Apparently, just having old people hang around was not a good thing. Mary Lou Weisman again, says that in the beginning retirement had not been invented. I get that. From today’s point of view, you wouldn’t think that this is something that NEEDS inventing, would you. In 2011 we are probably more sanitized regarding the life cycle than any other set of living generations. Except for seeing their dog born, or die, most are not up close and personal with the way it works for carbon-based life forms. Although, Tom would say that just because others died is no reason to suspect he will. [Bravado, I say.]
People didn’t get to anything approximating old age when you go through the geological periods, well, we weren’t there for that many but. It would be hard to live a long and healthy life when you are nomadic, fighting big fierce animals, living in caves or on dirt. So. There wasn’t an issue for a long time. Even in Christ’s time, you got old, you stopped doing the physical stuff and started keeping records and doing the planning. That is, if you were not among the wealthy. If you were, you spent your time trying not to eat food your kids prepared or staying away from hunts and battles.
Old people are funny. They spend an entire life gathering and collecting. Then they don’t want to give it away. Resources, except for the money the Fed can print, are finite. So if a bunch of old people have all the resources there’s nothing for those folks coming along behind them. At one point, Cotton Mather, a Puritan zealot, which right there should make you cringe when those two words go together, was among the first to make the argument for retirement. One has to wonder if all the ‘witches’ he tried in Salem, were sweet young things or old hags. I’m betting on the hags.
The idea of retirement has as much to do with the political as it does with the personal. Okay. So it’s not Logan’s run, although Michael York was a cutie, and we’re not trying to kill anyone over thirty. But we have done something. We’ve convinced a whole generation, maybe more like brainwashed a generation into thinking retirement is a good thing.