India when I am old (Part 1/2)

I was watching a TED talk by my favorite anthropologist (I only know one), Jared Diamond , about how old people are valued in traditional societies (small, tribal) and how they are not in modern societies (large, educated, tech savvy). It made me wonder that if America is the later, where exactly is India? Is it a traditional or an advanced one or straddling in the middle? Many of my generation are middle-aged. Soon our children will go to colleges never to return. It is not what skills we need to keep our jobs that will be important but what skills we need to have a secure and contented life when we become old (retire). So read on.

First, let me summarize what Jared says.

• In Modern societies the old rarely live with their children or with the young people. They live in separate housing for retired and old, sometimes separate states (Florida, Arizona). Rarely do you see the young and old interact. In traditional societies, grandparents, their children, and grand children (three generations) usually live together, co-exist and value each other. The young protect the old and the old pass on their skills to the young.
• Some traditional societies ill treat or neglect their old too. Especially nomadic and hunt-gathering ones that cannot carry the weak and elderly, and those living in shifting and harsh environment like the deserts and Arctic where there is not enough to feed everybody. But for most part, the traditional societies tend to take care of their old.

So why such variation in treatment? Are traditional societies better than the modern ones? No. Jared Diamond says the answer lies in how useful the younger generation feels about the older one. The more value the younger generation sees in the older generation the better they take care of their old. It is as simple as that. Here is a summary of the reasons:

Reason 1: Usefulness of the Elderly

In traditional societies, older generation continue to be valuable by taking care of the young (baby sitting), build tools, teach the young (hunting, gathering, cooking, making tools and weapons), and through knowledge (medicine, what is poisonous, politics) that only the old have monopoly through their experience. The old are the Wikipedia of their societies.

In modern societies there is no such monopoly because there are day-care centers to care of the very young. Books, Internet, Wikipedia, and Google to learn from. Knowledge from experiences become irrelevant very fast (knowing how to drive a stick shift is no longer relevant). Everything an old person can do a young person can do better in modern societies.

In societies with rapidly evolving technologies, the elderly are totally at loss because they can't keep up the pace. (For those of us who are in IT profession are not going to fare any better either. There will come a time when they cannot keep up with the pace of tech change). So the usefulness of the elderly in a fast paced modern societies is almost zero. That is why old are shunted away.

Reason 2: Culture

This is where cultures like India, Africa, East Asia come into the picture. In these ancient societies there was and is a culture of respecting and taking elders whether they are useful or not. In east asia it is Confucius philosophy which teaches people to take care of their elderly for filial reasons. In India it must be the epics extolling the value of taking care of the elderly (Rama obeying his father and self-exiling into forest, Pandavas taking care of Kunti while out of power, but the best is the story of Shravan who took care of his blind parents but was accidentally killed by Dasaratha)

There is no need to write about how the elderly are in modern societies (this includes urban India, modernized east asian countries like Korea, Taiwan, etc and not just the western societies). Here Jared gives a convincing explanation. The culprit is - The Protestant Work Ethic, that exists in developed protestant countries like US, North Europe, Britain, etc. I would call it "modern work ethic" because every society trying to modernize is trying to instill this value.

This work ethic places high importance on - hard work, self-reliance and independence - all of which are not possible for the elderly.

Reason 3: Obsession with Youth

As societies grows, there are more young in the society and so the market celebrates the young and energetic not the old and wise. You rarely see old in advertisements, the old are shown as bumbling buffoons, young upstarts in politics or corporate world are perceived as coming with "fresh ideas".

Solutions and Conclusions

At this point Jared goes on to give possible solutions that I found very weak and impractical. Training grandparents to be baby sitters, letting them to continue their profession and share their experience, etc. These are not going to happen.

But my interest is drawing the parallel between these observations with Indian society in the past (before 90s) and present (post 90s). Where are we? Are we a traditional or modern society? Are we truly treating our elderly better than the counterparts in modern society? How does it differ between different classes? How is Indian society going to treat its elderly in another 15-20 years (when we reach our senior citizen status)? Is it worth moving back to India because we think we will be treated better there? How important is health care for the elderly in both the societies?

I shall discuss this in a sequel blog.

Watch Jared Diamond's talk here.