The 22nd Century: The Boring Future
The 22nd Century: The Boring Future
I have said that each century is a stage of grief for modernity and that we are currently in the depression stage of the 21st century which is between the testing stage of the 20th century and the acceptance stage of the 22nd century but what will acceptance look like? What trends do I foresee for the following century? I need to put out of the way that this is purely speculative. The 22nd century is a long, long time and the future rarely arrives as imagined. Still, based on the arc of past centuries, here's one possible direction people may take. So what will happen during the 22nd century and how will the West respond?
Well first I'd like to borrow Occulturation's method of viewing decades through age and gender. I intend to do the same with the centuries.
The 16th century, in contrast, has a very young man style.
The 18th Century had a teenage boy energy.
The 19th Century had whimsical childlike wonder
In fact the 19th century was the first century where people viewed children as their own age groups and not just “mini adults” with the first public schools, children's literature, and other early content to cater to children.
You can even look at the style and aesthetics of the 19th century like the logos and headlines on newspapers and how they had a very “childhood innocence” to it.
The 20th Century is the equivalent of a young adult woman wanting to explore themselves.
While the 21st century is like a moody teenage girl feeling like everyone hates her and her life sucks.
We've gone from Puritans preventing women from even showing their hair to Sydney Sweeney in Euphoria. That's how much the vibes have shifted for the past 500 years.
I’d also like to borrow Occuluration’s other way to thinking, with the pagan concept of the triple
goddess: the mother, the maiden, and the crone.
The 20th Century is the mother. A young adult woman who is more outward focused and a bit more mature; this fits the testing theme as she is testing solutions and also being tested by reality itself. It also fits that this stage is the mother as it gives birth to a new world. The 20th century gave birth to the world we all know today.
The 21st century is the maiden - the younger girl prone to depression. This also explains some of the immaturity and dumbing down associated with this century and also why this era is introspective and self-centered.
Finally the 22nd century will be the crone stage: the wise old woman. The 22nd Century will probably have an old woman style. The wise old woman is someone who doesn't seem to want more and seems content with how it is, just wanting to simply “feed the birds”.
After the 21st century’s widespread malaise, burnout, and emotional collapse, the 22nd century may finally bring the last stage of grief over the death of the premodern world: acceptance. But this won’t be a triumphant, celebratory acceptance. It’ll be quiet, resigned, and profoundly anti revolutionary. In a way it'll be the exact opposite of the 18th century. If the 18th century was a time of angry change with revolutions, rebellions, and violence spreading across continents then the 22nd century might be its mirror image: a time when people stop asking big questions and just go along with whatever system is left standing. Also while the content of the 18th century is meant to be edgy and provocative that is intended to provoke outrage, the 22nd century’s content will be about common sense platitudes in a very earnest yet inoffensive way much like a PSA from the 1990s. It will be about how to live within the system and how to find happiness with what you have. This will be the century of saying, “It is what it is.”
I’m not going to lie but I think the culture and society of the 22nd century will be pretty lame and boring to us now. I don’t foresee any great renaissance or golden age taking place until around the early 23rd century. I think that the politics and society of the 22nd century will be primarily sentimental, “let bygone, be bygone” mentalities. And that the movies and shows and video games will likely be much the same. The media will be heartwarming “everything works out in the end” type stories. As for music I think it will be as tame as can be and completely lack any controversy or shock. I hate to say this but I really don't think there will be any new innovative music in the 22nd century, sure some bands and genres will have a lot of “homage” style music in but there won't be anything new or groundbreaking. I also predict that AI will be even more involved in the 22nd century and by then, people will be able to generate entire shows and movies with one prompt, and the prompts have to be safe, generic and appropriate. Anything edgy or shocking won’t be allowed as it would violate the AI’s policies. It will be mass appealing, wholesome entertainment. There will also be a decrease in political polarization, however there will be an increase in censorship. Mainstream culture and politics will be much more uniform. The messaging will be more agreeable to the average Joe than the polarizing, controversial messaging of the 20th and 21st centuries but the messaging will also be more generic. In the 22nd century, people will be watching period piece soap operas set during the Covid 19 pandemic and watching shows that more closely resembles Full House or Father Knows Best than Bojack Horseman or The Bear. By the way, this is referring to the mainstream, as there will always be indie media and alternative music but the pop culture as a whole will be sterile and lacking anything ground breaking.
This won’t be an era that screams at the system, rather it’ll be one that’s learned to live inside it. The modern age would be so deeply normalized that resistance won’t even cross their minds. It won’t be dystopia in the traditional sense as there will be no jackbooted regime stomping through streets, just the soft hum of optimization. Everything works just well enough. No one expects more anymore, only access. No one dreams of utopia, just stability. Children of this era will read about the 20th century's world wars and 21st century burnout like a fever dream and the premodern world will be so obsolete to them that it would be rightfully compared to the prehistoric era or the bronze age collapse. They’ll see the Middle Ages less like vibrant, beautiful castles and more like an old ancient ruin that’s colorless and crumbling. People will be more emotionally even, perhaps more detached. The highs won’t be as high, the lows not as low. People by then would accept they can't have whatever they want. They can't have both personal freedom and more collective efficiency, both constant change and predictability, and accept having fewer dreams for less instability. Much of modernity has promised “you can have it all”: freedom and prosperity, individuality and community, innovation and tradition. This century will mark the collapse of that narrative. People in the 22nd century will no longer believe those dualities can coexist. It'll see the end of “both/and” thinking, and the beginning of “either/or” acceptance.
People will stop romanticizing or demonizing the past and be obsessed with the struggle, the revolution, the pain of not knowing what’s coming. In fact, they may find an obsession with the past emotionally immature. Why fight the tide when you can float? They won’t be naive. They’ll know the world is unjust but they’ll be too accustomed to it to fight. They'll have internalized what every anxious generation before them feared: The future doesn’t need us to like it. Just to comply. But, and here's the twist, there might be peace in that. Not numbness, but clarity. Not surrender, but coexistence. The 22nd century may finally be when people stop thinking they're the center of the story, and start learning how to simply be part of something biological, digital, planetary, cosmic. And that, in its own way, might be a kind of wisdom. People won’t fight the modern world anymore. They’ll just live in it. They’ll accept that technology is permanent. AI, surveillance, and digital life are no longer controversial, just normal. Inequality is unshakable and things like wealth inequality, climate change, and broken democracies are all real but stable enough to survive. I know this is a really bleak picture to people now and to be honest, most people from the 21st century would hate this century and hate the people in it, much like a person from the 1840s would hate people from the 2010s and the values of that decade. Okay, maybe it's not that extreme but someone from today with their ironic detachment and cynicism will feel out of place, like from a bygone era. I'm just being honest. I hope I'm wrong and that there is a massive revolt or revolution in the 22nd century alongside a new cultural renaissance just around the corner but I really don't think that's the case. I can forsee people thinking I'm both a buzzkill for suggesting the future will be lame, but also naive for assuming people in the future will be accepting. After all everyone always predict that in the future everyone gets along and lives in peace. Maybe people in the 22nd century will see this blog and make fun of how wrong it is or how outdated it is and maybe the 22nd century won't be quite as boring as I think it will be but I am skeptical. I do think there will be some gems in the next century don't get me wrong but they will be rare and most will probably not be in the mainstream.
As the pendulum of cultural mockery swings, the next wave of satire in the 22nd century may target a different group. In the 21st century, the internet has birthed countless subcultures, memes, and ideologies many of which revolve around identity and how we relate to others in terms of thinking, liking, and being. One persistent theme is making fun of “normies.” “Normies”, the average, mainstream person who enjoys popular music, movies, and trends, have become a sort of cultural scapegoat. Often depicted as unthinking sheep or "NPCs", they are mocked for supposedly lacking individuality or deeper thought. This idea became especially viral in the late 2010s and 2020s, with memes ridiculing people who post Starbucks selfies, follow trends, or use common phrases like “Live, Laugh, Love.” The “NPC” meme suggested that most people aren’t truly conscious, they're just going through the motions. Ironically, this ideology bred its own group of conformists: people desperately trying to prove they weren’t like everyone else.
I predict the 22nd century will see a reverse and make fun of the self proclaimed “critical thinkers,” “independent minds,” and “free thinkers.” We’ll see jokes and memes mocking the individuals who currently pride themselves on not “following the herd,” who reject popular culture on principle, and who often claim to see through societal illusions the rest of us supposedly miss. But what happens when that mindset becomes just as common as the one it mocked? In a future dominated by algorithms and hyper personalized echo chambers, trying to be “different” may itself become cliché. The archetype of the contrarian, who avoids liking anything popular, who calls others “sheep,” who insists on seeing hidden meanings in every cultural product, could become the new parody. In the 22nd century, teens will be rolling their eyes at someone saying, “I don’t watch mainstream media; it’s all propaganda,” the same way 21st century teens roll their eyes at someone quoting a basic Instagram caption.
Just as "normies" were once mocked for liking the same things, we may see future generations mocking people who go out of their way to dislike the same things. The forced individuality, the ironic detachment, the obsession with being unique, all of it could be fodder for the next generation’s humor. Future jokes may depict “free thinkers” refusing to attend a concert because it’s too “corporate,” while everyone else just enjoys the show. Or a satirical sketch where a guide suggests how to be unique and everyone ends up choosing the same “unique” path.
This future likely won’t feel dystopian not in the way fiction imagines it. It will be sanitized, bland, and stable. Not a new 1984...but a new 12th century. Yes the 22nd century could be to the modern world what the 12th century were to medieval Europe: another lull after centuries of upheaval. Not backwards, just… static. The systems of the world may no longer be challenged or debated, just managed. A very generic century of a thousand years of modern history that few people would even think about. Of course there will still be events in history and famous figures remembered from the 22nd century but people won't claim they're “icons of the 22nd century” or “events of the 22nd century”. They'll instead be someone like Genghis Khan or Richard Lionheart as simply “part of the modern age” or “modern leaders”. Most people will struggle to know what decade these events came out of or even the year, like a Roman Emperor’s reign.
You might be wondering why I am mentioning the 12th century, a century that's over 900 years old, in a post about the 22nd century. Well I'm convinced that this stages of grief cycle has repeated several times throughout history and has happened before during the Middle Ages as a response to the death of the classical world. I believe that the previous acceptance stage was the 12th century.
I haven't quite developed a full theory for this previous cycle yet but I believe that the last shock stage was the 6th century. The 6th century opened with the Western Roman Empire in ruins. The shock of its disappearance could be seen through the crumbling infrastructure of Europe. It was also the century that had the worst year in history during 536 AD due to crop failures, famine, and widespread suffering caused by a volcanic eruption in Iceland that created a "volcanic winter," and a persistent fog and cold temperatures across Europe, while the Justinian Plague of 541–549 added catastrophe upon catastrophe. The once thriving cities of the Roman world shrank or vanished. Roads fell into disrepair and literacy declined.
Denial was the 7th century. There remained a desperate clinging to the idea of reviving Rome and making a next Rome. The Eastern Roman Empire still claimed to be Romans, and in the West, religious and legal traditions tried to maintain the old way of life. The Merovingian kings in Gaul styled themselves as heirs to the Roman Emperor. People were not yet accepting that the world of senators, marble forums, and ancient philosophers was truly gone. The Church grew in importance, providing structure amid the ruins, but the idea that the classical world might return persisted, even as reality was against the case.
Anger was the 8th century due to iconoclasm controversies, the growing threat of Islamic expansion, and the beginning of the Viking Age. Charlemagne’s ancestors rose in power, often through force and ruthlessness. In a world that had lost coherence, anger took many forms such as violence, religious rigidity, and the assertion of dominance by emerging powers who could not bring back Rome but could shape what came next. The dream of classical order was increasingly seen as a mockery in a world defined by warlords and conflict.
The bargaining era was the 9th century, where Charlemagne's coronation in 800 as Emperor of the Romans symbolized a great act of historical bargaining. The Carolingians sought to resurrect the Roman Empire but this time in a Christianized, Germanic form. The Carolingian Renaissance was a negotiation with the past, with copying ancient texts, reforming education, and rekindling the classical worldview within a medieval framework. This was not a full restoration but a compromise, an effort to regain cultural prestige through the Church and scholarship. The West wasn’t ready to let go but tried to strike a deal with memory and myth.
The 10th century was testing. The 10th century was marked by political instability, Viking invasions, and localized rule and conflict. It was a very dark period much akin to the World Wars of the 20th century. Yet this period also saw experimentation with new forms of power: the growth of feudalism, the development of manorial economies, and the Church’s increasing influence. This was a century of trial and error, of testing institutions to see what could endure without Rome. The classical past still haunted the imagination, but optimism began to assert itself.
The 11th century was depression where while monastic reforms offered stability, there was also a growing awareness that the classical world was irrevocably lost. The sense of failure spiritually, politically, and culturally hung over much of the 11th century. The Investiture Controversy and the tension between Church and State signaled disillusionment. Monastic writers, like those at Cluny, France, mourned the moral and cultural decay they perceived around them, as they saw this was not the world of Plato or Cicero. As well as the fact that like a year of the 21st century, most people now will struggle to know about anything out of this century as it's essentially a century where almost nothing remarkable happens and everything sort of blurs together.
The closest, most famous event out of the 11th century was the Norman Conquest, a very depressing time for the English people as they have fatigue over being ruled by outsiders with no connection to the Anglo Saxons who would dominate them and change their society. The Norman Conquest is the 11th century equivalent of a controversial 21st century figure taking power despite having no political experience and launching an invasion that is completely unjustified and pointless.
And finally, acceptance was the 12th century. By the 12th century, Western Europe began to accept its post classical identity. The Twelfth Century Renaissance marked a revival not through nostalgia, but through adaptation. Classical texts returned through Arabic and Byzantine sources. Universities began to emerge, and scholasticism sought to reconcile reason and faith. Roman law and Aristotle were rediscovered, not to restore Rome, but to build something new. This was a century of intellectual maturity. Europe accepted that it could never go back but could still move forward with something new. Once we reach the end of this long ritual, once we endure, we will reach acceptance. Acceptance may be bittersweet but at least there will be closure. I suppose I should address the missing links. If the last acceptance stage was the 12th century and the shock stage was the 16th century, where does that place the 13th, 14th, and 15th centuries?
The 14th century is sadly… the death stage. The peace of the 13th century shattered in the 14th. The Black Death and the Great Famine ravaged Europe, killing millions and shaking the spiritual and social foundations of medieval life. The Hundred Years’ War, and the Avignon Papacy deepened the crisis. Death returned both literally and symbolically. The confident combination of classical and Christian thought began to erode. Mysticism, fatalism, and despair surged. The classical world, already lost in form, now seemed distant even in spirit. This was not just death of people, but of certainties, hierarchies, and the medieval worldview itself.
And finally the 15th century…is hope. It is not quite shock or denial of the loss nor just accepting the loss and moving on quickly. It is a sense that while it’s sad over the loss it assures itself while hugging people at the funeral that “it’s gonna be okay. We’ll be fine.” In the 15th century, despite the ashes of plague and war, came hope. The Italian Renaissance, born in the 15th century, rediscovered the classical world with new eyes. This was not an attempt to resurrect Rome but to be inspired by it, through art, humanism, and science. Petrarch, the “father of humanism,” saw antiquity not as a ghost but as a source of hope. The invention of the printing press, the rise of national monarchies, and early exploration heralded a world awakening from grief. The past could not return, but its spirit could illuminate a new age. Then of course, the rug is pulled out from underneath, inducing shock once again.
So if the 21st century is depression, then the 22nd century is acceptance, the 23rd century is peace, the 24th century is death, the 25th century is hope, and the 26th century will be the next shock stage, starting the cycle all over again.
So to end this series on a positive note, we seem to have the centuries of acceptance and peace ahead of us. It's all uphill from here, it's a steep incline and difficult to climb but things are at least looking up, maybe we can't win. We may never stop grieving but we can find fulfillment in the process of life regardless.
This isn’t a golden age. It’s not even a silver age. It’s acceptance as the final coping mechanism. The great debates of “What is modernity?” or “Is this progress?” will feel outdated, like asking whether the sky should be blue. After centuries of rebellion, reform, violence, grief, and disillusionment… the 22nd century may become the age of acceptance. No mass revolutions, no angry manifestos, no utopias. Just daily life, humming along. Whether that sounds peaceful or horrifying… is up to you. But either way, it may be the final chapter in a long emotional processing of the modern world. We mourned the past. We resisted the future. Then we gave up trying to win either side. And we moved on.
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