A little over a year ago, I crossed the physically and emotionally daunting threshold into my ‘60s’. It is an interesting time. More than any other decade marker (so far, at least) this one seems to encourage real reflection and assessment of one’s life. 60 may be the new 40, but 70 is indisputably a helluvalot closer than it was twenty years ago. However one looks at it, time is getting if not short, then shorter. One adjusts one’s expectations accordingly.
First, there is the inevitable consideration of ‘how much time do I have and what do I do with it?’
But our time in history has thrown up another complicating factor: given the state of the world, what hope do any of us have for any kind of future? Now, before I’m accused of sensationalizing or over-dramatising the situation, allow me some context.
I was born in 1956, on the receding edge of the baby boom. Throughout my life, global affairs have been moving in a certain direction which has been almost universally accepted as both desirable and inevitable. The adoption of liberal democracy has been the accepted wisdom of my generation. The movement toward it has been my entire life’s experience, and is so deeply ingrained in my consciousness that no other pattern seems even remotely negotiable. This is the way the world is – and should be – evolving. End of story.
Yet, some sixty years later, the world is riven by populist movements rejecting this perceived wisdom. The most powerful nation on the planet has ceded its leadership to a wildly-unpredictable Twitter-addicted narcissist who is baiting every country that has any dealings with America with a message that boils down to: ‘My way or the highway’. Russia, China and other lesser players are rubbing their hands in untrammeled anticipation of the chaos that is coming, and the openings it will provide for them to advance their geopolitical objectives. Nation states that were turning our way – Hungary, Turkey – are suddenly executing U-turns into authoritarianism. What rogue states like North Korea are planning one can only speculate …
At the same time, the European Union appears to be slowly but irretrievably disintegrating, rendering what was one of the modern world’s most commendable and progressive multi-national projects into a fractured, inoperable shell of its former self.
Meanwhile, those of us in the small, by-standing countries lie awake at night, fearing for collateral damage…
Yes, this is the reality of life in 2017. There are forces in play that are so large, so malevolent, and so destructive that they do not bear thinking about, especially as we have so little power to affect or control them. And into this gloomy frame of mind comes a thought from noted astronomer and committed humanist Carl Sagan, voiced some decades ago:
Science is more than a body of knowledge. It is a way of thinking. I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time when the United States is a service and information economy, when nearly all the key manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries, when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues. When the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority, when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness.
Frighteningly prescient, no?
So what to do?
Well, my first and instinctive response is to armour up (emotionally) and shut down. Cocoon into a safe environment. But that’s a pretty shallow way to live out one’s remaining years.
Alternatively, as stated above, one can just give up on hope, and have some fun. Indulge yourself.
A couple I know – roughly my contemporaries, recently retired – have done just that. They consciously sold up almost everything they own – house included – and embarked on a lengthy program of world travel. I don’t know that their decision was driven in any meaningful way by the political realities on the ground as by a neat alignment of motive and opportunity. But they sold up, packed up, and are now happily tramping around South East Asia. I don’t necessarily envy their choices, but I sure admire their spunk.
For myself, I’m doing my best to adopt a similar mindset: forget the long game. Do what matters to you now. Carpe diem and all that. Because I know the long slide is starting. I just want it to be filled with better things than darkness and superstition.