If we only knew

I'm old enough to remember "Whites Only" drinking fountains and regulations in the American South that blacks had to sit in the back of the bus and give up their seats to white people. This concept looks so repulsive now. (It was repulsive then, too, but not for many southerners...bear with me.) If whites in Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia in 1960 could have looked ahead 45 years, they would have seen the disgust that people today have for their attitudes. If they knew, then, how their attitudes would appear to people 40 years in the future, would they have continued to hold their values?

My parents grew up on the Toronto Islands. Up until the 60's there were no Jews allowed in the bowling and baseball leagues, nor at the events in the Clubhouse. And my parents and their friends were otherwise very good people. Why didn't they see how wrong this was? If someone told them what people in 1980 would think of this policy, would they have changed it sooner?

Or take Sadam Hussein. He wanted to be known as a great leader, like Saladin. If he had known that he would be despised by future generations, would he have acted differently?

Let's assume that people would change their behaviour if, magically, they found out what future generations thought of them. The question becomes, then, what are WE doing today that people in 2040 will say "How could they have thought THAT? How disgusting! How could they have behaved that way?"

A couple of suggestions might be
"How could they (i.e. we) have ignored/contributed to global warming so much?"
"How could they have treated homosexuals that way?"
"How could they have destroyed so many species?"

Are there any things about us that you think might disgust future generations as much as those behaviours from the near past, like routinely-accepted racial descrimination, that disgust us now?