The World Really Is a Better Place…..
How Come It Don’t Feel that Way?
No matter how bad the world may be, it is in fact getting better. This is no Panglossian expression of banal optimism, nor does it reflect any religious or philosophical belief that the world is absolutely perfect as it is. It is simply a fact. Whatever genocides, famines, natural calamities, wars and pestilences; whatever tyrannies and economic busts we undergo, the fact is that today more of us live longer, healthier and wealthier lives than at any other period of human history. Not only that, but while this progress may not be irreversible, one day the human race will become extinct, and in millions of years from now the Earth will itself be absorbed by a dying Sun. Despite such dismal long term prospects, for the foreseeable future (by which I mean tens of thousands of years) we can expect our material progress to continue. That is not to say there will not be terrible events that may kill millions of us, or there will not be regressions, but fundamentally the human race will continue to thrive. We will adapt to circumstances and challenges, often self-inflicted, whatever the temporary dislocations, however dire. Just as over the past few million years human consciousness has developed, accelerating dramatically over the past couple of hundred of millennia, so will this ascent of consciousness continue, quite possibly into a post-human future. And, if we are really really smart, we might just have shot at being happier along with all this material progress.
As Satchmo gently and sappily croons ”What a Wonderful World……”, but what’s the catch? There’s gotta be one somewhere.
Well, yes…. and No.
Such a rosy prospect requires a rather large perspective of us that transcends, such minor considerations as our own personal fate, that of our families, our countries, our cultures and religions, and ultimately our species. In my first paragraph I blithely refer to dislocations that might sweep large numbers of us clean away. Such dedication to the Big Picture is all very well, but a little hard to maintain, even in the face of minor adversity. As a result, most of us place our heads firmly in the sand so far as the Big Picture is concerned and concentrate upon our more immediate circumstances and wellbeing. This is understandable but a pity, as it leaves the field to a few visionaries, seers, prophets, crackpots, charlatans and of course, billionaires. If more of us were just a little more aware of what was in store for us as a result of what is happening to us right now, where we are really likely to be in ten to twenty years from now and take responsibility for it, we might save ourselves and the world a lot of grief.
Take the fact that we now live a lot longer than we did. That’s great, but it also presents more than a few problems and not just to the world as a whole but to each one of us in particular. Just because we are likely to live ten to fifteen years longer, doesn’t necessarily mean those extra years will be healthy ones. Not only that, this final process is very likely to transfer any wealth you have may have accrued during your sojourn on this earth from you and your heirs to your doctors and hired caregivers.
What’s in Store for us….
Here’s how we’re going to shuffle off this mortal coil. According to a recent study by the Rand Corporation reported in the New York Times, 20% of us are going to get cancer, heart attack or some other debilitating disease and be dead within a year of diagnosis. Another 20% will suffer heart disease or respiratory failure or other chronic condition and, after a number of years of worsening symptoms and life-threatening episodes, will eventually succumb and die. Then a full 40% of us will suffer from Alzheimer’s or some form of dementia, or a disabling stroke. That entails an inevitable and irreversible decline toward death over an 8 to 10 year period, a process which could well take 20 years. During this time our faculties progressively depart, our character changes until we are simply unrecognizable as the people we once were. We are left to linger on in some diminished state, unable to tend to ourselves and dependent on the care and goodwill of family, or often strangers.
The inescapable conclusion we have to draw from this is that as the world ages more and more people will live in this final category. Between now and 2050, the percentage of the population in the US above the age of 85 is expected to quadruple, and the number of people with Alzheimer’s is expected to quadruple also. Commenting on this depressing demographic Leon Kass, until recently Chairman of the President’s Council on Bio-ethics, said.
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We don’t have enough people to take care of the millions on the glide path toward death. Fewer people are going into nursing homes. Families are smaller and divided”.
The Kass report went on to address the cultural and moral implications of this observing that ,“we live in an individualistic society, thinking of ourselves as autonomous beings, making up our own minds and seeking self-fulfillment.”
This may have worked in the past, but that was when children left home at sixteen to make their way in the world and when most people retired and died at 65 or thereabouts. However as the Kass report notes, “the defining characteristic of our time seems to be that we are both younger longer and older longer.” The result of this is that parents have to spend a lot more time and money than they did on preparing their children to participate in the world and in turn, their children have to spend a lot more time and money caring for their parents in old age.
In other words, modern technology, which was supposed to liberate us, is in fact creating more dependency, not less. We now spend more time when young and old dependent on others, and during our working life we spend more time caring for those who depend on us.
Only Connect….
How is this demographic likely to play out in the modern developed world? Not very well as things stand, and the situation looks like getting a lot worse before it gets any better. For that to happen our cultural and moral values are going to have to change. The emphasis has for so long been on economic individualism and a rejection of social conformity. The bonds of family have become so loose that in certain sectors of society they barely exist at all. If we are to cope in future as individuals we are going to have to nurture and honour the sacred bonds of family a lot more more, to the extent that they are morally unavoidable. Societally we need more emphasis on communalism and less on the individual and that is hardly the way things are going with George Bush and his espousal of “the ownership society”, where everyone is supposed to prosper and to fend for themselves. Clearly a society where the minority of rich people gets both smaller and richer, while the majority finds it harder and harder to cope and increasing numbers of the young and old are thrown onto the scrapheap, is unsustainable and headed for trouble. Nor are societies in the developing world, which culturally tend to maintain strong family bonds, necessarily immune from this dilemma as they become richer, more developed and live longer themselves.
For many of us who cherish our individual freedoms highly, the prospect of such strong family and societal links can be alarming. Such connectedness has obvious disadvantages along with the benefits. In Bali one only has to look at the Banjar system, which is as good an example of what we may be looking at as any, to see that. You may never be alone and looked after as a child and again when old and infirm, but it is a highly structured and not particularly socially mobile or flexible form of organization. And, as medical care becomes increasingly available, what happens when 40 percent of the community is 60 plus? This, rather than the cultural assaults of tourism, is far more likely to effect change here.
Wanna Bet…..?
One thing the Kass report omits to say, or the New York Times fails to report, is what happens to the remaining 20% of us who do not succumb in the way described. Presumably, if we are one of the lucky few, we live to a ripe old age, our mobility, marbles and libido intact and depart after one brief illness at 90 plus something with our nearest and dearest all about us.
It’s possible, but I wouldn’t bank on it if I were you. Whether we live in the bosom of our family or not, the inescapable fact is that we will need to take ever more responsibility for our own health and wellbeing. Given the increasing complexity and cost of medical care, relying on one’s loved ones and/or society to take care of us is increasingly a long bet. Even if inclined to do so our kids or society may not be able to afford it. That means we will be forced to take a much more rigorous view of how to stay healthy and our life style than we would like or are used to. If you’re not on for that and are shooting to be among the 20% of the health elect, deservedly or not …..Good Luck!
