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Elderly
still have much to offer our society
By
Konrad Schuller
Frankfurter
Allgemeine Zeitung, September 11, 2003
|
Research
shows that countries should aim for balance in their demographic profiles.
The young
complaining about free hip implants for old people, and the old grumbling
about free university education for the young: In Germany, the war of the
generations appears to amount to a banal feud over who gets what.
But it is not only in Germany that the young are pushing aside the old,
since the same principle applies to global competition among young,
faster-growing nations and older, less dynamic ones. Germany's current
demographic experience of a rapidly aging society teaches us that Europe,
a senior citizen's home by world standards, could be plagued by an
enduring financial crisis. Innovation is young: The average age of Nobel
Prize winners shows that top-notch achievement becomes rare after the age
of 45. Aging peoples, one might conclude, have relatively less to offer.
Yet new research shows that wisdom, long thought of as an intangible
benefit of growing older, can be measured tangibly and put to practical
use. While too many elderly put a burden on society, too many young people
can also pose problems. And while population growth may temporarily
relieve national pension budgets it is a dead-end street on a global
level. In view of the world's limited resources, some are therefore
considering the aging nations of Europe not as a dying breed, but as a
pilot project.
As for “wisdom,“ the idea that it may be grasped empirically is a very
recent concept. Paul Baltes of Berlin's Max Planck Institute, who
researches old age, has developed a “paradigm of wisdom“ that defines
wisdom as “expert knowledge“ in the “fundamental pragmatism of
life.“ The Max Planck Institute has developed tests that serve to
evaluate “wisdom-related achievements“ based on model situations (“A
15-year-old girl wants to marry immediately. What should she consider and
do?“). Participants around the age of 70 achieved the best marks,
showing a particularly strong ability to solve conflicts.
If only young people would seek out - and listen to - their advice.
Baltes has used his research to raise a number of seemingly heretical
questions: Is it possible that Germany's political class isn't too old,
but rather too young? Could it be that the qualities of old people -
tolerance and conflict resolution - are simply being pushed aside by the
youth-obsessed hype of public relations departments?
Empirical evidence, in any case, indicates that Germany isn't using its
wisdom potential fully. Only 1.6 percent of the 666 parliamentarians
elected in last year's national election were older than 65, and only one
(Interior Minister Otto Schily) was 70 or over. Baltes' conclusion:
Chancellor Gerhard Schröder's coalition government may be too young to
solve Germany's problems.
The strengths of old age are matched by the dangers of youth, as U.S.
political scientist Gary Fuller discovered when he researched the causes
of recent unrest in Sri Lanka. As he investigated what had prompted mass
murders, he found that neither famine nor economic hardship were the
causes; instead, killings always peaked in years when the age group
between 15 and 25 accounted for more than one-fifth of the population.
Genocide researcher Gunnar Heinsohn of the University of Bremen spots a
connection: Nations with a demographic “youth bulge“ tend to be more
violent. Crime and civil wars are caused less by material hardship than by
the frustration of the young at blocked opportunities for social progress
in a society dominated by their parents' generation.
Physical violence breaks out when that group which researchers call
“young men desperate for positions“ becomes too strong. Heinsohn
describes this process throughout history, from the countless massacres of
antiquity (Romans against Greeks and Romans against Carthageans, through
to the “European killings“ resulting from the conquering of overseas
colonies before 1900 (when the Old World had been suffering from a
“youth bulge“ for 400 years), and today's child militias in Liberia
and the intifada in the Middle East.
According to Heinsohn, 60 of 67 investigated nations with a “youth
bulge“ are struggling with mass killings.
In comparison, Germany's aging society looks boring and expensive, but
stable. In competition with growing teenager nations and their
susceptibility to crisis, Germany's population growth lull could prove to
be a bearable disadvantage.
In any case, more important than the question of how many people a nation
needs is the question of how many people the earth can support. Those who
believe in continuing rapid material progress believe the earth will be
able to cope with more than the projected population growth from today's
6.25 billion people to 10 billion by 2050. Others, like the American David
Pimentel, believe that if a “European“ standard of living for everyone
is the goal, then the earth will be able to carry no more than one-third
of the people that inhabit it today.
Pimentel has calculated what families should do to help achieve this goal,
assuming no war- or plague- related mortality over the next 100 years:
have just 1.5 children.
That figure, as it turns out, is almost exactly today's average German
family size. Will our demographic “crisis“ prove a model for the
world?
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