Why future generations will discount my words of wisdom

The Korea Times

The Korea Times

Opinion

Michael Breen

Why future generations will discount my words of wisdom

Posted : 2016-05-02 16:24

Updated : 2016-05-02 16:31

By Michael Breen

One night last week, after I had wobbled home from a meal of braised lamb and too much wine, a question bubbled to the surface of my mind, followed by a thought.

First, the question: Just as in our age we look back on the past and wonder how otherwise nice and sophisticated people could own slaves or send children up chimneys, is there anything about our civilized world today that will disturb future generations?

Besides the obvious ― warfare, poverty and loneliness ― I've often wondered whether our descendants might not redefine our liberal democratic governments as some kind of authoritarian dictatorships because of the sheer amount of our money they hoover up in taxes.

But on this night, two new ones occurred to me. Is it likely in the not-too-distant future that the use of alcohol and recreational drugs, and meat-eating will go the way that cigarette smoking is going step by rapid step into the ashtray of history?

The prospect may seem unlikely now, but this type of change could happen very quickly. Imagine, for example, the impact if the curtain were lifted on slaughterhouses. If middle school students were taken on an educational tour through an abattoir just once, they could become vegans for life.

That is because, in modern middle class society, there is a growing tendency to tiptoe through life exuding empathy for others, for our pets, for the environment. We are out of touch with how the burgers and cold cuts end up on our plate. If required to participate in the daily massacre, I suspect a minority would get macho about it but that a majority would balk.

If the current trend of empathy continues, we might well witness a new hippie trend minus the hedonism of the 1960s version with people opting to live with integrity, taking good care of themselves and acting as stewards of nature.

Besides meat-eating, such a trend could make alcohol and drugs unfashionable, not for reasons of religious temperance, but more on the grounds that mind-altering knocks a person out of integrity.

As some people predict with cigarette smoking, I reckon that once consumption of alcohol and meat go under ten percent in a society, the portcullis of tolerance will come down and they will be banned.

Then came the thought: what will future generations for who meat-eating and drinking are outlawed think of their ancestors who indulged?

Will they look upon those of us who fess up in print ― as I have just done ―as befuddled sadists?

Will meat-eating especially appear so cruel and unpleasant to our descendants that anything sensible someone from our era has to say might be discounted simply because the thinker was a meat-eater? Will trying to take confessed meat-eaters seriously be as hard as trying to artistically appreciate Hitler's paintings?

I don't want to overstate this. Just as history accepts the contributions of Julius Caesar and George Washington to their own eras even though they owned slaves, so the importance of people like Barack Obama and Ban Ki-moon will be given proper treatment despite the fact they tucked into beef sandwiches.

It's artists and intellectuals who risk being discounted. Like, for example, the way the early 20th century poet Ezra Pound and even TS Eliot are dismissed in some quarters for having preferred fascism over communism.

In the future even The Korea Times columnists might find their fine contributions to global debates similarly dismissed. Imagine a PhD student in 2066 trawling through early 21st century columns in the English papers in Korea for a thesis about where society was on the eve of re-unification or some such theme.

The student might note that I had one or two useful things to say, but then feel compelled to add, "But he was probably a degenerate because he openly confessed to eating meat and drinking alcohol without making any effort to hide it."

Put that way, I am inclined to agree with her.

Michael Breen is the CEO of Insight Communications Consultants, a public relations company, and author of "The Koreans" and "Kim Jong-il: North Korea's Dear Leader."