Those that thinks that our society will
continue along the same path forget that the Western European countries just
have undergone a “once-in-the-millennium” demographic transition, which will never happen again, and that the USA are
still in this transition and China has reached there as well. Throughout
history of mankind, a relatively stable population has been normal and the
rapid population growth of the last 200 years is the abnormal. The end to population
growth is perhaps a bigger challenge for the capitalist project than the
population explosion; after all, the population explosion had gone hand in hand
with the capitalist expansion. A country like Japan has completed its
transition and there has been virtually no growth for twenty ears and a constant "crisis".
The changing population pyramid will change
society. Many manufacturers, service providers and retailers are adapting their
offers to be more appealing to rapidly growing groups of elderly, who are also
used to be active consumers (earlier generations of old people were still not
raised as “consumers”). Politically, the care for the elderly was earlier
mainly a question of relief for the working generation, and it was their
perspective that dominated; the elderly were “objects” rather than subjects.
Today it is the old people themselves that shape how care of them is developed
with a combination of political action and letting their considerable wealth
speak. Less observed, but equally important, is the shift in values that will
come.
The demographic transition shape societies.
The big cohorts of young people that characterized the youth of capitalism and
industrialism is the demographic reflection of the expansion and pioneership.
Like with so many other things one can also turn this on the head and say that
it was this demographic structure that drove capitalism in its early stages. It
is not only economic growth that is propelled by a big share of young people;
it is also the values typical for the young such as rejection of traditions,
rebellion, glorification of strength, risk taking and body culture. Our current
society's glorification of youth stands in stark contrast to the attitudes of
earlier cultures.
Society, but also many old themselves has a
kind of youth obsession. Old people are expected to behave as “old youth” in a
similar way as children were treated as “small adults” some hundred years ago.
Eighty year olds engage in mountaineering, speed dating, wind surfing or
parachuting:
Former President George H.W. Bush marked his 85th birthday on Friday the same way he did his 75th and 80th birthdays: He leaped from a plane and zoomed downward at more than 100 mph in free fall before parachuting safely to a spot near his ocean front home.[...] He told reporters that he jumped Friday for two reasons: to experience the exhilaration of free-falling and to show that seniors can remain active and do fun things." Just because you're an old guy, you don't have to sit around drooling in the corner," Bush said (AP 2009).
This is about to change. Other properties,
other characteristics of being human, will be in higher esteem for elderly
people. Properties like maturity and reflection and even slowness (e.g. Slow
Food) itself. Add to that, values such as care, spirituality and safety,
opposition to risk-taking. Care for things close and interest in the beauty of
and satisfaction by the small things in life are also typical for age, in
contrast to youth's taste of exploration, expansion and novelties. The values
of the old are better adapted to the values needed in a sustainable society.
The combined effect of the shift in values and the effect on growth, caused by
an aging population will be a strong determining factor the coming century.
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