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Foreword
@ 2008 Theodore Roszak
The news of the day — and for that
matter the history of the twentieth century — gives every
good reason to despair for the future of our society. And
yet, as bleak as things may seem, there are other forces in
play — subtle, long-term undercurrents that are shaping our
lives for the better even if we cannot always see them at
work. One of these, and I believe it is the most
consequential but least appreciated force of all, is the
demographic transition usually called the longevity
revolution. That more people are living longer is common
knowledge, the subject of all the television snippets about
pension plans, health care, and fitness that fill in the
last five minutes of the network news. What is less
recognized is how deeply rooted our lengthening life
expectancy is in the history of modern times, that it is
indeed so inevitable a development that it deserves to be
seen as the biological and spiritual destiny of our species.
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You say you want a revolution
Well, you know
We all want to change the world
You tell me that it's evolution
Well, you know
We all want to change the world
But when you talk about destruction
Don't you know that you can count me out
Don't you know it's gonna be all right
You say you got a real solution
Well, you know
We'd all love to see the plan
You ask me for a contribution
Well, you know
We're doing what we can
But if you want money for people with minds
that hate
All I can tell is brother you have to wait
Don't you know it's gonna be all right
You say you'll change the constitution
Well, you know
We all want to change your head
You tell me it's the institution
Well, you know
You'd better free your mind instead
But if you go carrying pictures of chairman Mao
You ain't going to make it with anyone anyhow
Don't you know it's gonna be all right
All right, all right...
— from The White Album (1968) by the Beatles
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The longevity revolution is a
cultural sea change that does not depend on the brilliant
insights of a few gifted minds, less still on organized
movements or the charisma of a great leader. As I suggest in
my chapter on "Ecology and Longevity," it is more like an
environmental than a political transformation. Indeed, I
believe it may be the planetary ecology finding a way to
protect its cargo of life from a runaway industrial system.
As a history teacher, I have often
pondered the fact that, throughout the past, the people I
have been studying were born to a life span of some 50
years. By the time they reached 45, they were old. Some
lived to be very old, but not many. When old age pensions
were first established in Europe and the United States, the
retirement age was arbitrarily set at 65 by political
leaders who knew that most people would never live to
collect the money. That in itself — the sense of how much
time one has left to work out one’s salvation — changes
everything about the way one makes choices, about one’s
hopes and ambitions.
In its youth, the boomer
generation discovered the politics of consciousness
transformation. "You say you want a revolution… Well, you
know, we all want to change your head." I had students
during the sixties and seventies who were dosing on anything
that was rumored to be psychedelic, every herb, plant, and
industrial chemical they could lay their hands on that might
allow them to explore some purportedly higher level of
awareness. But, as I suggest in my chapter on "The Doors of
Perception," the greatest consciousness-transforming agent
of all comes to us from within our own experience and as
naturally as breathing. It is the experience of aging, which
brings with it new values and visions, none of them grounded
in competition and careerism, none of them beholden to the
marketplace.
It may be that the old have always
realized that you can’t take it with you, but their numbers
were never great enough, their voice never strong enough to
make them a decisive factor in society; nor did they expect
to live long enough to lend their insight any social
importance. Now, in ever greater numbers, we are aging
beyond the values that created the urban–industrial world.
That fact begins with the boomers, but it will roll forward
into generations to come as the now-young become the
then-old — and live longer and longer. Which means that
every institution in our society will be transformed as its
population drifts further and further from competitive
individualism, military–industrial bravado, and the
careerist rat race. It is as if the freeways of the world
will one day soon begin to close down, starting with the
fast lane and finally turning into pastures and meadows.
And with that change in personal
life we can begin to see a subtle wave of ecological change
that will help us rein in the worst excesses of
commercialism, consumerism, and environmental damage. Life
in "Eldertown," as I describe it, will be nothing like the
worldwide urban ethos of freeways, sprawling suburbs,
shopping malls, and gas-guzzling cars. The elder culture
will find little reason to uproot forests, pollute the seas,
and strip mine the Earth. To be sure, on its own, the
ecology of aging will not take effect rapidly, surely not
soon enough to save many environmental treasures. But that
is not what I expect. Rather I believe there will come a
time within this century, perhaps before the boomer
generation leaves the scene, when we begin to recognize
that, by working along the grain of the longevity revolution
and the changes it brings about in our everyday values, we
can achieve an environmentally enlightened social order.
 When it
was published nearly 40 years ago, The Making of
a Counter Culture captured a huge audience of
Vietnam War protesters, dropouts, and rebels
— and their baffled elders. Theodore
Roszak found common ground between 1960s student
radicals and hippie dropouts in their mutual
rejection of what he calls the technocracy —
the regime of corporate and technological expertise
that dominates industrial society.
The book
is an immensely readable and perceptive first
take on the remarkable
generation whose trajectory through the decades has, as Roszak says in
the Foreword to his new book,
"radically altered man–woman
relations; revolutionized our popular culture;
raised the dangers of military–industrial power
to visibility; thrust the black, gay, and
feminist movements into the political forefront;
and made environmentalism a permanent part of
our lives."
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What will our world be like when
there are more people above the age of 50 (or 60 or 70) than
below, people whose highest needs are for compassion,
companionship, philosophical insight, and a modestly
sustainable way of life? If the aging of the modern world is
experienced consciously and creatively with an awareness of
how promising this transition is, it can be the path to the
sort of countercultural utopian social order that became so
popular among the countercultural young during the sixties
and seventies.
Others will disagree. They see the
rise of the wrinklies as a disaster, a fiscal train wreck, a
death blow to the prospects for progress. They see a world
dominated by grandparent power as backward, stagnant, and
unaffordable, a society burdened to the point of bankruptcy
by nursing homes and demented millions. Meanwhile, there are
those in the biotech community who are doing all they can to
extend our life expectancy by decades, if not centuries —
seemingly with no regard for the larger consequences of what
they do.
Perhaps the doomsayers will be
correct. Perhaps it will turn out that way — though not
because it has to. My own hope is that the boomers — the
best educated, most widely traveled, most innovative
generation we have ever seen — are not too frivolous to face
the dilemmas of longevity. On the contrary. I believe they
will, in growing numbers as the years unfold, recognize that
the making of an elder culture is the great task of our
time, a project that can touch life's later years with
nobility and intellectual excitement.
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