Old and Wise... or maybe just oldish

by C. Lacombe

I turn 60 this month. Holy jumpin' Jiminy Cricket, how did THAT happen! Well, it happened the same way all life happens; one day at a time.

I mean, when Hollywood directors start making history documentaries about your childhood years, you know Spring Chicken has disappeared from the rear view mirror. History though really started catching up to me in the last couple of years and I feel like I have some advice to offer younger adults.

First, pay attention to the world around you. Watching and reading history from my own childhood really drove this home. My sister brought me a July 1975 National Geographic magazine focused on feeding the world. I also watched The Vietnam War: A film by Ken Burnes & Lynn Novick (1955-1975); Oliver Stone's Untold History of the United States and The Men Who Built America; which is about Rockefeller, Vanderbilt, Carnegie, Astor, Ford and Morgan – those were some vicious men.

In 1975, I was 16 and just out of high school. Yes, I graduated at 16. I had heard about starving Biafrans and draft dodgers, but I wasn't really paying attention. In my defence, I was 16 or younger while this stuff was going on and only now see how these events shaped today's world. Biafra, by the way, only existed for three years in Nigeria.

It's really tempting to simplify all this by quoting Jean-Battiste Alphonse Karr who said, in French, "the more things change, the more they stay the same." But the fact is we live in a really complex world and, if we want to make a better future, we need to know how what we do fits into the big picture. I'm seeing some common threads for sure. For instance, lots of politicians lie to get elected and stay elected. Although, to be fair, the above sources deal only with American politicians.

While all this global strife was going on around me, I had no context and couldn't see the relevance to my life. So that's my second piece of advice; find the context that makes what you learn relevant. I read this summer that 1972 brought a rash of bad weather around the globe that impacted world supply of grain and threatened to tip global surplus to deficit. Then, the 1973 Energy Crisis sucked the fuel and fertilizer out of food production in poor nations causing losses and suddenly, the world had only a few weeks of food grains left in reserve. I remember that. But as a teenage Canadian couldn't see why running out of grain for a few months would be such a dire problem. A small hardship, yes, but a crisis? Now I know my perspective would be different if I lived in India at the time. Same thing with draft dodgers. I thought that was funny. That really wasn't funny.

Finally, pay attention to how cultural norms shape your actions and opinions. Confession: I'm a Trekkie. Probably because my dad was a Trekkie and I have fond memories of watching Star Trek with him 1966-1969. So, when Netflix came into my life. I methodically watched all of them; I mean all of them. Even Deep Space Nine. In the context of 2018's cultural norms, the characters in these series were sexist, racist and arrogant beyond reason. But I remember I did not feel that way when the shows originally aired. Also, thanks to Netflix, if you watch TV shows from the 1970s, you clearly see these characteristics in many shows. Our culture has changed. It's changing right now. Don't get left behind.

Also, don't get so caught up in your own culture that you don't understand that it's different in other places. You cannot use your norms to judge other cultures. In a TedTalk by Anna Rosling R?nnlund called See How The Rest Of The World Lives, Organized By Income, she introduces her project called Dollar Street (https://www.gapminder.org/dollar-street/matrix ). The talk introduces and explains how to use the web tool. The web tool is fascinating. It allows you to see in photos of various aspects of life at any spot on the income scale in quite a few countries of the world. For example, you can go look at what front doors look like all over the world. Some of the doors will be from the poorest people of the nation and some will be from the richest. It is a great site to add context to your own life.

Assuming you want to move humanity toward a brighter future, these are my recommendations. Pay attention to the world, look for context and relevance and know how you're shaped by cultural norms and how those norms are changing around you. And then, you know, Be the Change.

One last thing, good luck. The future awaits you.