I agree with the premise: norms will change. But I hypothesize you underrate the effects of emotion, superstition, symbolic intuition and evolutionary psychology. Tribal and social factors might recur to help maintain order and comfort. So, loincloths or minimal coverings would probably re-emerge after a stage of nudism to have at minima…
I agree with the premise: norms will change. But I hypothesize you underrate the effects of emotion, superstition, symbolic intuition and evolutionary psychology. Tribal and social factors might recur to help maintain order and comfort. So, loincloths or minimal coverings would probably re-emerge after a stage of nudism to have at minimal class and symbolic order. Perhaps barren or widowed people would craft them by hand from some unused resource, like some kind of utilitarian farming cloth. People might import pets—whatever adapts best to space (cats, dogs, snakes, lizards, birds, who knows)… and the remains of those pets might become a resource, too, perhaps bones to use as eating utensils or writing instruments. Wood would indeed become a luxury, but perhaps one with great symbolic power. Families or communes might keep a tiny wooden idol in their home that they pray to or even worship as some kind of Earth deity. Burning would might become a highly specialized ritual since it requires both wood and oxygen. Just some thoughts… space anthropologists might study these strange adaptations back on Earth.
Firstly, just to make it clear, this article is mostly written for comic relief. I do not really think space colonists will turn to nudism. If nothing else, for working people, having pockets is worth a lot more than the rather insignificant time it takes to sew some clothes.
If there is some substance behind the clickbait title I think it is the relation between intellectual and manual workers. This is something that I actually believe can shape a lot of any future space culture. On Earth intellectual workers reign supreme due to their limited numbers. The oddity of space is that it is very difficult to send physical goods there but comparatively simple to transfer intellectual properties. This turns the intellectual/manual worker relationship upside down. In space everything produced by manual workers will be very valuable, while everything produced by intellectual workers will be very cheap. And this is not only an initial anomaly. It will hold true for as long as Earth is significantly more populated than space, which will most probably be the case for hundreds of years. How this will affect the culture of the space colonists will really be something for anthropologists to follow.
People will probably want to wear some kind of clothes. But elaborate clothes containing a lot of textiles will seem wasteful and luxurious to a much higher degree than on Earth.
I agree with the premise: norms will change. But I hypothesize you underrate the effects of emotion, superstition, symbolic intuition and evolutionary psychology. Tribal and social factors might recur to help maintain order and comfort. So, loincloths or minimal coverings would probably re-emerge after a stage of nudism to have at minimal class and symbolic order. Perhaps barren or widowed people would craft them by hand from some unused resource, like some kind of utilitarian farming cloth. People might import pets—whatever adapts best to space (cats, dogs, snakes, lizards, birds, who knows)… and the remains of those pets might become a resource, too, perhaps bones to use as eating utensils or writing instruments. Wood would indeed become a luxury, but perhaps one with great symbolic power. Families or communes might keep a tiny wooden idol in their home that they pray to or even worship as some kind of Earth deity. Burning would might become a highly specialized ritual since it requires both wood and oxygen. Just some thoughts… space anthropologists might study these strange adaptations back on Earth.
Firstly, just to make it clear, this article is mostly written for comic relief. I do not really think space colonists will turn to nudism. If nothing else, for working people, having pockets is worth a lot more than the rather insignificant time it takes to sew some clothes.
If there is some substance behind the clickbait title I think it is the relation between intellectual and manual workers. This is something that I actually believe can shape a lot of any future space culture. On Earth intellectual workers reign supreme due to their limited numbers. The oddity of space is that it is very difficult to send physical goods there but comparatively simple to transfer intellectual properties. This turns the intellectual/manual worker relationship upside down. In space everything produced by manual workers will be very valuable, while everything produced by intellectual workers will be very cheap. And this is not only an initial anomaly. It will hold true for as long as Earth is significantly more populated than space, which will most probably be the case for hundreds of years. How this will affect the culture of the space colonists will really be something for anthropologists to follow.
People will probably want to wear some kind of clothes. But elaborate clothes containing a lot of textiles will seem wasteful and luxurious to a much higher degree than on Earth.