What will we have to fight about?
It’s been about a month since CMK and I recorded out conversation about wars in the future, but this idea keeps coming back to me. A good thing, too, since I write science fiction, and every story needs its conflict.
Take for example the first episode of Continuum. Obviously I’m a big fan of strong, time-traveling women in power-suits, but I really wonder if we’ll still be fighting the big government/big corporation war 65 years in the future. The separation between government and business may be an issue now, but playing the question out in the 2070s is like a 1940s sci-fi story about the 21st century battle between fascism and communism. We have so many more important things to fight about these days than our grandparents’ half-baked political rhetoric (institutionalized racism versus totalitarian denial of human nature…ooh, which should I pick?), and I’m sure our own grandchildren will feel the same way about the issues that happen to be important to us.
So what will we have to fight over in the future? I’m sure there are lots of things (add your comments below!) but I’d like to focus on one that came out of a twitter conversation I had recently with Steve LeCouilliard, author of Una the Blade (another strong woman with roots in the Conan mythos! Either I’ve tapped into a deep throbbing well of cultural trend or I’m not as creative as I thought I was).
The problem of our grandchildren will be cultural homogenization.
As communication and travel becomes ever easier and cheaper, people living in different places will be increasingly exposed to eachother’s ideas. Customs and practices that seem better (i.e more useful, more rewarding, more profitable) will spread at the expense of local customs. You’ve been denying your daughters education for thousands of years? Guess what: societies that let their girls go to college are out-competing yours. Arbitrarily declare some part of your population untouchable? Fight wars based on ideas of national pride that were invented out of whole cloth by state propagandists? Don’t do that, either. And by the way, here are some medical practices that will extend your lifespan and lower infant mortality. Globalization, the connection of ever-larger networks of commerce and communication, forms the basis of peace, tolerance, and freedom.
But at the cost of diversity. We have the same basic kinds of skyscrapers, cars, and computers in every place humans have skyscrapers, cars, and computers. There is some choice (laptop versus server stack), but those are machines built for different purposes, not the regional variations that make the older technologies of fashion, housing, and cuisine so interestingly different in different places. And as time goes on, don’t you notice that everyone’s wearing business suits, living in apartments, and drinking coca-cola?
Even worse, how do you know the practices you import will work in your region (remember the problems with irrigating Afghanistan using American methods…which also turned out not to work in America)? House construction is and must be different in different climates, where local, traditional practices still work better than imported ones. Import the wrong ideas and you could end up living in an impoverished wasteland.
And I can see how that might make people angry. A lot of the rhetoric behind religious terrorism (of whichever religion) boils down to: “they are trying to turn us into copies of themselves and we must stop them.” And the problem doesn’t have to be religious. Even secular Americans think threats to “our way of life” should be dealt with violently.
Now what will happen when North America is no longer a net exporter of best practices? What happens when American parents see their kids drinking European Fanta, wearing Indian saris, speaking Mandarin, and worshiping Allah? They’ll be just as mad as any froth-in-his-beard ex-patriarch in the Himalayan foothills, wondering why his child bride has to go to school now. But unlike some goofball in the mountains, American and western European ex-superpowers will be in a position to do something about their anger.
The question of globalization/homogenization will grow teeth then, you can be sure.
