Rejected Age

     Wisdom is always said to come with age. "Respect your elders." "Age before beauty." Many phrases come down from times when the oldest members of society were highly respected. In modern Western cultures, this trend has ended with the "first come, first served" mentality of business. Since the elderly are no longer a "beneficial" part of the economy and are seen as living out their last days using their children's inheritance. No longer are old men seen as the best to give advice or to tell stories of days gone by. Now we have the internet to find out our options and have movies, television, and the internet, once again, to fulfill our desire for entertainment.
     This is the end result of the French Revolution's impact on the philosophy of the individual coupled with the changes to society brought on by the industrial revolution. How did this come about? As cultural views shifted away from the town, as in medieval periods, views focused much more on individual families. As industrial jobs absorbed workers into cities away from the farms, families were split with brothers or sisters ending up much farther apart than before. As these familial ties were cut, industrial jobs further separated those nuclear families for at least half of the day, six days a week. The weakened bonds of the nuclear family allowed peopled to focus on individual needs and cut themselves away from relational bonds. Thus, the philosophy of individuality reflected the effects of the industrial age.
     An individual's value depended on his contribution to society, usually economical. This led to an assertion of woman's right's beginning in the late nineteenth century and eventually to women's suffrage and jobs outside the home by the twentieth century. Since elderly individuals no longer contributed to the economy, they became burdensome, unnecessary leeches incapable of earning their keep. With this increasingly representing the culture's mood, it may be a small blessing that the life expectancy remained low. However, with the understanding of disease developing in the 1870s and 80s, the influence of unions at the turn of the century, and increasing opportunity for white collar jobs after the global depression of the 1930s, life expectancy rose as the physical requirements for labor dropped.

     How does this explain the West's disrespect for age? There are several reasons. One of the main contributors is the negative connotations age holds as being economically worthless. Coupled with that, as a larger portion of society becomes elderly than ever before, the novelty of wisdom with age is lost. In  agricultural societies threatened by insects, disease, drought, famine, and war, to achieve a great age demonstrates luck, resolve, or intelligence. Once these achievements are removed, age becomes a normal stage of life, almost expected. This is especially true when someone is killed in a car accident; the newspaper and family will mourn of "a life cut short." In the West age does not represent wealth, resourcefulness, intelligence, or skill. It is an expected "right" of life.This is due in large part to the vast number of people that live to ever-increasing old age.
     Another reason for the fall of the great age of life is that information is readily available everywhere. Historically, few people could read and all relied on the memories of the elderly to predict the weather with knowledge of previous disasters on how to handle current troubles. Now, we have the recorded knowledge of generations over the centuries easily at our disposal. In more recent years the advent of the television neatly removed a large portion of reading from the news. Furthermore, in the last decade or so, the internet, cell phones, and now smart phones, are allowing knowledge accessible at any time without need to consult the wise men that sit by the city gate. 
     These rapid changes also render the elderly obsolete from the current generations. Yes, my great grandfather had to walk to school, grew almost everything he ate, didn't have a radio for the first part of his life, and didn't have air conditioning until he was middle aged. I don't even think he ever used a computer, and he died years before cell phones were used by more than billionaires. The millennial generation, and to some extent their parents, see no need for the knowledge of the past that their ancestors offer. A little girl may adore the fact that her grandmother grew up with a horse just outside, but she will shriek and scream if told that the rabbits and chickens in the cages next to it would be that night's dinner. 
     The previous generations are tidily "removed" from the current age with the computer. Generally, the elderly are unable to adapt to the computer because of its recent existence while their eight year old grandson can use a smart phone to bring up an atlas of America that would have been 600 pages in your grandparent's trunk for their road trip even just twenty years ago.
     Living memory is no longer valued. Too much is changed to render their stories relevancy in life; they exist only for entertainment when the power goes out. Once again, documentation of the most significant events answers most of our questions. The largest novelties the elderly can explain are the radio, television, ice box, and other outdated inventions that modern culture hardly notices, much less cares about.

     But really, why should we respect them? As explained, their social significance has been rendered moot. What causation can explain the need to hold on to agricultural and historic tendencies in an industrial age of individualism?
     One compelling cause which I know to affect nearly every individual alive today is that with the near guarantee of reaching old age ourselves, we should care for the elderly to set an example of precedence for the generation that will care for us. While much of the knowledge of the older generation is, yes, now no longer applicable to our ever day needs, the stories they will tell can inspire, encourage, instruct us on how to avoid mistakes, love through hurt, sacrifice willingly, and many other timeless traits. My great uncles and grandfathers held years of farming and tinkering knowledge, and if they had to make a run on the store, it was the hardware store because they didn't have the right tool to do the job themselves, not to buy a whole new piece to replace the old.

     Respect the elderly. They have lived life and can aid in directing you through the rapids of youth.
Who knows? You might actually find a best friend and kindred spirit, separated only by time.


    __    
Agatha Tyche