The Future of Vice

A vice can take many forms: overindulgence, moral fault, depravity, among others. Many  things once considered vices are now widely accepted. In the Western world: premarital sex, usury, and apostasy, to name just a few.

Some vices have been embraced, only to later slide back into questionability. The question of what might be considered a vice in the future matters if we accept that novel vices – as well as shifting definitions of what does or does not count as a vice – are underappreciated indicators of the direction in which society is heading. Coffee rose to prominence in Britain’s Whiggish 17th-century coffee houses, with their excitable atmospheres and free flow of information. Psychedelics are associated with the 1960s and with ideals of expanded consciousness, universal togetherness, and world peace. Cocaine-sniffing yuppies fuelled the highs of financial capitalism in the 1980s, and so on.

But vice is not confined to drugs and inebriants. Habits and behaviours can also assume the role of a vice when deemed overindulgent or morally or ethically questionable. In this issue, we explore the future of vice – and what it reveals about our society and culture.