The summer of 1969, and of 2069

This summer has seen a number of TV shows remembering events of 50 years ago. Quite a few have been about the Apollo moon-landing programme. I have not been especially interested in those, apart from the sad observation that anybody could think it was smart to put the flag of a nation on another planet, as if this was a triumph for just a part of humanity. Imagine if we ever have alien visitors, and the first thing they tried to point out was that they were from some small part of some other planet. It makes no sense.

This week is the anniversary of Woodstock, and PBS showed a fascinating retrospective about it that had me laughing out loud. It was also fun to have visited Woodstock ourselves earlier this summer, to witness a town full of folk who still behaved as though it was 1969, and that they were still 25 instead of 75.

I had a couple of takeaways from the Woodstock documentary. One was to note just how stoned everybody appeared to be. This era was certainly an expression of freedom, fired up by marijuana. Like so much in history, this rather extreme moment led to a backlash, so my generation grew up rather frightened of soft drugs, probably due to some establishment propaganda arising from the Woodstock crowd. The long cycle may be turning again now, with legalisation in the US and elsewhere. I have never partaken myself, but I started a discussion about it with my family this week, because a part of me is challenging the taboo and wondering why we should deny ourselves a low-risk pleasure.

The funniest expression of the stoned crowd organising Woodstock came in interviews about the final planning for the event. They seemed to forget about security, and then hired this bunch of rank amateurs, hippies themselves, from New Mexico, whose approach to security seemed to be centred upon asking everyone if they felt good. Then in the last week, they fell so far behind that they had to decide whether to complete the stage or the fence. They wisely chose the stage, so at least they had a concert rather than a riot, but the upshot was that nobody paid an entrance fee. Overall it was striking how lacking in commerciality the whole event was, with hardly any food concessions or corporate support. That could not happen today, which is sad in a way but has its advantages – such as available toilets.

My other takeaway concerned what led to the mass rebellion that was the hippie movement, and that was how far society had moved away from its youth. The establishment remit was absolute and rather ridiculous, whether in church doctrine, parental norms, dress codes, available entertainment or pursuing the war in Vietnam.

In that environment it is not surprising that the rebellion was so intense, but perhaps it is surprising how quickly the cycle turned afterwards, despite few concessions by the conservative establishment. My theory is that the main thing to change after 1969 was better parenting. Thank goodness for that.

Earlier in the summer there were other shows about Stonewall and the repression of the nascent LGBT movement. These shows were also made more interesting because of a current connection – each Sunday I sing around the corner from the Stonewall Inn, so we get to know the Village a little bit, and to greatly admire it.

The Stonewall retrospectives are more jarring, which ultimately is for a good reason. It seems unconscionable that just 50 years ago, in my lifetime, society could perpetrate such barbarity against people who were only looking for love. I remind myself that I have also followed a journey in first tolerating and then celebrating LGBT, but it was still shocking to see just what fear and cruelty homosexuality engendered so recently (and, we must remind ourselves, still does in many parts of the world).

Watching scenes from 50 years ago that now seem unconscionable made me pose a question for myself. In 2069, what will seem unconscionable about 2019? I have thought of three, all mainly pertaining to developed countries. But some developing countries will not be far behind.

The first is homelessness. I see this on the streets of New York every day, and have become somewhat inured to it, but in reality it is a disgrace to humanity that we go about our daily lives ignoring people suffering so much. In 50 years time, people will see pictures of our subways and alleys and be horrified that we let this happen. It is not hard to fix. If we start with the attitude that a home, like an education or basic healthcare, is a human right, then we can eliminate the problem.

Many trends will help. Start with mental health and addiction, the twin scourges behind much homelessness. Medicine will advance on both fronts, so the vulnerable number will quickly diminish. Then cities will become more liveable, not least because the end of the age of the car will free up space. Then, society can find solutions in the form of affordable housing, smarter rent laws, universal basic incomes and continuing education, and the problem can almost vanish.

Next is racism and nationalism. One striking feature of the Woodstock programme was how lily white it all was. In the cities of many developed countries, that has changed a lot, even if gaps in privilege are still everywhere. We see more mixed marriages and a generation growing up finding mixed race heritage an exotic blessing. The world is getting smaller and people are travelling and building a wider picture.

In this environment, the narrative of loyalty to a military nation state and demonization of other races and colours will gradually lose all credibility. The current spasm of racist nationalism in the US will eventually snap the rubber band back quickly, and such nonsense will be seen for what it is, the last rumblings of an establishment losing its younger people.

I also believe we can make some progress towards global open borders, a natural consequence of the factors above. It just needs some smart thinking about economics, in which migrants have some obligations to the countries they leave and those they arrive in, and both of those countries have some obligations as well. Rich countries will get older and will have a need for immigrants, so this sort of deal will go through, because corporations will slowly push them through over the complaints of some of the public. Then we can start to say goodbye to nationalism, and, more slowly, to racism. In 50 years we will have come a long way, and the ugly scenes of the Trump presidency will seem unconscionable.

I have hopes for a third revolution, in the areas of sex, chid rearing and cohabitation. I think there might be a medical breakthrough to essentially remove the chance of pregnancy from sex, unless both participants enable the possibility. So the default will reverse, from one where pregnancy is possible unless proactively disabled (with the responsibility in practice on the woman), to one where the default is safe sex (since disease can also be made much less likely) unless both parties actively seek pregnancy, in which case the odds of pregnancy can also be increased.

This could have wide-ranging consequences. It can further the cause of gender equality. It can radically reduce the number of kids born into tough circumstances. And it can enable a revival of sex itself as a pleasurable pursuit, something the Woodstock kids embraced perhaps rather too strongly but which today’s youth have lost a bit. Then we might see more imaginative sexual couplings, including more bisexuality and more BDSM (Fifty shades will be laughed at in fifty years for sure but its popularity does point a way forward in a way).

At the same time, lifetime partnerships may become more unusual, partly because of the cost of city housing, so we might start seeing long-term cohabitation by groups of four or six, with flexible sexuality and roles including child-rearing.

This last prediction for 2069 might be a bit less likely and also a bit less clearly defined than the other two, but it does feel possible to me, with the key step being the decoupling of sex from pregnancy. And this third prediction would be the one that raised the biggest cheer from the 1969 folks I’ve been watching on TV this summer.

If I am alive in 2069 I will be 109. It is not so unlikely, there will be many centenarians around by then. If I still alive and still have some senses, I can look at old film and feel guilty for tolerating homelessness and celebrate the demise of racism. I might have been a marijuana user, though by then most likely in a medicated form. But I can't imagine being in any shape to embrace the next sexual revolution!