by Roger Bourke White Jr., copyright June 2014
When people are living in the Post-Snap TES societies, what will they care about? What will their attention be focused on?
Much will be the same as today, because instinctive human thinking changes slowly. But the "stuff" around us changes quickly and that makes a difference. It changes what the instinctive thinking focuses on. The neat part is that difference is often surprising.
One of the big differences is that in TES people will not be worrying about basic necessities such as food, shelter and health care. But this will not be counted as a blessing, this will be taken for granted. People will still get outraged and feel gross injustice has been committed. In fact, probably more so than today because the harsh reality of finding these basics won't constrain people. So people will still do a lot of pissing and moaning and bitching, ...The question is: over what?
Let's start by reviewing the instinctive thinking styles that will still be a constant in the TES worlds.
The list of instinctive thinking topics is well defined today, even if it is not called that. Look at the categories in books stores that are put at the front of the store. Another place ripe with instinctive thinking categories is the magazine racks in supermarkets -- people who buy reading materials while shopping are not looking for mind taxing topics. The supermarket list is surprisingly limited and has been surprisingly constant for decades. On it are categories such as food, fashion, health, spirituality, hunting and gossip. These categories are inspired by instinctive thinking, and these categories are going to survive in the TES environment. What will surprise is how they interact with the "sufficient stuff... always sufficient stuff"-environment of the TES world.
Instinct is one element in the puzzle of what people will be thinking about, another is diversity.
Diversity will grow. There will be lots and lots of different kinds of material things for people to be interested in. These different material things will support lots of new kinds of activities as well. One example of a new activity and culture is skateboarding. Skateboarding flowered massively after the grippy, polyurethane wheels were introduced in 1972. Once this much better skateboard could be invented, a whole new sporting culture evolved around it. This is an example of expanding prosperity supporting expanding diversity. More of this kind of thing will be happening around the world, and the various cultures around the world will all be diverse within themselves as well as varied from culture to culture. Note that skateboarding flowered because it is mixing an instinct -- recreation -- with a newly available material possibility: the skateboard itself.
In addition to diverse cultures, there will be diverse counter-cultures. Those who desire to break away from a cultural norm will have the prosperity to do it successfully. Other changes will also be happening. Cultures will strengthen while nations will weaken -- national boundaries will have less meaning. In their place regional boundaries and cultural boundaries will take on more meaning.
Because of this diversity what people will be thinking about will also be diverse. The instincts part will be common to most people, but the material culture around various people will be different and that will have a big effect on what they are thinking about. If a person has chosen a quiet lifestyle filled with hand crafting, they will have completely different things on their mind from the person who chooses a life of networking and night-clubbing.
An unexpectedly good example of future forecasting in this topic of what people will be thinking about is shown in the movie Zardoz (1974). In that movie the people living in the domes are experiencing a TES life, and the movie shows some surprisingly advanced portrayal gems mixed in with a lot of usual sci-fi action/adventure dross. Here are some of the gems:
o some fairly decent human-computer interfacing. I recall a human arguing with the computer about how to expend computing resources.
o immortality through cloning and consciousness transferring, with memories and personalities maintained in cyber.
o a big crisis about what people should be doing. There is a lot of hipster-style activity going on, but that kind of activity is not sufficient for all, and many people are falling into deep apathy. This is a serious plague afflicting dome life that the locals haven't found a cure for.
o there is future-style disputing and dispute resolution: people who lose serious disputes are punished not by death (because everyone in the dome is immortal) but by aging and its attendant enfeeblement. They are then exiled to the old people's place.
These are all in the movie Zardoz. Except for the reincarnation through consciousness transfer to clones, these all seem to be likely elements in Post-Snap living. Another difference is I don't envision impenetrable domes isolating the blessed from primitive impoverished barbarians living outside the gates. There will be insiders who consider the outsiders ignorant and near savages. But, poor as they may seem to the rich, the poor will still be living urban, and with more material wealth than middle class people have today, although it will be of a different form. For instance, these poor people may have to survive on getting around in driverless cars that are little more than taxis, and their personal phones are <gasp> still attached to the outside! not implanted.
So, what else are people going to be thinking about in these various TES worlds? What will be on their minds? What will they be taking conscious action on?
Interest in sports and personal athletic accomplishments will strengthen. Camping, hiking, gymnastics, yoga, these kinds of activities will fill many people's days. Striving to complete a landmark accomplishment in a personal athletic activity will grow. The traffic jams for climbing Mount Everest and other high-profile peaks will grow. Bicycling across the US will be done by thousands each year.
Along with personal accomplishment, team sports will remain popular. Dealing with the harsh realities of various kinds of sporting arenas will remain a style of harsh reality many people pay lots of attention to. Many will watch, and many will participate in the various ways average people can.
Virtual entertainment is going to consume a lot of people's time, and it will be accessed in many forms. The virtual versions of sporting activities mentioned above will be popular time and attention consumers. So will traditional virtual entertainment styles such as role playing games and first person shooters. All-in-all, people will deal a lot with simulations. These simulations will consist of a wide range of mixes between simulating realities of various sorts and simulating fantasies of various sorts.
Even though few people will be driving in the real world, driving simulations will remain popular. Related: Fast and Furious-style movies will become a staple. They will occupy a thinking niche similar to what Western movies did in the middle half of the 20th century.
At first simulations will strive to be more and more real, as they do today. With time, there will come a small backlash, and some people will praise simulations that are more like impressionist paintings -- something designed to be pleasing to look at rather than more realistic. A 2014 example of this happening in movies is The Grand Budapest Hotel.
Gossip will remain a large part of many people's day. How people will gossip will change as the communication revolution unfolds. What will remain constant is passing along juicy news and being judgmental about it. How to act upon those judgments will also change as the communication revolution unfolds. There will be constant formal pleas to be tolerant and recognize the virtue of free speech, but those will be undermined by instinctive prescriptive thinking which will produce "Yes, but..." laws and regulations. This is the same sort of dynamic that in the 2000's had people talking about tolerance on one hand, and passing hate speech laws on the other.
The desire for material wealth is going to remain strong, as will the desire to show it off. People will still be thinking a lot about what they want to own, and admiring what other people own. The difference is this will be happening on top of TES basics, and with a lot more diversity in what can be owned.
These are the kinds of things that will be what people are thinking about. It is a mix of instinctive style thinking interacting with the new kinds of opportunities our wider range of material culture will offer. One of the differences in the material side is the existence of the TES. This means worrying about things such as disasters and starving will happen only to those who choose to worry about such things. This kind of worry is instinctive, so there will be some people who do, even if there is no physical reason to do so.