You're Never Too Old to Rock and Roll
And you’re always too young to die.
For the last two centuries we have been obsessed with youth. For centuries, before that, it was the young who had the highest mortality – as infants, children and young adults. The young were expendable. The survivors were not. So, if you made it out of youth, you were valued.
Modern human beings – homo sapiens – at first coexisted with other human species – the Neanderthals, homo erectus and Denisovans – who then disappeared. Some people assume interbreeding. Others suggest we killed them off. Still others suggest a simpler answer that these other species could not compete as homo sapiens populations increased.
We don’t know much about the other human species but we do know that the elderly among our Paleolithic ancestors thrived.
30,000 years ago, the proportion of older people among modern humans suddenly boomed. Mortality was still high for the young – but the survivors lived longer -- looked after as a source of wisdom and experience. It was the elderly who held tribes together – a source of stability and strength. In nomadic groups, of course, they had to be ambulatory. If they weren’t – they were simply abandoned or killed. But this was the case with the young as well.
But at this time in our prehistory, hunting and gathering groups were moving towards less nomadic and more sedentary adaptations. They often clustered around estuaries where food was plentiful and they learned to grow food, as well. They were still not developed agricultural society – since they still did not have a sense of property, living in collective societies, with little concept of individual ownership.
Older people were valuable. They the best tool makers. They were the best counsellors. They were the story tellers, the healers, the spiritual guides. They were looked after and their societies prospered.
Our modern concept of “youth” was largely an invention of the 19th Century. Simply put: young people were grist for Blake’s “dark and satanic mills” where it was work until you die. Few people lived long after “retirement”.
First, we invented the idea of the “child” whereas previously we had had infants, “little people” and, from puberty on – “adults. “Teenagers” came later, as industrial technology advanced and we needed to educate accordingly.
Now, all that is changing. In the OECD countries, families are smaller, fewer children are being born – and fewer are needed. In addition, technology is increasingly automated so we need fewer and fewer workers. Education? A form of social certification. Really, a not so subtle way of defining social class and privilege. However,,
Because things change so fast – life- long self education and experience trump four years of studying outdated economic theory in practical terms. “Youth” and the institutions that support it are increasingly obsolete. We are always going to have young people but they will never again receive the attention they have this last one hundred years –especially now that mankind’s greatest problem is to reduce population levels --not increase them. If populations drop by half, we still have too many people. Populations need to drop 75%.
The Greatest Generation was the last generation to believe in “retirement”. At the same time, a lot of older people simply cannot afford to retire – or don’t want to. For the Boomers, it was “you’re never too old to rock and roll”. Which is good because we need them.
And we need them “fit”.
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