The Village Elders!! No, they don't sing Macho Macho Man.and then it hit me:
Where are our village elders?
You know what I mean.. that old, hunched over (wo)man who's already been through it all and already seen it all, who spends the day tending a garden or making baskets or something (or running an ethical corporation.. anybody?), and who the village runs to whenever it is time to make some sort of communal decision.
In the day and age of global consumerism; of my purchasing power influencing sweatshops in China and Singapore; of our information continuously being shaped by a media system that gives us soundbytes and not the entire story, where did the village elders go?
Before the internet. Before the television and the car, there were people who we listened to.
And then it hit me:
Leisure World. The elders are in Leisure World because we put them there. They're (for the most part) sealed off from the outside world. Why should we go to them for advice? We know what we're doing! We have all our fancy economists, bankers, economists, institutions, media outlets, etc.. etc.. etc..
and yet.. how could we not know that houses don't alway increase in value? If we had simply looked farther back into our past, we would have noticed the Great Depression.. if we had listened to the elders who lived through that era and who, I presume, generally suggest a disciplined spending habit.. but why should we listen to the voices of the ancients?
After all, they know so little of technology; of human progress.. and besides.. they're OLD!!
I did a google search for village elders. Apparently they DO EXIST!! There's an international peacekeeping group of village elders who travel to places like Zimbabwe or Cyprus and work to mediate peaceful solutions between seemingly uncompromisable conflicts. And guess what? People want to listen to them!
Why? Because they're village elders!!
There are so many things going on in the world today.. if you care to take a look, this is a great website, especially w/ r to current humanitarian crises.
In America, we're a bit hyperfocused on our own financial problems; the need to create jobs; the continuous nationalist populism that the government must necessarily throw at us to keep us involved (and to stay in power)..
Yet something in me craves the worlds of the elders.. the wise man. I know we have preachers and teachers, but often these people are young, biased, unobjective...
I know we've got Jimmy Carter. We have that "unbearable lightness of being guy." We have amazing authors, artists, sporadically-placed academics (Noam Chomsky comes to mind). But where is the institutionalization of "elder-hood" in our society? Wouldn't it be awesome if we had an ethical committee that made recommendations; a meritocracy of sorts of older citizens who met a few times a year and made recommendations that us young people could listen to if we so choose? What if they had a newspaper, or a newsletter, or even a general mailing list?
Elders Just LOOK Cool.
So I continued to research a little bit.. apparently the Elders went to Gaza during the recent crisis! And Jimmy Carter published a press release, which was released into the Washington Post.. Check the link here. And yet the sad thing is an unbiased report from an Ex-President who is so involved in international human affairs is relegated to page A15 of the Washington Post?! Only the most avid readers are going to get to that article.. and so here's my dilemma. How is this information supposed to reach us? How are we supposed to be ethically involved in the world when the stories are eclipsed by all the other IMPORTANT information out there.. Murdock, I know we're supposed to care about making money and protecting our national interest, but come ON!!
More on this later.. for now back to reading.
Love to All,
T
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