Diminishing Worth of Wisdom
I have written about how quickly the world is changing these days and commented on how this impacts society. In the world of finance, politics, technology the changes are coming faster and faster - all domains are affected. Often times these changes are not insignificant and hard to ignore. So changes come fast and they have impact on our lives. I recently read a book (The Way of Transition) that took this subject and extended it to aging. The conclusion was obvious when I read it but I had not thought about it until then.
Society has always made use of tools and inventions to improve its standing. As humans have evolved we have managed to disconnect ourselves from nature (though in the end nature always has its way). We have inventions that have decreased the impact of seasonal change on what we eat. That have permitted us to migrate like no other animals can. A winter storm is not as big a deal as it might have been 100 years ago when communities would be cut off.
As our dependence on nature's cycles has diminished and that on technology increased our society's need to understand and be able to use the latest technologies has increased in tandem - this makes sense since we want (need?) to be able to use them. Since these technologies come so quickly it tends to be people that are just out of school and at the beginning of their career who can best understand and therefore most use these inventions to impact our society.
All of this has also impacted the value that society places on age, on experience, on wisdom. When innovation was slower, the older you were the more experience you likely had with a given tool and the more worth you had in society due to the experience you had using it. The more often you had used the tool the more useful you were as you could teach the next generation to use it. This was due to the fact that the average useful life of tool was longer. We've been using a shovel for a long time - not Facebook. The younger guys would tap the older ones on the shoulder and ask for advice on the use of that shovel. You were wise.
Today, with tools changing so rapidly it is the young generation that knows how to best use the latest gadgets. The older guys' shoulders do not get tapped as often. As a result, in a society that heavily emphasizes progress, using the measures of technological and innovative advance, the power shifts to the younger generation.
If we lived in a society that properly balanced technological progress in the context of living a whole life (psychological challenges, philosophical questions, cultural and societal behaviours) we would understand that age continues to bring wisdom. Wisdom in the tools of life - in how to deal with loss, with change, with transitions. But our focus is not on life but rather on advancement - of the economic and technological kind.
Comments