When a lot younger, my brothers and I, along with our Dad, would traipse into the centre of town every Saturday afternoon, lured on by the promise of selecting a chocolate bar of choice from Woolworths. (Oh, so easily pleased…)
Every so often, as we set out or made our sugar-fuelled return along the road from our house, we would pass an elderly man who would dictate a steady pace along the pavement with his walking cane. As a source of amusement between my brothers and I we would observe, as our Dad chatted to him for a few minutes, how quickly it would be that this wiry old man would re-route every conversation to the subject of his time spent as a POW in a Japanese labour camp during the Second World War. Even an observation as perfunctory as the cold chill in the air would spark the flames of recollection burning as to just how cold it would get during the bitter Japanese winters.
As unashamedly humorous as my brothers and I found these occasions, our Dad would always tell us of the cruel and torturous horrors inflicted upon such POWs in Japan, instil in us the necessity of respect for such men and the trials they endured, and lament the fact that those horrendous events had sunk so indelible a scar upon their psyches.
I’m sure most people of my age and older will have similar tales of association with representatives of the ‘war generation’ and the duty-bound sense of respect that set like concrete thereafter. This is, after all, how we have been conditioned to respond to older people for decades; upholding them in wizened esteem, eager as a just and compassionate society to provide for those who, when called upon to do so, served their country with distinction and honour, once they reach old age.
It is my belief that societal trends and prevailing attitudes to the older generations may see a gradual yet marked alteration in the years to come.
I believe the drivers of this change will be largely two-fold. Firstly, the inescapable fact of demographics of which most will already be familiar – with almost a quarter of the UK’s population predicted to be aged 65 or over by 2050. Secondly, and perhaps more controversially, I believe the change will be engendered by a residual yet tangible undercurrent of animosity and disharmony where once an unquestioning respect held root.
Life in the West for the majority, from the post-War years to before the last global economic crash will retrospectively be judged to have been the most insoucient and prosperous period to have been alive than any time previously in human history. The vast expansion of technology, medical science, globalisation, free market capitalism, relative freedom from major conflicts, the (at least, surface level) dissolution of arcane prejudices and segregations, and greater levels of personal wealth, all amount to a society of far higher merit for those inhabitants than any time previously.
The ‘baby boomers’ (1945 – early 1960s), reveling in the hard fought freedoms of the previous generation, have lived in a culture far more permissive and equal than ever before, with a functioning welfare system and health service, where property has been affordable, freely available education resulting in a ‘career-for-life’ with the prospect of an easily-defined structure of progression, with the promise of a generous pension upon retiring with at least a couple of decades still stretching out ahead of them. Of course, this is a reductive and halcyon-view of the second half of the 20th century, but regardless of the many troubles and hardships, it was undeniably tranquil in comparison with the preceding centuries of war, pestilence, famine and servitude.
The global economic crisis from 2008-onwards looks set to further expand the widening chasm between rich and poor, the corporatisation of everyday life, soaring property and wider ‘costs of living’, and the development – with a return to nefarious Victorian hallmarks of the employer’s market and ‘zero hour contracts’ – of a distinct underclass.
The tension will inevitably foment as the young look to the ever-increasing legions of the old and associate them, not with war heroes or defenders’ of their national freedom, but with the reasons why they cannot buy a house or afford to go to university or food and energy prices, or save into a pension scheme. Reflecting on the myopic tendencies of their elders, they may be forgiven for feeling resentment, as it makes a blatant mockery of the common yet misguided notion that human progress is infallible, that the gradual betterment of society intertwined with the life chances of the people are locked on a consistently upward gradient.
Looking overseas, similar developments can be seen to be brewing beneath the surface. China, the inculcator of the most speculative social experiment in modern times – the ‘one-child policy’ – is currently witnessing a pronounced shift in inter-generational obligations. Traditionally, the Chinese elderly were venerated and the act of caring for one’s parents seen as a hallowed duty incumbent upon every child as a means of repaying the parental debt.
With the rising growth in the elderly (in 2005, 11% of China’s population was aged 60 or over), and the slump in descendants due to the proliferation of single-child families, the tide may be turning in terms of how much of that debt can realistically be expected to be repaid. The expansion of rural healthcare and retirement homes can perhaps be seen as a marked sign of things to come for China’s elder population.
While the sealant of social cohesion between young and old may disintegrate in the years to come, in terms of politics the older generations will almost certainly detect the clammy embrace as politicos and policy makers clamber even further into bed with them, each more desperate than the other to plump their pillows and sing them comforting lullabies to sleep. Being as they are statistically more likely to vote, the elderly’s influence on political parties, as they each try and appear as attractive to the ‘grey vote’ as possible, is likely to become even more prevalent in the years to come.
Encumbered with the terminal ‘short-termism’ of so many career politicians, the welfare and preferences of the young will be shunted off the main political agenda in favour of pledges cleverly marketed at the huge numbers of the retired, property-owning target demographic.
This growing ostracisation of the young can already be recognised in the Conservatives and their plans to cap welfare for young families, refuse to act on accelerating private rent rates, and scrap Jobseeker’s Allowance for the under-25s. The problem is that everyone knows what kind of fissures occur when a section of society is put under persistent strain whilst at the same time feel a collective recognition of the section whose past is to blame for their present hardship.
An interesting paradigm to view in terms of how a current generation turn their backs in protest against the one previous is in the ‘de-Nazification’ of post-WWII Germany; in particular, the student rebellions of the late-60s which were taken to be a defiant rejection on the part of the young of the crimes and facilitation of their forefathers.
Whilst the circumstances connected with this societal shift are nowhere near the same tenor, it may well be the case that whereas class antagonisms divided in the past, in the decades to come it will be ageist antagonisms that prevail as responsibility, atonement and a sense of sharing the collective burden imposed by generational actions and improprieties find themselves in high stead.
To my way of thinking, respect is a valuable and finite commodity, much the same as genuine empathy or trust, not to be expended wantonly and without proper recourse to appropriate qualifiers.
Before long, the old man walking down the road won't be a war hero who suffered in the fight against tyranny but someone who perhaps, in his small and relatively minor way, contributed to the invisible tyranny of late-capitalism that has a negative implication for so many growing into adulthood in the early-21st century. The currency of generational respect is volatile and it may not be long before it enters a recession of its own.
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