Two Hundred Years From Now, What Will They Think?
Nettie Bozanich
 
Two hundred years from now, what will they – the people of the twenty-third century – think of us?  As they open their history textbooks (or will they be electronic files?), what will they think is peculiar or fascinating about our twenty-first century Western culture?
 
First, let us look back before we look ahead.  In thumbing through history books, I find myself intrigued about the practices and norms of cultures of the past.  For example, women in Elizabethan times wore cosmetics which contained high concentrations of lead.  This lead often caused their hair to fall out and for some it was fatal.  In the nineteenth century, hatters used mercury in the process of making hats and this led to mercury poisoning that caused dementia. 
 
Modern science allows us to understand the danger of these processes and to sometimes find ourselves in awe that people were literally killing themselves with everyday products. Knowledge is continually evolving and future generations will likely look to our culture and find many things that are part of our everyday lives to be so incredibly dangerous. I often wonder about what those potentially dangerous items could be: microwave ovens, household cleansers, gasoline as car fuel, body lotions, aluminium foil, vitamins, hair gel, cola, sugar-free gum, computer printer ink.  Sure, some of these ideas may sound completely absurd to us now but I doubt that people who used lead make-up or wore hats that were in contact with mercury felt that those products were dangerous.  The fact is that we just don’t know what future knowledge will reveal about our present times; this is the cycle of knowledge.
 
Scientific knowledge is not the only lens through which we observe the past.  Another area of analysis, which is more subjective, is cultural. 
 
For example, as I look into the past, I am intrigued by the celebration of Christmas in the nineteenth century America.  In the early 1800s, Christmas was not a major holiday and in some regions it was not even observed.  It was not until the 1830s that the holiday began to gain more popularity.  One common form of celebration during the Christmas and New Year’s holidays was the shooting of guns.  For us, Christmas is such a major celebration – in both material and religious terms – that it is difficult for us to imagine a culture without a focus on this time of year. 
 
In two hundred years, people may find our Christmas celebrations and traditions absurd.  I imagine, that they could find Halloween and particularly the tradition of “Trick or Treating” to be peculiar. 
 
Students of history may read the following:  “In the 1930s, the tradition of Trick or Treating began and its popularity spread throughout the twentieth century.  The practice involved children dressing up in costumes as witches, ghosts, and popular cultural symbols such as princesses and superheroes.  Some of these costumes were dangerous as they impeded children’s vision or required them to wear various types of make-up or chemicals in their hair.  Children dressed in these costumes would go at night from home to home, yell Trick or Treat, and strangers would give the children candy.”
 
Our sense of the world is bound by the culture and knowledge of our time period.  We can explore the past and attempt to understand it; we can venture into the future and attempt to think about possible directions.  Essentially, it is our perspective as twenty-first centurions that moulds our ideas about daily life and what we see as social norms. 
 
Looking back helps us to see where we have come from and to understand a way of living that evolved into our current way of life.  Looking ahead helps us to see how the way that we live now is not permanent.
 
Two hundred years from now, what will they, the people of the twenty-third century, think of us?  The real answers are left to future historians but our guesses as to what they may think of us could tell us more about today than twenty-third century life.
 
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