the world in 2008 looked very much like the world of 2017. Major technological breakthroughs happened...but they didn't much change architecture or transportation.

 

[Willie Boy]

True, but Trump wasn't in office during any part of that 9yr period of time.

 

[Kulindahr]

One fifth to one quarter of all existing jobs will be gone, including things like legal assistant.

If we haven't introduced a UBI (universal basic income) by then, we will see poverty that makes the worst of the Great Depression look mild.

 

[belamyi]

You know, the world in 2008 looked very much like the world of 2017. Major technological breakthroughs happened...but they didn't much change architecture or transportation.

That's because they are still 20th century. I have come to think that the real 21st century (new political, economical, social dynamics) would kick off around 2026, hence my question.

 

[Willie Boy]

That's because they are still 20th century. I have come to think that the real 21st century would kick off around 2026, hence my question.

And what do you base this belief on?

 

[belamyi]

And what do you base this belief on?

Faith

No, seriously... look at the period 1775-1825, 1875-1925 and... 1975-(so far)2017: as much as the Western world had been changing and had changed by 1810 or 1910, compare those years with 1830 and 1930.
The problem with periodizations is that silly academics have always considered the starting point of a punctual event inside a much more general process of change (for example, the 1492 arrival of Columbus to the "West Indies", with the start of a whole new era.
If you look at politics, economy, society, even the arts of XVIth century Europe, you will see that it is still totally "late Middle Age", "Gothic", closer to XVth or even XIVth century than to XVIIth century.

Oh, I also realize you are not familiar with my old "belamian" decades

1925-1936
1937-1946
1947-1958
1959-1965
1966-1973
1974-1983
1984-1995
1996-2005
2006-2017
2018-2025

 

[Harke the Boeotarch]

You know, the world in 2008 looked very much like the world of 2017. Major technological breakthroughs happened...but they didn't much change architecture or transportation.

The Western world has stood still. In the meantime China and Arabia developed from developing countries to countries more developed than we are.

 

[zoltanspawn]

Lots more precious babies will have been born to solve the problem of under-utilized spaces. Hopefully, the danger rhinoceroses pose will have been eliminated and there will be beautiful sunsets every day.

 

[Willie Boy]

Faith

No, seriously... look at the period 1775-1825, 1875-1925 and... 1975-(so far)2017: as much as the Western world had been changing and had changed by 1810 or 1910, compare those years with 1830 and 1930.
The problem with periodizations is that silly academics have always considered the starting point of a punctual event inside a much more general process of change (for example, the 1492 arrival of Columbus to the "West Indies", with the start of a whole new era.
If you look at politics, economy, society, even the arts of XVIth century Europe, you will see that it is still totally "late Middle Age", "Gothic", closer to XVth or even XIVth century than to XVIIth century.

Oh, I also realize you are not familiar with my old "belamian" decades

1925-1936
1937-1946
1947-1958
1959-1965
1966-1973
1974-1983
1984-1995
1996-2005
2006-2017
2018-2025

And how many of those time periods were you actually around for to see the supposed stagnation?

 

[belamyi]

And how many of those time periods were you actually around for to see the supposed stagnation?

Who talked about stagnation? Not me. Where, when did I talk about "stagnation"?

About the other question, you are questioning the very concept of history: I have been told that I was already alive in 1975, but I can't tell a thing about my personal experience having lived at that period.

History is about the records of things past, not about personal experiences; and those "records of things past" depend on the investigation, verification, questioning of what is said to have happened, as well as on the prevention of negationism of actual facts.

 

[belamyi]

The Western world has stood still. In the meantime China and Arabia developed from developing countries to countries more developed than we are.

That is one of the most clueless, silliest things you I have ever read from you, if you mean that seriously, and one of the feeblest jokes, if you were just fooling around.

 

[Willie Boy]

Who talked about stagnation? Not me. Where, when did I talk about "stagnation"?

Your whole premise is based on stagnation.

About the other question, you are questioning the very concept of history: I have been told that I was already alive in 1975, but I can't tell a thing about my personal experience having lived at that period.

So you know nothing about what you lived through..... Only what is said by others.

History is about the records of things past, not about personal experiences; and those "records of things past" depend on the investigation, verification, questioning of what is said to have happened, as well as on the prevention of negationism of actual facts.

History is all about the interpretation of reality by those in power. They dictate what is written down as "facts". History can be questioned by personal recollections..... Which is why I prefer to hear 1st hand knowledge versus "historical facts". I want what people actually saw/heard/lived through, not the "politically correct" homogenized and pasteurized after product that the "powers that be" want me to know.

I don't get your preference to go by what other people tell you about the time you lived through over your own experiences and knowledge of the time.

 

[belamyi]

Your whole premise is based on stagnation.

No, but since you seem unable to explain yourself, I will try to make it for you: I talk about regularity, which is not mere repetition either. I am not talking about a general view of history, I am referring to a pattern that has been developing for, at least, the past four hundred years, and that only in the so-called Western world.

It is like calling the economic cycles of capitalism in those past four centuries "stagnation", merely because a same pattern of bull and bust has been developing itself with certain regularities that, I repeat, are not mere repetitions: it's also like saying that nature has "stagnated" because you see the same animals and plants doing the same year after year.

Did I explain YOUR perception of "stagnation" rightly?

So you know nothing about what you lived through..... Only what is said by others.

Exactly: there is no "direct", immediate experience of anything, even when you believe you are totally conscious and aware, you can always be mistaken. In fact, we live through assumptions more than through certainties: otherwise, doubt would kill us like a doubting ass.

So history, like science in general, is precisely about the continuous investigation concerning what one assumes to be certain, what lies behind the practical necessities of life. That is why science so often seems "useless" (like Geometry seemed to Descartes, for example) when it goes ahead of the practical necessities and applications of knowledge that one ignored up to those at first sight "useless" discoveries.

History is all about the interpretation of reality by those in power. They dictate what is written down as "facts". History can be questioned by personal recollections..... Which is why I prefer to hear 1st hand knowledge versus "historical facts". I want what people actually saw/heard/lived through, not the "politically correct" homogenized and pasteurized after product that the "powers that be" want me to know.

I don't get your preference to go by what other people tell you about the time you lived through over your own experiences and knowledge of the time.

No, that is a secondary degree, and not just about history, but about life in general: history, morals, arts, success... those that you call "the powers" [that be] dictate the certainties, the assumptions I was referring to previously... who tell you what economic theory to believe, what historical truth to believe, what sexuality, what social habits to follow as "good and normal", even what professional activities are more desirable, even if they do not always make any of that directly, explicitly.

But what you say you prefer is just as dangerous, because personal experiences and memories get mixed up with personal beliefs: haven't you ever been in the company of a few people, and one of them, mistakenly, believes to have heard something that the "personal experience" of the rest, yourself included, knows to be "wrong"... that other person who is wrong says "I know what I heard" and, truly, only that person "knows" what that persons BELIEVES he or she has heard.

Again, you are assuming too much: I do not get "a preference" on relying on what other people tell me. I had referred, in my previous example, to the time in which I was just a few months old: what can I possibly remember? Of course I must rely on what my mother tells me about having been born in my tenth month of gestation. But you assume that that is ALL I belief, and do not enquire further while, on the cntrary, what I said is precisely that I take just any piece of information as worthwhile taking into account and investigating, but NOT as a FINAL belief.