Listen to the Old People!

Our culture places a lot of value on empirical evidence - we love science and technology, we require safety studies for new products, we generally believe that repeated observation leads to greater understanding about the way the world works.  It's inherent in almost every aspect of our lives and our zeitgeist.

So then, I wonder why we don't spend more time listening to what old people are saying about their lives, which choices worked out well for them, and how they wished they had shifted their priorities.  This logic is the cornerstone of parenting - the idea that more experienced humans who have tasted more of life will be able to make better choices and therefore provide guidance and structure to the younger humans that will help them lead good lives.  Somehow I think we lose that sense once we reach adulthood.

My grandfather with my nephew & brother-in-law at my wedding.  trefpool.com

A palliative care nurse collected the dying regrets of her patients in the last months of their lives (no mention of how many individuals were included in this anecdotal research, but it's enough that she's writing a book about her findings), and the most common sentiments follow below.

1. I wish I had been more true to myself
2. I wish I had worked less
3. I wish I had expressed my feelings more
4. I wish I had kept better contact with my friends
5. I wish I had let myself be happier

The theme that flows beneath this collection is clear to me.  We all walk a negotiated boundary between our articulated sense of self and our sense of the expectations and norms of the society in which we live.  This list of regrets sends a clear message: Embracing conformity to the world's expectations is not the path to a life well-lived.  Working more, bottling up our feelings, transforming ourselves after gauging others' expectations, these are things we all do in the modern world, and while it helps grease the wheels of capitalist production, it's making us miserable.  I must ask again, why on earth are we so fixated as a country on economic growth, on protecting the means of wealth generation, when doing so comes at the expense of our happiness and sanity?

My (millennial) generation has been occasionally labeled as lazy and self-absorbed; a cultural discussion about how to persuade millennials to work harder has arisen in the wake of this digital debate about the character of today's crop of young American adults.  Maybe we're just wise enough to realize that there are bigger fish to fry in the finite allocation of time we've been given on earth than satisfying all the whims of our corporate overlords.

Capitalism = Misery

A favorite talking point of politicians and metric used to gauge the success of nation states is the overall rate of economic growth.  Millions of people the world over during époques past and present have had their fates determined by high level policy decisions designed to accomplish that singular goal of fueling the rate of economic activity.  It’s taken for granted that more is better, that pushing that percentage ever higher holds the key to personal and collective success for all members of the political unit.

Why?

Economic growth requires one essential ingredient- a consumer population with the desire to have things that they don’t already have.  Consider that – capitalism doesn’t work if the population is content.  Every corporation large and small invests tremendous assets to convince you that there are things missing from your life, things that will make your happier or smarter, more attractive or more successful.  Companies want  you to feel like you and your life isn’t good enough, and that you should give them money to make it better.  Conservative economists evangelize about the power of economic incentives to motivate human behavior, and its crystal clear that in a world of buyers and sellers, the sellers are driven to help you identify all of the things missing from your life.

There’s a vicious circular logic entrenched in the political discourse of contemporary America that measures whether or not our country is headed in the right direction by to drive up the statistical measure of our frantic pursuit to fill the voids in our lives with material possessions.  Our national project is pathological dissatisfaction.  We’re only happy when we’re as unhappy as possible.

I’m sure Heller and Kafka are laughing about this somewhere.  Or sighing maybe.

We could be doing things differently people!  See this discussion between author Dan Buettner and National Geographic where he has a data-driven analysis of states and communities around the world that let their policy be driven by goals of increasing equality, tolerance, safety, community, and health, rather than economic growth.