What do you think would change the most in the future?

climate

Odd that you mention it in the body of the question… but the biggest change the future has in store… in my oppinion… is a lockdown on opinion.

We’re seeing more and more of it now.. the suppression of free opinion. Free opinion is attacked as criminal and vilified. Free exercise of opinion is labeled as an attack in and of itself and considered as an act of war.

We even see the suppression of it here, on Funadvice, with the implementation of the mature category. The need to genuflect to sponsorship has placed a demand that incendiary or discourteous language… especially in regards to our warfaring… be resigned to a less accessible venue.

Free opinion is the biggest enemy of the power structure. The free exercise thereof has spurred actions that those of us who claim to abhor totalitarianism, accept.

Europeans and Canadians face imprisonment for espousing unpopular sentiment regarding the official accounting of World War II.

American like the Chinese dissidents before them… seem to be subject to an executive ordered drone strike. Anwar Al-Awlaki… the American citizen… was summarily assassinated by order of the president without ever being proven guilty of anything except espousing his support for Al-Qaeda.

What form the expression of opinion takes in the future is not exactly certain… but what seems to be inevitable… is that whatever opinion is expressed… will most likely be a collective one.

The economy (to get worse for many), higher taxes and less freedom, more wars and conflict, environmental and weather related tragedies, epidemics, evil things being seen as good and good being seen as evil. Sorry to be pessimistic (I’m usually not), so leaving all that stuff aside I’ll agree with Miss Brooke and say technology.

I disagree, I think oppression will become less and less. People are much more open and have much more rights than they once did. Many places no longer have the arbitrary rule that Kings once had, difference in religion is seen more and more and no longer considered heresy when one practices a different religion. While some countries freedom of speech is still oppressed, more places have freedom of speech though not saying there haven’t been unfair cases of oppression. Mature content, sexual activity and fornication was once entirely scandolous and would ruin a person is now seen as a normal thing.

Though we still have communism and oppression in places like the communist China. Actually, China’s rule isn’t so horrid as many years ago when my family fled because Hong Kong was being put back into Chinda’s rule from Britain. I think as a general population, our world is growing to be more open and free slowly.

Individual sovereignty is inversely proportionate to the power of the state. I agree… liberty under the divine right of kings doctrine was severely limited… however… the power the modern state has to ferret out dissension… and enforce its regulations supplants any disparity in the feudal age you’re referring to and our modern time.

The abuses under feudalism eventually forced the villein class to demand the king acknowledge the limitations upon his reign. America based its Constitution upon the Magna Charta that stayed the hand of King John. Since the signing of the Constitution however… we see that as the state grows… the ability the Constitution has to stay its power wanes. In the last century millions of Chinese and Russian dissidents were exterminated by their government. Both under totalitarian forms of statehood. I know of no equivalent from the feudal age.

In my opinion… we’re not seeing a more open society… only a shifting zeitgeist. What once was taboo is no longer… but mob rule is still alive and well… it’s only a mob with a different mentality.