Retired population.......Responsibility to your country.....?

Question

I feel that members of our senior citizen group is under utilized in this country. It seems to me that they are a wasted resource which will be uncoverable once they are gone. What they offer to the next generation is a limitless bank of experience. They are the keeper of moral standard and values. Yet, I think they sometime take these incredible assets to heaven while leaving younger generations very little to inherit. I hope one day we'll recognize the potentials of this wealth and benefit from them. Having said that, I actually feel that it's the responsibility of each senior citizen to find a mean to preserve and past on their knowledge and wisdoms. If museums are design to preserve physical artifacts, should we not create some similar institution to preserve the experience of these surviving generation. How come we've baseball museum, yet we don't have an insitution where seniors can teach and share their life with younger members ? I think we'll be surprise at the results....

Answer 1

You speak of seniors as if they are slaves for your own personal enjoyment. You have no right to say that anyone is to be held "responsible" for passing anything down to anyone else. You won't find it anywhere except in living life & learning how to get up everytime you fall or are knocked down by someone or something in the course of your lifetime! The best way to learn is to shut up & listen to people when they are talking to one another. When you take a bus, keep your ears open & learn how the others act & react to one another! Best of all, give someone your seat when no one else will. An act of kindness gets you more than any written word ever will. I speak from experience. You won't find the answers in books from Seniors because many of them will just share lies & tall tales that they have heard from others. Don't think that age means wisdom. You could become a "victim" at any age & you should not believe everything you read or hear until it is proven as fact to you! Twisted minds come in all ages. Con games are played by many who call themselves "seniors" & "experienced" people!

Answer 2

Humans haven't been too successful passing anything akin to wisdom from generation to generation.

Frankly, I don't consider it a bad thing. I've just read through the answers here, and even though I believe half, or more are from one, or two people using multiple IDs, the words are representative of a lot of the population in your age group.

We seniors let a lot of lousy things happen on our watch, same as our parents did. Same as their parents did before them.

Same as you'll do.

There's probably not much of substance we have to teach you. Ours, in the US and UK, was most likely the wealthiest, most spoiled rotten in human history, until you came along.

Here's hoping you'll profit as much by the flaws we mightn't have taught you, as you won't from whatever wisdom we might have, but didn't.

The best thing you can learn from elders today is the same thing you ought to be learning from one another:

How abysmally worthless human opinions are.

Seniors already know this. That's the main important thing we know, and there's no way we can pass that understanding on to you.

Answer 3

A few years ago I tried to start a program in our local public schools called "Living Books". Basically it would have been a series of guest lectures by older people who had "been there and done that". Southern Nevada at that time was awash with people who had walked through the pages of history and lived to be able to talk about it: a lady who had been General "Hap" Arnold's secretary at the Pentagon during World War Two, one of the men who developed the heat shield tiles for the space shuttle, etc.
Well, the hoops that the local bureaucrats at the school district headquarters wanted me to jump through were too many to count. They wanted me to post a surety bond to protect anyone injured on their premises, including the speakers, have the speakers "audition" before a group of administrators who couldn't find half the places on the map that those speakers would be mentioning in their talks, ad nauseum.
Needless to say, I abandoned the effort and a lot of schoolchildren missed exposure to a great learning resource.

Answer 4

If you took a time journey back to Plato, you would find the same question being asked....and in fact, it was asked by many. The saddest part about NOT knowing history is that history repeats itself...look no further than Iraq...we learned nothing from Viet Nam!...or at least, some learned nothing from Viet Nam! And it doesn't stop with politics, although that effects us more than any other thing..for it gets us all! As for knowledge, some tribes value elders, others cast them aside. Ours casts the elderly aside, has always cast them aside...at least after the industrial revolultion here. You can open all the museums in the world, but if no one comes, it is a waste of time, energy, and money. When was the last time you were asked anything by a youngster? When I was young, I had all the answers in front of me....I have no idea how my parents learned so damned much in such a few years between my teens and my 25! Lord, what school did they go to? They gained so much knowledge in such a short time...and "if I had only listened" is not a new idiom. In fact, it is so old, even I have said it on numerous occasions. At least, my Mom and Dad haven't said, "I told you so" yet! They are ever so much more polite than I have been to my kids....I not only say it, I do the "I told you so" dance, grinning from ear to ear. ... much to the annoyance of my dear offspring. :-) We could sit down and write a book, volume after volume, or whatever....but who would read it? No one! We could hold seminars on general wisdom..but who would come...no one. Each generation must make its own, same mistakes..some things in life cannot be taught, only learned. Sad, but true. And it would seem that some are a bit cranky here today..your question was/is completely reasonable, thought out...you deserve a real answer.

Answer 5

It would fall on the parents and grandparents to teach their youth what they've learned and pass it on down. IF you can get a young person to listen.

Thankfully my grandmother wrote several books and had 1 published about our early days on the farm.

I agree with you. I'm 52 and just a bank to my kids and grand kids. I wish they were interested in how to make real butter or milk a cow or how to gather chicken eggs or de-tassel corn. It's all going to be a lost history soon. Reading about it or even going to a museum doesn't do the real event justice. My daughter has already told me she is putting me in a nursing home when the time comes, or I get broke, whichever comes first. lol

Answer 6

Most of us seniors would prefer not to be institutionalized, but that doesn't mean we can't contribute. Until recent times we seniors were often thought of as a burden to be cared for. Now people like yourself are starting to realize that while many of us are a a burden, more and more of us are a think-tank for progress and ingenuity. How society will choose to use us should be very interesting. I for one am willing to be used.

Answer 7

Thank you sweetie for your kind words. Yes we have decades of wisdom that will go to the graves, but I'm sure most of us have already tried
to give warnings...teach the
moral values...give recommendations....even beg
for changes. Honey, once
you're over 60 you are
irrelevent. You are a dinosaur
that is past its usefullness.
You are just a burden and
an unnecessary expense on
society. All young people want Seniors lives to end at
about 60 yrs.
The reason we have become
so independent and worldly
and extremely intelligent is
so we can GET EVEN!!!!

Answer 8

Thanks for your kind words about us old folks. You should be warned, however, that being old and being wise doesn't necessarily go together. Notice the word "necessarily" for that word is a qualifier meaning that equating old age and wisdom is an iffy situation. The Cliff Clavens of the world are not going to be a lot different when they're old then they were when they were young. Look up "Cheers" for a peek at who Cliff Claven was.

Answer 9

While what you say is true, one can only teach if their are students willing to learn. To most younger people, what older people have to say is just prattle. A by gone day, a by gone time, that has no connection with their lives until they too are old.

Answer 10

I agree in part with your comment, I think the U.S. society would do better by learning to not only to respect their elders, but value their knowledge. Other countries rely heavily on elders, but here if you're not 20 you supposedly have no idea. Sad.