Older and Wiser
As a young man I was far from convinced that older was necessarily wiser.
I was a trainee ship's officer at the time and many of our senior officers had wartime qualifications.
It seemed all you needed at the time was a pulse to be judged competent.
Now that I really am older my doubts are confirmed.
The trigger for these rather downmarket thoughts is the peculiar political situation here in Britain.
We, the older generation, seem to want to fight for nonsense causes on the basis of the Britain of our youth.
We want, it seems:
The old seemed destined to ruin the world for the young and those of us with the benefit of the wherewithal to retire and play with our grandchildren should do just that.
Better than that, we should learn from our grandchildren.
Just of late there has been a rush of cases where men of power, hard or soft, have done terrible things to the young who came within range of that power.
The worst was Jimmy Saville, who may have molested 500+children in his reign as a disk jockey and pop pundit.
That in itself is a terrible indictment, but what of the dozens of men (and perhaps women) in high office in the BBC, hospitals etc who should have been protecting them? And all those priests? We of the older generation can claim many things: but wisdom: I think not.
Can we say that the young will inherit a better world than we did? I guess the jury is still out on that.
I was a trainee ship's officer at the time and many of our senior officers had wartime qualifications.
It seemed all you needed at the time was a pulse to be judged competent.
Now that I really am older my doubts are confirmed.
The trigger for these rather downmarket thoughts is the peculiar political situation here in Britain.
We, the older generation, seem to want to fight for nonsense causes on the basis of the Britain of our youth.
We want, it seems:
- As a country to 'punch above our weight' and to keep the fuzzy-wuzzies in their place.
Kipling is alive and rhyming! - As fuzzy-wuzzies and other types of wog start at Calais we don't want to be any part of Europe and as most of us are retired, or approaching retirement, we don't care if it causes mass unemployment.
- It seems OK to keep running up debts that our grand-children will have to pay;
- The National Health, an institution with huge costs and no cost to the user, must be financed (but not by us personally) whatever the cost.
- Kaiser William II was 55 in 1914;
- Captain Smith of Titanic was 62 in 1912;
- Adolf Hitler was 50 in 1949
- Mao Zedong was 66 when he started the Cultural Revolution (though I think he had a different name at the time).
The old seemed destined to ruin the world for the young and those of us with the benefit of the wherewithal to retire and play with our grandchildren should do just that.
Better than that, we should learn from our grandchildren.
Just of late there has been a rush of cases where men of power, hard or soft, have done terrible things to the young who came within range of that power.
The worst was Jimmy Saville, who may have molested 500+children in his reign as a disk jockey and pop pundit.
That in itself is a terrible indictment, but what of the dozens of men (and perhaps women) in high office in the BBC, hospitals etc who should have been protecting them? And all those priests? We of the older generation can claim many things: but wisdom: I think not.
Can we say that the young will inherit a better world than we did? I guess the jury is still out on that.
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