By Ed Pilkington
The world is about to cross a demographic landmark of huge social and economic importance, with the proportion of the global population 65 and over set to outnumber children under five for the first time.
A new report by the US census bureau . . . shows that within 10 years older people will outnumber children for the first time. It forecasts that over the next 30 years the number of over-65s is expected to almost double, from 506 million in 2008 to 1.3 billion – a leap from 7% of the world’s population to 14%. Already, the number of people in the world 65 and over is increasing at an average of 870,000 each month.
Continue Reading Population of Older People Set to Surpass Number of Children, Report Finds
Great discussion!
Originally posted this on Catherine’s blog:
Catherine said “…we live on a very primitive planet.”
Primitive is an understatement. In one generation, “technology” has removed from our collective conscience what makes us human and tricked us into thinking we are advanced. Media and product consumption numbs minds. Only other humans make us human. Period.
I’ll never forget my first international relations course. On the first day, the professor drew fish on the board to make his point: the world is unkind, and big fish eat little fish — so-called “realism.” He may not have understood that he was describing the human condition, but I can still see the board in my mind. I can also still remember how depressing it was to see and hear. Greed rules.
In this technoworld, we have less need for other humans, and therefore can marginalize them in our own minds. It’s about me, mine and those for which I care. That’s it. The irony is that the rural — or areas considered “primitive” compared to big cities — are in the best position to endure if the “techno-blinders” are removed and society returns to a primitive state. Cities, on the other hand, will be in big trouble. One can’t eat a PC or TV or iPod. Many people can’t keep their houseplants alive. In 18 years of schooling, I was never introduced to simple farming, but I learned calculus. Hmmmm.
At 40, and after years of city living and debt accumulation, I moved to rural Oregon, bought a 1980 doublewide trailer, and started teaching. In less than two years, I know almost everyone on my street, I drive less than 50 miles a month, I grow much of my own food and barter for the rest. I own my trailer and the property on which it sits. And I have never been happier. I do not mean to boast. It’s more of a confession. An awakening available to everyone.
My Los Angeles-based friends think I’ve lost it. What they don’t know is that they don’t HAVE it. They are unaware of the world outside their own — even though they are bombarded with media. They value homes and cars and things (and ultimately, themselves) relative to what other humans have. Real “value” can only be discerned from within. When we let the collective determine “value” we all lose.
As other posters have pointed out, only human connections — those made without technology — give us real hope. While I am grateful for the opportunity to post here, this post will also go into the inevitable black hole of technology (and thus, apathy). It reinforces all that I detest. But it’s better than being ambivalent, or at least I hope so.
A new political party? A new nation? How can we break free from the primitive without major upheaval?
McLuhan also said “the medium is the message.” Hence, the content is secondary at best, but most likely irrelevant.
Further, it was in Ellul’s Technological Society where he promotes the premise that the use of “technique,” irrespective of the specific technique employed, will push humanity toward draconian centralized rule. Hence, humanity must dismiss technique, whether it formulated through the mass production of culture, mass production and distribution of food, mass centralized distribution of information and perception, etc.
In short, we cannot employ the technology that is leading us down this path to fight this slide. We must dismiss the technology and the techniques being employed altogether.
I think it was Marshall McLuhan who said it the best…
“Today in the electronic age of instantaneous communication, I believe that our survival, and at the very least our comfort and happiness is predicated on understanding the nature of our new environment, because unlike previous environmental changes, the electric media constitute a total and near instantaneous transformation of culture, values and attitudes. This upheaval generates great pain and identity loss, which can be ameliorated only through a consciousness of its dynamics. If we understand the revolutionary transformations caused by new media, we can anticipate and control them; but if we continue in our self-induced subliminal trance, we will be their slaves.
Because of today’s terrific speed-up of information moving, we have a chance to apprehend, predict and influence the environmental forces shaping us-and thus win back control of our own destines. The new extensions of man and the environment they generate are the central manifestations of the evolutionary process, and yet we still cannot free ourselves of the delusion that it is how a medium is used that counts, rather than what it does to us and with us. This is the zombie stance of the technological idiot. It’s to escape this Narcissus trance that I’ve tried to trace and reveal the impact of media on man, from the beginning of recorded time to present.” http://www.vcsun.org/~battias/class/454/txt/mclpb.html
Jerry