A recent New York Times article says that by the year 2016 there will be more individuals in the United States over the age of 65, than there will be under the age of five. The World is getting old. This is the reality that we face as a nation, and as a world. Despite all the jingoistic rhetoric about third world non-Christian countries taking over in population size, as a world we have slowed down our new population growth. In the distant past, famine, war, plague and natural disaster took its toll on our populations. However this is not the case anymore. Sure, there are disasters, hostilities and disease outbreaks. However as a world, we now respond to those afflicted areas with scientific knowledge, the ability to travel long distances, communication links and human specialists in these type events at a moments notice. So how is it that population growth is stymied? It isn’t really. The population of middle age and older is steadily growing.
In the 1960s, 1/3rd of the United States population was under the age of 30. In 2005 over half of the population of Ireland was under 30. Today, as we see Middle and Far Eastern countries, the population is almost 50/50, with populations 30 and under, 50 and over. This is building into a world population that is going to be really old, and at the same time moderately young.
What has caused this split in populations? We lay the reasons for these phenomena at the feet of empirical scientific research and the subsequent development and use of new life extending technologies. What place does technology play in all this?
Technology has helped to solve the two main causes of mortality in the world; disease and war.
Disease was tamed by the spread of scientific breakthroughs and practices. War, at least large spectacular horrific ones like World Wars II and I have been curtailed by the spectacle of the atom bomb. Mutual destruction is a deterrent for sure. Atomic catastrophe has shown that religious fanaticism should not reach the total assurance that after an Armageddon, there will be a time of sincere prosperity. The specter of annihilation is still a ghastly one, and it haunts the rational and irrational mind alike. Thank goodness the few that espouse a total destruction of society are kept in check by the vigilant many. Shocking events such as 9/11 and European bombing tragedies in Spain and the UK should make those that guard against such travesties even more vigilant. That is my hope anyway.
Since it is technology that has enabled the world to eradicate disease, and in some respects curtail warlike tendencies, what will technology do to help mediate the growing older of our populations? What can it also do to help enable those in the prime of their life deal with the generations that are still with us?
Technology is no replacement for a concerned humanism. The idea that we all are going to be older should make those that come before quite concerned about those that come after. They will be our caretakers, particularly if we can’t do it ourselves.
We all want to live to be old. You can re-define age if you want to from a narcissistic point of view, but aging is a sign of a successful society. The aged used to be sought out as a source of strength, partially because if you lived to be old, you must have done something right. Disease and war didn’t get you, and obviously you had enough to eat. That was unusual in some areas. But the aged started to change. Because started to value all humanity, not just particular groups and backgrounds, we brought about changes that left us with large numbers of people who centuries before, would have not lived that long. The physicist Stephen Hawking is just one example. The natural selection and eugenics crowd lost to science and morality. Not just religious moralism, but humanism. Humanism brought forth not just by Luther and Kierkegaard, but also by Lincoln, Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt, Ghandi and Martin Luther King.
We have been affected by this humanism. It is ingrained in our religious values now thanks to the progressives in all religions. It has been a constant battle however. The Abbasid Caliphate centered in ancient Baghdad was the center for a thriving humanistic outreach to the Muslim world at the time. Their saying was “that ‘the ink of a scholar is more holy than the blood of a martyr’ stressing the value of knowledge”. This was before the Crusades, where religious influences accentuated myth over humanity. It has taken centuries to get to the point within the Middle East where the younger generation can see the promise of a world with respect and humanity as its core.
Interesting that in the last few weeks the old ways of doing things has intervened. Warriors did the job that the bards and humanists couldn’t get finished. Osama Bin Laden is gone, and we found out about it from a Pakistani student who was using Twitter. We have seen that good and decent people live sometimes in the presence of archaic mysticism. Technology is bringing the humanists together.
In the ensuing backlash, we get to see that technology can bind us. Technology is not here to make us conform to some standardized techno-controlled future. It is here to make us connect and realize the humanity on each end. It might take another generation, but the new citizens will have to deal with the old ones first. The malleable and the habitual will be living together. We older ones should be shaking in our boots.
Lets hope that the technology will allow us to bend to the needs of the many over the views of the few, because I’m betting humanity will win one way or other.
