by Roger Bourke White Jr., copyright February 2016
Visible Personal Sacrifice (VPS) is about saving the world.
The thinking behind it is a mix of Social Justice Warrioring and high-profile ambition. It is about saving the world in ways that are showing off one's dedication to the cause in high-profile ways -- many other people can see you're enthusiastic about this saving the world business.
How will VPS express itself in the TES environment? VPS will still be powerful instinctive thinking in 2050.
What will be VPS campaigns in 2050?
That is what this essay is about.
As stated above VPS is about high-profile sacrificing to save the world in one way or another. There is plenty of VPS happening in the 2010's and there will be plenty in the 2050's, but it will evolve.
Here are some examples:
o Saving/Protecting the Children will still be a popular one. How will people sacrifice to do this? An example from the 2010's is elaborate and expensive car seats for kids. Another is worrying about kids walking to school and playing unattended in parks -- avoiding these takes high-profile time and attention. But by 2050 things will have changed. For example: With pervasive surveillance, wearables and cyber muses available for babysitting how will the leaving kids unattended worry express itself in the 2050's?
o Recycling bins to save our environment are a 2010's example of Saving the World VPS. These may survive in the 2050's, but if they do they will be anachronisms because cyber will be doing so much material handling by then -- robots can do the recycling much more efficiently than bins can. Climate Change VPS may still be active, but it will express in some new way.
o The ironic one will be Helping the Poor in various ways. Ironic since TES is all about giving sufficient stuff to everyone. How will this variant of VPS continue to express itself? Who will be the sign holders on street corners of the 2050's? Who will be giving them spare change?
How will these 2010's versions of VPS change as we get into the 2050's?
There are few things more visible to the whole community than child raising. There are few things that generate more opinions on how to do it right. VPS is going to become even more a part of child raising as people become more prosperous and the Tattoos and T-Shirts phenomenon continues to kick in.
But, mixing in powerfully with the VPS instinct is the Best For My Child instinct and The Curse of Being Important. The result of mixing together all three of these instinctive thinking patterns will produce surprising choices, and a lot of head-scratching by cool-headed on-lookers over these choices.
Saving the world from climate change is powered by End of World instinctive thinking. End of the World thinking won't go away, but it can easily morph into worrying about something other than climate change -- a commonly recurring one is resource exhaustion.
Whatever it changes into, bicycles will likely still be a strong attraction for VPS enthusiasts -- they are quite visible and clearly take lots of personal effort.
Like climate change, recycling will become so old school. What will replace it as the hot new way of sacrificing to save the world? Right now, I can't offer up a good candidate. One possiblity is mixing fashion choices with save the world choices.
This will still be a hot target for VPS activities. It will be so because the Social Justice Warrior types (SJW) will be supporting more rights demands.
But who will they be protesting against? Who will be "The Evil 1%", "The Man", in 2050? One candidate will be cyber.
Related: How will hoop-jumping for social services fit into this? It is traditional that one must jump hoops to get one's rights money and perks. That tradition is unlikely to change.
How will VPS campaigns be promoted? How will the VPS choices be enforced?
How will people be shamed in the 2050's when they don't follow current VPS trends?
As a 2010's example I'm thinking of how Lucas was shamed for some joking comments made in an interview in 2015 about the upcoming Star Wars movie. On Facebook the comments were taken out of context and made him sound like a sourpuss looser about his selling Star Wars to Disney. This kind of gossip-style shaming will still be strong in the 2050's.
"There outta be a law." is a common second thought after deciding that a new VPS invention is a hot idea. This is likely to continue. The twist is that so much of material prosperity and service activity is taking place in the cyber domain. How will VPS-oriented laws interact with cyber activity? Keep further in mind that much of what cyber is doing will be pretty much incomprehensible to most humans, especially those living the TES Necessity lifestyles.
What new kinds of VPS can appear?
Keep in mind that part of VPS is being obnoxious -- this is the "visible" part of the sacrifice -- and part of being obnoxious is saying, "I'm doing this. You should do this too."
How will VPS and fashion mix? They are likely to. As an example: Can VPS influence tattooing and piercing?
Related, how will VPS and entertaining interact? Entertainers will be putting on benefit concerts for popular VPS trends. Will they get criticized as well? For instance, will effects-heavy concerts be criticized for their waste?
How will immersive VR mix with VPS?
Boy! I don't have a clue at this point!
How will the Nomads -- the 2050's version of "homeless" -- mix with VPS?
As mentioned above, the social justice warrior types will still want to be crusading in various ways to "help the poor". How will "the poor" help them by becoming highly visible people who need help? Who are the sign carriers on street corners of 2050? Given all the new ways there will be for paying for things, what will be the 2050's equivalent of giving someone spare change?
The social justice warrior instincts will still be supporting visible begging styles. What will those begging styles be? Will there still be cardboard sign holders on street corners?
How will cyber muses, VR and internal communication (zombie mode) mix with begging styles?
How will "the homeless" abuse the system in ways comparable to using restrooms as long-term break areas in the 2010's?
VPS is still going to be a common activity in the 2050's. But how it will manifest itself will change steadily. Trends will change, what to sacrifice will change, how to display being poor and needing help will change.
But because this is a powerful instinct it will still be displayed in high-profile ways, and there will still be a lot of "I'm doing it. You should be doing it, too." thinking, and with that will come both social shaming and laws to enforce VPS.
--The End--