The psychology of growing old

Perceptions of calamity: real or imagined

As I work on an essay examining an aberrant judicial decision, I begin to wonder was it always thus. We are all in thrall to our own minds. Only those with rare capacity are able to see through the tricks our minds play or, maybe, appear to play. As I age one of two things is happening to me. The world, it seems to me, is descending into a crazed, dystopian abyss. Alternatively, the world simply moves along approximately the same experiencing positive and negative phenomena as it always has done. If that is true the explanation for my dismal frame of mind is that it is a product of ageing. Perhaps a means for the mind to prepare the soul for death as the future is so dire that the soul would rather suffer eternal sleep than experience the horrors yet to come.

I genuinely don’t know which of those two alternatives is the truth. They are not mutually exclusive of course and it may be a combination of both. Admittedly, I am given to a predisposition to see in history a golden age from which there is a descent. I am hostile to what is called the Whig interpretation of history which might suggest my disposition is indicative of a Tory interpretation a label I would resist because I perceive myself as progressive even radical. To alleviate any discomfort, I would claim that the golden age I see is that from the very distant past and find it represented in the Tao Te Ching, a peculiarly pessimistic view of the increasing complexity of human life.

Looking at my own life it might be useful to identify it as a pocket-sized golden age as it provides a perspective that could explain why I think the way I do. Through my childhood the various accoutrements of a material world were there or arose. My family always had a car and then two cars. Pharmaceuticals were in their heyday – antibiotics were effective, pain relief was ubiquitous both enabling ever more complex surgery. Infant mortality, at least in the society I inhabited, plummeted probably due to vaccines as much as anything. Energy for heating, light and transport was abundant. Chemistry unleashed restraints on resources. Sanitation reached an apogee. Telephony existed and television was introduced and, albeit long after my childhood, computers made their appearance.

Perhaps I should concede that as teenager and a young adult I suffered debilitating angst. Maybe that was a premonition that the material wellbeing I describe was illusory. Or, perhaps not, as it may have been simply a product of material abundance. I was not prescient. Nonetheless it is now clear that the prosperity I describe was false and a terrible price would be paid for the ignorant arrogance it entailed.

I won’t discuss pharmacology other than to say that self-congratulation for the invention of antibiotics is short lived, not much more than the duration of a human life. But the real affliction is the car. Back 60 years ago no one thought about the profligate use of fossil fuels. It probably could have gone on longer without consequence if Westerners had a monopoly on the internal combustion engine. It is now evident that Western societies took a disastrous turn in their enthusiasm for the car. Cities like Los Angeles should never have existed. Despite the climate deniers’ myopia, feigned or real, it is clearly evident that the globe is heading for catastrophe. Europe and North American swelter. But the severest consequences afflict the places where the most people live. In a band from Mauritania and Morrocco in the West to Bangladesh in the East temperatures will rise to levels beyond human endurance even for the resilient Bedouin. The doom-laden thought I cannot escape is what becomes of the billions when the heat is unbearable, the sea rises, the monsoon is disrupted. I have no idea but calamity is inevitable now. I would sooner die than see the outcome. My children may well find out but their children certainly will.

Thinking about the geography, physical and human, I cannot help but reflect upon the conflicts which bedevil the regions. The idea that India might divert the Indus is terrifying. Similarly, the Brahmaputra and the Ganges make a tempting target for China particularly if its arid north suffers ever more drought. But the real locus of pessimism lies in the Levant (to use a neutral term). It seems to me that two peoples fight over a piece of land that may well become unhabitable. It is likely that there may be a technological solution to the heat – air-conditioning for all maybe. Some clever engineers may need to solve the problem of nuclear fusion first, good luck with that. What I cannot see is a solution to the mania, the depravity, the insanity, the inhumanity which have been vomited forth of late. I think primarily of Palestine but the same applies in Sudan. The anodyne sounding RSF, emerging from the satanic Janjaweed, is equal in its wickedness and depravity to the IDF.

I can envisage that it is not a forlorn hope that technological solutions will be derived to ameliorate climate disaster and political answers to disputes over resources. However, I see no mass psychotherapeutic solution to Israel and its ilk. The IDF admits it had aerial surveillance on the al-Baqa café in Gaza City before it dropped a powerful yet indiscriminate bomb on it. They knew, then, that it was full of innocent people. The IDF and its political masters and apologists have no conscience, no empathy. We are now told that empathy is a weakness, Curtis Yarvin and Elon Musk, or a sin, deranged Christian nationalists. Never mind that lack of empathy is a symptom of psychopathy. But why would that surprise anyone? It seems that psychopathy is the indispensable ingredient for political or economic power amongst Western countries. Witness Trump and his acolytes. Perhaps it was always the case. We do not descend into an abyss of heinous insanity. We were already there.

The answer to my question about the nature of pessimism which prevails in my mind is both. The world deteriorates but I, subliminally, over-emphasise as I progress towards death.

The world is a sacred vessel that cannot be changed. He who changes it will destroy it. He who seizes it will lose it.

Chapter 29 Tao Te Ching