Change and Social Survival

Change, like time, is an almost uncontrollable concept. Whether we like it or not, we are being dragged more or less consciously, sometimes screaming, along.

For most of us change is dealt with reactively, as it often is impossible proactively to direct change. The main reason is that change is systemic: the planned transition from A to B more often than not becomes a move from A to K to Z, avoiding B at all – and then landing us with the issue of coming from Z to B, etc.!!!

There is another reason: many philosophers claim we have no free will; free will is an illusion. I don’t agree, but prefer to leave that discussion for later.

For most of us, the daily changing parameters of life concern small decisions such as shopping for dinner in the Supermarket. A clear plan for the day may change into something totally different, once we are under the marketing influence of the shop’s display. Fine, this can be termed “opportunity knocks” and as such it provides us with a feeling that we have a choice. There you go: Free Will!

Real change, the next level up, may be either social or societal.

Let me describe a few examples of social change first in this essay. To this group belongs a move of house, change of job, divorce, having children, fighting the neighbour and other issues, that will hit most people in a lifetime. These are problems, with which we all must learn to deal while remaining mentally healthy and fulfil our roles in life. We learn the necessary skills from early on in childhood, where at the same time we enjoy the parental protection. As we grow older through our productive lives, we have to use our practised ability to learn in order to control the 1000s of parameters that may lead us astray, so that we can find the fastest way between A and B.

Between 25 and 60 most of us have a major advantage: we generate assets – or money – which are the underpinning for most of our decisions. Money creates freedom. Decisions and change become driven by our attitude to the balance between cost and priority. We use the assets to lead our lives in the direction we want. This includes directing, guiding and paying for our dependants. If there’s any meaning with life, this is probably the main purpose: propagation of the species while securing the take-over by our descendants.

At the moment of writing a law has been introduced in the UK, which eliminates child benefit payments for families above £50k income p.a. For most of these families it seems to be the end of the world. They have become accustomed to a choice of several holidays every year, upgrade of their iPads every 6 months and a choice of restaurant visits. Suddenly £25/week/child delimits these choices. In other words, the feeling of freedom and ability to choose (i.e. the option of being able to change) has been curtailed. I leave it to the reader to ascertain how realistic this feeling is.

Social change also encompasses the flux in values, e.g. political correctness, freedom of speech (or not). Believe me: if someone had told me 30 years ago what our society would look like in 2013, I would not have believed them and asked them to stop the clock in order to get off the train. This is a good example of “the boiling frog” syndrome – we accept change, even when it is rather negative, as long as it is slow! – but these concepts demand a special treatment, too long for this little essay.

Time goes.
You survive.
And then we hit older age.
We have fulfilled our role and are essentially not of any real use any more.

The politicians call it the “burden” of the elderly – a rather disgusting characterisation, but typical of highly materialistic societies, where money has replaced family values, wisdom, experience and other “soft” values.

Do we not have the responsibility to include the elderly in an active society?
Are they not a part of or a significant consequence of our medical progress and technology? We spend a lot of money on longevity, so it appears illogical to me not to focus on an improved life quality of older people.

If the word “burden” is accepted, should we not choose to get rid of the elderly at a given age?
If so, I suggest the age of 75.
It is a compromise between some sort of nostalgia and family feeling and the rising maintenance cost after that age. Most children would probably agree, as any inheritance due would be available to them at a lifetime, where they could still enjoy the proceeds.

It has often hit me, that there is very little learning that transcends from one generation to the next. In the technologically accelerated world of the 2000s, living conditions and the need to follow and be totally updated on the complex composition of our society, have created an “ability-gap” which for many people is becoming an insurmountable chasm. The ubiquitous “iPhone, iPod, iPad, I Paid!” boomerangs on the productive generation in its later years by a demand to live with the consequences of what they created: one cannot just call a friendly tax advisor any more, a bank manager, talk to a utility customer services clerk or find a high street shop that can repair a wrist watch. On-line, automated, press 1/ press 4/ press 3 ending up with 20 min music before being cut off are on the menu of the day. A new form of 1984 has arrived, a technological and de-humanised society where those without the required android phone, broadband connection and the latest PC are ostracised by default.
Even 6-year olds have a better chance of matching the demands of the daily grind than a 70-year old person, who has contributed to this society with hard toil.

The consequence of entering Charon’s anteroom is often a feeling of isolation.

You don’t produce anything any more – neither children, new knowledge or money. No one expects you at work. If you have done a good job, your off-spring doesn’t need you. This need was the major objective, in particular when the human species tended to die at the age of 25. You have become an artifice, a product of medical technology, keeping you alive well above your shelf life, rather than a depository of answers to the eternal repetition of the questions that each generation asks. The delusion repeats itself: every generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it.

As you age, your friends may begin to disappear. As a 75-year old said: “I don’t need Facebook to stay in contact; I’d rather have a Ouija board!”

When Orwell said: “The choice for mankind lies between freedom and happiness. For the great bulk of mankind, happiness is better”, he might have thought of old age as much as of our political and societal mismanagement. At any rate, for most people it is a fact, that freedom disappears with age, either because of failing health or because the money flow has dried up. Learning to live – happily – in these circumstances is mentally at a par with bereavement. Unfortunately our present social structure fails miserably here compared with the families of the past, who saw several generations staying together in large groups.

There is probably only one alternative, or solution, to what Zappfe called “suicide as a logical consequence”: “make sure you prepare for enough activities to keep you occupied for the next 40 years after retirement!”

In Coptic (Ptolemaic) Egypt, families lined the ‘Triclinium’ with the mummy-coffins of their departed family members, until such time where no one remembered who they were. The coffins were then dumped in the dry desert sand, later to be found by Flinders Petrie, the English archaeologist, reducing these artefacts to demonstrations of a highly developed skill of painting.
The content has lost its significance.

Well, perhaps this ritual is a bit far fetched in a dining room of 2013 and as few of us believe in the Roman concept of the "Lares", we had better concentrate on life here and now.

So, I have an idea for people to take on board, namely Christopher Hitchens’ words during an interview with Jeremy Paxman just before he died: “If you wonder whether to call someone or not – chose call. Always”.

And just a thought: the meaning of the Chinese phrase “May you live in changing times” is normally completely misunderstood.

It is actually a curse.