Adjusting Society

We should apply our "objective" knowledge of ethology to sociology, because studies of human societies and behavior are a specialized sub-division of animal behavior. We are part of the larger, animal world. We are able to study most other species without much prejudice, because we feel unaffected by outcomes which seem to affect them only. On the other hand, studying ourselves is fraught with problems of prejudice and bias. One way to overcome the difficulty of, and resistance to, truthful self-examination is to apply the insights gained in our observations of other species to ourselves. This is not to say that comparative studies are simple or inherently objective, as, again, our emotions probably interfere. Nonetheless, we should attempt the work.
 

I want to bring up a few adjustments people should make in their societies, based on the new circumstances of our lives. In writing this, I assume people will be rational, so willing to make these adjusments. Of course, they aren't, so it won't happen.
 

Lifespan
 

Most importantly, people are living much longer than in centuries past. Just 200 years ago, in the United States, most women were dead by age 35, victims of disease and infection following childbirth. In those days, men lived longer - to age 45 - but then succumbed to any number of diseases and accidents. Very few people made it to Lincoln's 4 score (80 years) when he made the speech. Even in FDR's day, just 70 years ago, most men didn't make it to age 65, and almost everyone was dead by age 70. Retirement was not the Golden Years we have come to imagine in the last several decades. I, for example, thought my "retirement" would probably end by age 70. For my cohort, now 65, 75 years was a high expectation when we were young. Now, many of us will live much longer than that, but we are often not prepared for it.
 

Longer lifespan presents a lot of problems, but these problems are not new. For the most part, the problems are extensions of old problems. Old age will never go away, because all animals have a life cycle beginning at birth and ending in death. Old folks have problems with working. Old age brings on any number of major and minor disabilities and diseases which increases the necessity and cost of medical care. Old age changes needs and aspirations: most older people buy less and just "settle in" for the duration.
 

We are living longer primarilly due to the elimination or control of diseases, better diet and reduced hazards. The on-the-job death rate is much lower than it once was because there are far fewer dangerous jobs. Farming and mining are still among the most hazardous occupations, but far fewer people do those things. People still die on the job, but from stress and other diseases secondary to being a service or intellectual worker. Although we have exchanged one set of work-related insults for another, medical care for most of the insults has improved dramatically in the last century. Net net: we are living much longer.
 

Despite advances in medicine, and even the "threat" of bio-engineering, we have not changed our genetic makeup. Thus, we have not changed the overall program our bodies execute in a lifespan. The diseases and disabilities of old age - commonly, arthritis, "slowing down" and senility - have not been removed, and the age of onset has not changed significantly. In my opinion, despite all the hullabaloo about diet, exercise and other healthy things people should do, not much has changed in the overall scheme of things. A person susceptible to heart attack or stroke has it, perhaps a bit later than was "programmed" when one follows "good" medical advice. But what is "good" medicine? It turns out too often that yesterday's prescriptions are today's poison. What works for one person or group fails for another. So, at this time, it is nearly impossible to say what practices are effective. For that reason, we have to assume the people will continue to be afflicted with the conditions of old age at the usual age of onset. This implies expectations of a longer work life are not based in fact. It also implies our dreams about the "Golden Years" will be mostly unfulfilled.
 

Youth
 

Young people (I was once one of those) assume things will go on indefinitely, more or less as they are now. It is very difficult to imagine the disabilties that acumulate with age, or being hobbled by them, despite daily observation of old people in public places. My recollection is that young people focus on their cohort, so they are oblivious of the old folks in their midst. The effects of age are simply ignored or not seen. Young people assume any difficulty an older person has is temporary, like getting a cold. It is often with some surprise that people "awake" one day to find themselves middle-aged or even old. This bias is probably built into our genes; so it probably cannot be "educated out." In 1973, I had a long conversation with a young woman whose focus was her long term plan for retirement 35 years hence. At the time, I thought she was incredibly depressed and depressing. Lesson: most young people are not going to plan for their old age, because they simply cannot imagine it. The few that do so risk shunning by their peers. (Which is why institutions have to step in and do the planning.)
 

Nonetheless, in expectation of longer lives, younger people are changing their lifestyle. They have children later, and often spend more time developing adult skills. Working life starts later, as it is expected to end later. Because young people think they will live longer, they actually save less for old age, because they believe they will have a longer time to accumulate a "nest egg." Increased longevity has unexpected consequences because of changed expectations and interpretations of the situation.

Productivity
 

The picture which emerges is that people living longer will not significantly increase the working lifespan. With increased education being required, people are starting productive work at later ages. Living longer results in a greater total cost of life, even at somewhat lower standards of living. Taken together, workers will have to earn far more in their shortened productive life to pay life cycle costs.
 

Here, I must point out that people have to earn their living expenses during their lifetimes. This applies to everyone, rich and poor. Those who inherit will fritter it away if they do not work, so sooner or later the life of leisure ends; if not in this generation, then later. Social Security and other welfare programs assume people actually pay their way on the average (contrary to conservative propaganda). Although I believe we have achieved a near utopia (by ancient standards) in which machines do most of the work, the machines have to be designed, programmed and maintained. There is still human work, even if it is "easier;" i.e., less manual. That "easy" work is actually mentally hard and stressful, and requires a lot of education. Moreover, since the education "wears out," retraining and on-going education are also required. So, we don't have to develop big muscles and risk death behind the plow, but we do have to beat our brains and risk death behind a desk. The Biblical injunction applies more literally than ever: 'man shall earn his bread by the sweat of his brow.'
 

Since the needs of life are not provided as manna from heaven, a longer life means we must produce more stuff in a lifetime. Higher workplace standards increase educational requirements, which leaves less time to make the stuff. It should be obvious that productivity has to rise dramatically just to keep everything the same; i.e., the only way out of the problem is to make stuff ever more quickly (the Red Queen problem). Fortunately, we have a solution to this problem at hand: automation. The computing and information revolutions of the last three decades are key elements of the solution.

We should be able to feed, clothe, house and care for everyone, despite the increased lifespan, increased down time and decreased work time. Nonetheless, the balance is precarious; imbalance is dangerous. If productivity does not increase, there is no way to make ends meet. In that case, someone is going to starve. Then the insurrections start.
 

Education
 

The necessary educational changes are already taking place to accomodate longer lives. Considered strictly as a requirement of increasing productivity, the need for broader and deeper education increases. The key factor in increased productivity in our era is technology, not labor or natural resources. That's because we must figure out how to do more with less. There will be more non-working people to support, especially with the Baby Boomer retirements now upon us. There will be less oil, less air, less land, less water and less of everything else to provide that support.
 

I believe the need will be for a broader education as well as a more specialized one. This reiterates the ancient idea of liberal education as the basis for living a life. Broader education is preferred because we cannot know what economic and social needs the future will demand. It is very expensive to go back to the beginning when re-training a worker. On the average, there is a cost saving in acquainting people with many fields in high school and college. Then, at a later date, when people change careers, they will already have enough knowledge to undergo rapid re-training.
 

In our rapidly changing economy, lifelong learning is necessary, but should not be too specialized. The reason is the same as before: we cannot predict what will be needed tomorrow. There is another reason for general lifelong education: personal satisfaction and quality of life. Almost everyone I've known valued their education more highly as they got older. Buried among all the odds and ends we learn in school and elsewhere are the secrets of tomorrow's fulfillment. For example, I always enjoyed gardening, a favorite old folks' hobby, but I especially enjoy it because of the biology I learned. I came to enjoy keeping tropical fish for the same reason. The study of biology opens the way to an entirely new experience of the natural, living world. The same is true of all the other disciplines - language, literature, history, anthropology, psychology, etc, etc. Some technical people, especially younger ones, tend to dismiss the liberal arts as BS. That is a prejudicial and unjustified view, especially since many of our ideas about automation and computing originated in non-science-fiction literature. Engineers often become managers. When they do, the baloney they learned in Shakespeare, Poetry or Psychology suddenly has real application. I am prejudiced in this matter, having received both a liberal and technical education, but I believe the best managers, engineeers and scientists are not narrowly technical.
 

With the longer lifespan, then, goes lifelong learning. Not just learning how to do a job or another job, but learning how to live a life. Without such learning, a long life is an exercise in ennui.
 

Reproductive Cycle
 

We need to take a close look at elephants, who live as long as humans.
 

Elephants have male and female hierarchies. Elephant mothers are very protective of their young. Daughters become mother's followers. Old bulls keep rampaging teenage male elephants in check. Young elephants that don't conform are thrown out of the herd, where, lacking the protection of the herd, they soon die.
 

Elephants don't have a lot of offspring because they are a lot of work and need a lot of forage. Like humans, elephants are destroyers of the environment because their large size creates a huge appetite. Herd size is often limited by disastrous years of food or water shortages which kill off the young and old. Generally, elephants have a fairly flat age distribution because young elephants have a good chance of growing up, and old ones do not die quickly.
 

Until recently, most human children died early in life. People had 5 or more children just to keep the family and tribe going. The traditional wisdom was 'be fruitful and multiply' in almost every country. Hindus and Chinese, for example, wanted enough sons to work the land so parents would have support in their old age. This is a system that can work, so long as the population does not outrun the available resources.
 

All that has changed almost everywhere in modern times. Children don't die off so quickly. Almost all of them become adults. In some places, the population has grown beyond carrying capacity; for example, Bangladesh and the Sahel.
 

Long lived humans need to adjust their reproduction to create the desirable "flat" age distribution. This means parents will have to be pleased with few children. It means children should receive a superior endowment, including an education that guarantees success in a rapidly changing world.
 

In short, we should note the elephants; in particular, note what happens when there are too many elephants. We need to adjust the population downward, to what this Earth can support.

Welfare

In an advanced technological society of long-lived individuals, we need to accept the fact that most people don't work. Most of the people, most of the time, are on welfare; i.e., they are supported by those few who are working. Of course, in a high productivity society, this is not a problem because, by definition, highly productive workers are able to support many non-workers.
 

Example: At the founding of the United States, the average farm probably had a surplus amounting to 10-15% of the crop. Thus, almost everyone had to work on the farm just to eat. The Southern cotton crop could not be produced economically without abusive slavery. Within a century, this hand-to-mouth economy was transformed by the introduction of steam-driven machines, chemical fertilizers, railroads, the telegraph and improved seed and breeding stock. A century ago, one farmer supported another 3 people. 50 years ago one farmer supported 50 or more people. Today, one farmer supports nearly 100 people. Modern agriculture is an extremely high productivity industry which makes possible the rest of our socio-economic activities.
 

While people complain about farm subsidies, it is actually then rest of us who are on welfare. Our lives are only possible because of the huge farm surplus which we take from the farmers to feed ourselves.
 

One large group of welfare recipients is students. Once upon a time, students helped bring in the crop; but no more. Most students have no idea what happens on a farm. For them, the local Safeway is the farm. Students are well known "goof-offs," who are far more interested in sex and beer than books. We tolerate their youthful indiscretions because they learn enough and eventually become the adults who keep our society going.
 

There are other groups of welfare recipients. Senior Citizens are well known leeches who do little or nothing except consume and criticize. In most other societies, the elderly are given some sort of part-time work to keep them busy and to reinforce their sense of being needed. Also, busy seniors tend to be less critical and demanding.
 

While there are not too many of them these days, housewives, maids, butlers and personal servants are another welfare group. They provide personal attention to their paymasters, which is not considered work. However, providing their keep is also not considered welfare. Nonetheless, other than producing and nursing children, this group has little to show for its existence in the larger society.
 

Yet another welfare group exists among the respected rich. This group lives by clipping coupons and automatic deposits of dividends into their accounts. Some of this group serve on corporate boards, for which they are paid extremely handsome fees just for attending a meeeting. for a few hours. It is not clear how their services to corporations benefit society, especially since they have not been able to prevent, punish or repair massive criminal projects in the corporations they oversee.
 

Need I go on?
 

Conservatives are given to deriding "welfare queens" and other people they consider useless leeches. The trouble with the criticism is that most of us are on welfare, including most of the critics.
 

Living
 

The aging of the population, in America and elsewhere, should give everywhere pause. It's time to ask, what's it all about?

The American ultra-capitalist answer to the question is always "more." More: the ever greater family, the ever larger house, the ever bigger car, the ever grander vacation & c. In the ever-more society, people are insatiable (a premise of capitalism), causing companies to grow because consumers demand more. Among the many key insights in their book, Multitude, Hardt & Negri tell us that the global Empire creates its own subjects. The appropriate consumers are created by global capitalism - people who have the right attitudes to be caught up in an eternal rat race. Brave New World has arrived, but almost all our consumer-subjects don't know it.
 

My criticism of that lifestyle is not new. Throughout the 20^th century, Beats, Hippies and many others have exposed the synthetic life most people are leading. Timothy Leary asked us to "Turn On, Tune In,.Drop Out." Turning on was one way to see the artificiality of what we were doing. Other people were awakened by the Beatles, Bob Dylan, Buddhism, yogis, the Dalai Lama, and the Maharishi Maharesh. There are many ways of seeking and finding another way.
 

The key question has to be, what am I doing and why am I doing it? Is there really any reason to consume more and more? Is More all that my life is?
 

In a world of greatly increased productivity, the amount of work required from each member of society is much less than it used to be. That's a fact: it is possible to have a lot of things with (much) less work than before. But, if people break away from the capitalist induced consumption cycle, ultra-capitalism breaks down. There won't be much growth, and there won't be huge profits. Is that really a problem? I think not.
 

The most basic problem posed by the on-going demographic changes is this: what is the reward for work? Are we consigned to work ever more, ever harder for ever more "products" that we have been cajoled (even brainwashed) into wanting? Or, is there some point where we say, "Enough is Enough." If we are willing to say "enough," then the immediate economic problem becomes distribution, not growth. In our world, we actually grow and produce enough stuff to satisfy almost everyone's "reasonable" needs and wants. Take away the heavy advertising and cattle-prodding ("keeping up with the Joneses"), and there is actually plenty to go around. Of course, in such an economy, one has to accept that nearly everyone is on welfare.
 

One also has to be responsible and do the required share of work. The Welfare State does not thrive on laziness or leaving the work for someone else. Citizens need to be "public spirited," community oriented. While hard-core capitalists and conservatives deride that notion, in fact there is an underlying communitarian spirit in most places around the world. That feeling comes out when it is not suppressed by "wedge politics," and the constant advertising of greed and envy.

The problems of a changed age distribution - increasined longevity - are not that difficult to solve. The solutions do require people to stop taking the SOMA handed out minute by minute. There are economic, political and social interests which won't benefit from solving the problems, so they are trying to keep things as they are. Luckilly, those interests cannot hold out long, if the "multitude" do something different:
 

TURN OFF, TUNE OUT, AND DROP IN.
 

[Sorry, Timothy, you got it inside out. But you did expose how powerful mind-altering drugs, and even words, can be.]