Just because something is socially acceptable or even legal doesn’t mean it’s right. History has proven this time and time again.
Imagine sitting on a plane in the “non-smoking” section—just a few feet away from the smoking section, where someone lights up. Imagine letting your kids ride in a car without seatbelts or ski without helmets. Would you leave a child—or even a dog—alone in a locked car while you ran errands? What’s your gut reaction when you see a visibly pregnant woman drinking alcohol? Or when someone tosses a bag of trash out of their car window? How about drinking and driving? Letting your kids roam the neighborhood unsupervised? Eating red meat at every meal without a second thought about health or sustainability?
Not so long ago, all of these things were not just legal but completely normal. Today, most are illegal, and we look back at them with disbelief.
Now, think bigger: slavery, child labor, lobotomies, unregulated pesticides in our food, lead paint in our homes, using asbestos in buildings, and even casually spraying Lysol around the house as if it were a health tonic. For decades, these things were considered harmless—or even beneficial.
If you’ve ever discussed these practices with your children or grandchildren, you’ve likely heard the same horrified reactions: Wait, you did what? That was allowed? Smoking on planes? Drinking while pregnant? Littering?
At the time, these things didn’t seem outrageous. And if someone had told you that one day there would be laws banning smoking outside a building, seatbelt requirements with fines, or jail time for leaving a child alone in a car, you might have thought they were being ridiculous.
But here we are.
And just as we now shake our heads at those outdated norms, future generations will do the same to us. They’ll be horrified by the way we churned through resources, filled landfills with cheap junk, and treated shopping as entertainment. They won’t believe we once thought fast fashion, single-use plastics, and houses stuffed with barely-used possessions were just part of “normal” life.
Because, let’s be honest—our excessive consumption will irrevocably harm future generations . We treat the planet like an endless supply closet, piling up more than we could ever use, while someone, somewhere, is paying the price. Soon enough, people will look back and wonder: Wait, you did what? You threw away half your food? You bought new clothes just to wear them once? You built bigger houses just to store more stuff?
And just like today, when we look back at smoking sections on airplanes and shudder, they’ll shake their heads at us and think: How could they not see it?
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