Emotional response in humans had spiked drastically in the first few decades in space, and it had taken centuries to settle into what was accepted as a normal response. The sheer amount of change humankind had gone through had caused massive mental shifts that hadn't always been for the better. Humans didn't take well to change, they never had, and there'd been a bigger-than-it-should-have-been portion of the population that didn't believe humankind was moving to space even as they completed the first series of space station colonies and moved the first half a million people into them.
That portion of the population had lost their minds when the exodus to space started, causing riots and attacking launch stations on Earth as they claimed those taken up in the ships were being taken away by the governments and corporations behind the push to space. They'd sworn it was all one big conspiracy. It had lasted for nearly a decade before the reality sank in to the point that even they couldn't deny it anymore, but there were still isolated populations on all the planets humans had moved to that didn't believe the extent of humankind's reach in space.
It was an odd conundrum having people deny so strongly what was right in front of their faces. Finley had always associated it with the tendency to cling to religion. Something that supposedly explained everything, took all responsibility, and made all the hard choices so people didn't have to.
Finley didn't understand the attachment to religion that humans had had in those days.
Well, she understood it, but she didn't agree with it or with why people found it comforting. Finley made her own choices and took responsibility for her own actions. That meant she got credit for the good, the bad, and everything in between. That had been the big attraction of religion, something else to blame for the bad times, the trying times, and all those things that you couldn't explain and couldn't control.
Until humans reached space, religion had still been a prevalent force on Earth. The major religions, Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism, had hung on for far longer than expected, as humankind faced such massive change, but even they had faded away after a couple of centuries in space.
Thankfully, they were all but forgotten now. Buddhism had held on a bit longer because it lacked the idols and exclusionary practices of the others, but even it hadn't managed to hang on through humankind's first contact with the Alari. Other religions had grown to replace them, including cults that worshiped the Alari and the Parasites, and even one that worshipped Olympus Mons on Mars. Still, none of them had gotten the foothold that earlier religions had when humans had been confined to Earth.
One by one, the planet-side governments that had survived the move to space had shed their religious ties, and there were no longer any concessions for religious beliefs or holidays. All the governments that had followed had moved further and further away from any kind of religion. It wasn't on paperwork, it wasn't considered for work or promotions. In fact, excessive religious support was seen as a negative trait now.
A lot of good changes had come with the loss of religious influence, including the disintegration of gender specific roles, sexuality based identity, and focus on ethnicity and race. Now, the only thing that determined your value was your skill, your work ethic, and your attitude.
The categories people themselves into still tended to include where they were born, but since humankind now moved so often that it was rare to find an individual who'd been born in the same place as their parents, it had nothing to do with family history or blood and everything to do with what kind of care and vaccinations they'd had as children. People born on Mars had to be vaccinated for different things than those born on the Moon, and so on.
Thankfully, medical advancements had seen the eradication of many serious illnesses that had plagued humankind on Earth, including the second eradication of polio, measles, and Ebola, but also things like allergies, mold infections, shingles, and chicken pox. The plague had appeared one last time on Mars, thanks once again to infected fleas, before doctors had figured out an antibiotic mixture that had wiped it out for good.
The only thing medicine hadn't been able to completely defeat was the damn common cold and cancer. Cancer had become more common, almost prevalent, especially in humans who spent long periods on ships in the Cosmic Microwave Background. Treatments had been developed that made it survivable in most cases, but next to the increase in mental health issues, cancer was currently the biggest health threat to humankind.
The common cold was just a pain in the ass, as it was still evolving beyond every vaccine they could come up with and influenza pandemics had wiped out multiple colonies and ships before they'd developed protocols to handle outbreaks in confined spaces. Cancer hadn't changed much when it had reached space, leading to some interesting but unproven theories that it may have originated there, but when the flu had mixed with space radiation, it had been off to the races, and humankind was still trying to figure it out.
It was one of the most enduring mysteries of humankind at this point.
Finley had had her runs in with both during the war, and she'd take the cancer, a minor tumor found on her left lung that had been treated quickly with surgery and chemo and been over and done with in a month, over the flu, which had left her miserable for a week at different times.
Evan was the only person she knew who had worse flu bouts than she did.
Russo, the fucker, had never been sick a day in his life and liked to claim that it was because he was more fully evolved than the two of them.
Finley had even been treated in Walker Hospital's flu ward once during the war, and that was not an experience she ever wanted to repeat.
~ tbc