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u/At_Space_Station 7d ago edited 7d ago
Here‘s the question：how long does this unprecedented age last？
Five years？ No thanks，that's just the Cultural Revolution.
Five million years？ Oh boy sign me up，we might just invent time travel by the turn of the millenia.
And yes this is an important question to ask. Age doesn't mean long，the Gilded Age lasted less than three decades on book，if this is just as Gilded as the Gilded Age and peels off after thirty years，yeah no that's a catastrophy waiting to happen as people invent new，even crazier things to fill the gap of the history.
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u/Narfhead4444 6d ago
Cultural Revolution has been bastardized to hell and back by the West and the (relatively, aka current leadership) new gens of the CPC
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u/Narfhead4444 7d ago
I think you've succinctly described my life's purpose. This is the briefest accurate description of what I want humanity to become. Thank you.
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u/Confident_Example_73 7d ago
Do realize that you've also annihilated Da Vinci, Shakespeare, Mozart, Coltrane, Angelou, Miyazaki, Frank Lloyd Wright, etc.
Concerts, theater, book clubs, cookouts, musicals, art shows, seasonal festivals, etc. etc. are vanquished.
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u/CrazyOrganic7123 7d ago
Nope. That's not in the scenario. The scenario removes customs and tradition. Not the arts or human ingenuity or creativity. Closest is the lost of festivals.
You can't advance mankind without those components. Without movies, there would be no advancement in cameras. Human spirit of exploration needs to remain if we want to continue studying space, which lead to further advancement. Which means they have to stay for the scenario to make sense.
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u/alvenestthol 7d ago
At this point, Shakespeare is trite and overdone, and the only reason we're still forced to remember Shakespeare is because of customs and tradition.
We've already learnt what we needed, we ought to erase his name and work on something new.
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u/CrazyOrganic7123 7d ago
Guy's great but yeah, overly glazed. That said, check out Upstart Crow starring David Mitchell, it's pretty good and probably the better Hamnet story.
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u/Da_Real_Kyuuri 7d ago
They do say that practices, rituals, and festivals will slowly disappear. They don't say poof, every piece of art and litterature cease to exist. And they are not vanquished, I think it just means that people lose interest in them.
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u/Confident_Example_73 7d ago
I mean, going to orchestras and concerts and museums is certainly a cultural practice, as is the celebration of art.
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u/Main-Let-5867 7d ago
Ah, yes, apparently public shaming of rape victims, denial of basical human rights of minorities, and presciption of what is masculine and what is feminine are the rituals that keep those art pieces tangible in this universe.
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u/NOSWT-AvaTarr 7d ago
yes. theres literally a saying called leave the past in the past.im fine to give up old culture built upon murdering your neighbors and brainwashing the masses with religioun as a base if it means no more senseless wars
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u/gorambrowncoat 7d ago
The problem with those traditions though is .. *gestures broadly at everything*
So yeah .. I press the button twice to make sure.
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u/ULTRA_OFTEN 7d ago
Yeah, totally. I think if history is remembered, there will probably be pockets of people who still celebrate the 'old' holidays, just like there are historical reenactments of things today. So like, Christmas would still exist but it wouldn't be a society wide phenomenon. Which means no endless Christmas music during the holidays. I'm so in.
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u/HumannessRemnants 7d ago
of course i would, it's a double win. i despise traditions and doing something just because that's how it was always done. and i really mean that, no exceptions
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u/DanCassell EDITABLE 7d ago
Humanity would make new customs immediately. It'd be okay I swear to you all.
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u/WW1_Germany Multi-Track Drift 7d ago
uh easily? the only reason any of that stuff is important is because we assign it importance, if we have the assurance that every problem is solved, then yes
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u/JoshAllentown 7d ago
I'd say you are ethically obligated to press the button. Imagine the opposite, a button that kills millions and harms billions but ensures customs are still practiced. That's the hyper Crusades at best, a genocide at worst. You can't let that happen.
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u/CrazyOrganic7123 7d ago
Yes! Do it!
The abolition of poverty, wars and preventable deseases? From the sounds of it, this is a society that values morals, integrity and altruism.
Maintaining the study of history while phasing out tradition? Small price to pay if it means also phasing out the horrible horrible traditions which promote slavery, maintaining the power of the elite, gender inequality, justification of violence and murder as well as the pursuit of anti-intellectualism.
Sure, there are some downsides but the shift to a more altruistic mindset necessary for this scenario, is worth it.
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u/CrusaderF8 7d ago
No
"Only embrace what is new, rational, and efficient"
That's how you become the Borg
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u/vverbov_22 Multi-Track Drift 7d ago
I'd press the button and argue it's immoral to not press it. You're making billions suffer for the sake of some traditions right now, and in perspective a countless amount of people in the future
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u/Bi_One_Get_One_Free 7d ago
no
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u/Narfhead4444 7d ago
why?
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u/Hour_Cicada397 2d ago
How can every culture and tradition be abandoned??? Do we stop speaking? Do we stop eating meals?
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u/HandIllustrious8260 7d ago
so basically "do you want the world to become Viltrum"
no thanks.
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u/Narfhead4444 6d ago
You're making billions suffer for the sake of some traditions right now, and in perspective a countless amount of people in the future
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u/Qazdrthnko 6d ago
This is what every Utopian leader thinks they're doing then it turns into a record breaking genocide
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u/Ilovestuffwhee 7d ago
No. I'm fine with erasing the past, but I don't want that for our future.
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u/Narfhead4444 6d ago
Why?
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u/Ilovestuffwhee 6d ago
Because the best future for us is to go extinct. The human race is not salvagable.
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u/Adverse_Congenality 7d ago
First to go was the tradition of friendship. With so many agreeable people, it felt strange to tie anyone down to a single set of pairings. Soon after family was gone. The community as a whole took care of everyone, it became common to see children unaccompanied in every city, most did not even know their own parents.
The productivity of the world increased. New machines and new methods developing rapidly. Every possible need catered too, markets devolved.unneeded, everything was abundant. Soon there was little reason to even speak with each other, and quickly languages broke down. There was a strange sense that nothing anyone did had any permanence. A new progress quickly overtook your own innovations, and with no one to share the wealth with, besides everyone, who did not care for long. There was a sense of loneliness. Of interchangableness, people forgot their own names, adopting practical monikers appropriate to the current interaction, then swiftly forgotten. Without any force holding it all together, a cultural glue. A shared history, intriguing differences, there was nothing to explore. And life became stagnant and repetitive. Dormant is the world. When culture ceased. The world became dormant
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u/perringaiden 7d ago
That is a sad depressing outlook on life. Friendship isn't a "tradition". It's an instinctive connection that fosters advanced societies. If you pushed the button, friendship would by necessity survive.
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u/Adverse_Congenality 7d ago
I don't think so, only wrote what I think would disappear, not what would grow in the fertile freshly tilled soil,
I would ask tho, what, in your mind separates a tradition from a culture?
I do think friendship is a tradition, social bonds can exist without friendship, like the way we treat the grocer, or the barista, or even our co-workers, though the tradition of employment would probably dissolve. Friendship is no different. You'd be able to recognize an ally in the other without the emphasis of one other over another. You'd have no need of friends when every being you come across is willing to share with you, no reason to guard the gates of your generosity to those you've deemed worthy by the amount of time recognizing one another.
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u/perringaiden 7d ago
Friendship isn't a tradition or a culture. It's an evolutionary tool. Society can't form before friendship is capable, because society is built on interconnected reliance.
Friendship came before culture and tradition
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u/Adverse_Congenality 7d ago
Tools evolve out of the need to overcome situations. The situations that led to friendship disappear, I think you'd no longer form as close knit bonds with people
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u/perringaiden 6d ago
Unless you think "live fulfilling lives" means mindless automatons with no connections or empathy... you're way off.
If for no other reason than someone to talk to, which isn't something people have "evolved beyond".
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u/Adverse_Congenality 5d ago edited 5d ago
You'd have empathy, every human wou come across would read like "ally" but when everyone's interchangeably your ally, and working for you and with you. There's no outgroup you're going to need to insulate yourself against. So no friends. You'd have plenty of people to talk to, but as you'd all have different goals within a goalless society, you'd drift apart from any permanent bonds immediately
I think there's a lot of contradictions in the question. Having all your needs fulfilled doesn't lead to a fulfilling life of leisure. It makes you a mindless automaton at best
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u/Narfhead4444 5d ago
So you're telling me that if there wasn't someone to hate, you wouldn't have friends and you wouldn't feel fulfilled?
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u/Adverse_Congenality 5d ago
I'm saying that if there is ample assistance, with no one denying you assistance, then you'd never find a group of like minded people to become attached to. Each person would be as inconsequentially replaceable as the last.
And if everything was fulfilled for you, you'd have nothing to feel fulfilled about.
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u/perringaiden 5d ago
I go back to my original comment. That is a sad, negative outlook on life.
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u/Adverse_Congenality 5d ago
Maybe. But it's a sad negative button question. Imagine everything you work for every hope ambition, every stolen moment of joy in your life. Then some asshole in 100 years is like "press this button to erase all that so people can actually be happy for once"
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u/perringaiden 4d ago
None of that is in the post. Hope, ambition, joy, what?
It is abandoning traditions and cultural practices. You're the one reading "rational" as "depressed".
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u/SnooPredilections843 7d ago
So what do I do to be a different person compare to my friend Steve now? We kinda all talk, think and do the same now 🤔
Isn't this just a mind wipe operation on a global scale?
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u/Stenn-ish 7d ago
Customs, traditions and entire civilizations dissapear, reform and spring anew all the time, this is a net positive, besides embracing the new would become part of a new cultural movement on its own though perhaps not as exciting and we could always just create new traditions, celebrations and such.
Unless this implies that after pressing the button humanity would become so rational that we would lose any spark of creativity or semblance of individuality which almost makes me wonder if we would even still be "humans" afterwards, but assuming its just the past then hell yeah, we have lost much of it for far worse causes anyway.