"Red Riding Hood, Why Are You Afraid of Grandma?"

When I was a teenager, I saw “The Savage Innocents,” starring Anthony Quinn. To my tender young eyes, Mr. Quinn’s masterful performance was overshadowed in by one scene in the movie: The oldest member of the Eskimo family, the mother-in-law, was placed on an ice flow and set adrift to be eaten by the polar bears. The polar bears would, in turn, feed the Eskimo family during a future hunting season. The mother-in-law was too old to be a functioning member of the family, her teeth being too worn to chew skins; and I was much too young to dispassionately grasp this concept of the food chain in Alaska. I cried so hard that my mother had to take me to the lobby, reassuring me that it “was only a movie.” Of course, both Mom and I knew that this film reflected real cultural values and practice, but the words “it’s only a movie,” comforted me at the time.

Almost fifty years later, my feelings have changed. Freezing to death on an ice flow is a much more preferable end to life than the loss of dignity, “acceptable neglect,” and depersonalization that I witness, almost on a daily basis, within our own culture. Freezing to death on an ice flow and becoming carrion for polar bears seems downright humane.

Our society, despite the efforts of AARP and other senior activist groups, does not wish to acknowledge even the mere presence of old people, much less to “mainstream” their healthcare and promote family unity by including them as viable members of this society; members who each bring their own unique gifts to the family unit and to society as a whole. We are lost in a world of ipods, white teeth, MySpace.com and music downloads.

Why? Why are we dancing this whirling-dervish dance to a communal “death by frivolity?” Because we are afraid. To validate our elders is to acknowledge that we, ourselves, are mortal and will, “in the blink of an eye,” join them in their growing…then diminishing… growing…then diminishing.. gray and shadowy ranks.

Within this young society, not even three hundred years old, we have made remarkable progress on many levels; a very short time has lapsed from the signing of the Declaration of Independence to walking on the moon. We have moved forwardly so rapidly that we have forgotten to take the most important things with us. Essential things for our trip into the future – such as inherent societal honesty and integrity, which would bring inherent societal trust for those who run our government, and, most importantly, the Law that is the basis for all laws of all civilized countries – the Ten Commandments. “Honor thy Father and Mother, that thy days shall be long upon the earth.” Does the way we mistreat and negate our elders portend an early demise for our society? We have done such a good job of separating Church and State that much of Society has never even considered that ignoring God’s Word could be the causal factor of the final halocaustic outcome toward which we are racing - with engines blasting, radios blaring, politicians blaming, atheists blaspheming, and the globe baking.

It is my belief that the mass apathy displayed toward our elders is indicative of the apathy toward anything which does not affect us personally. In our post-Katrina, post-911 world, we are shocked by nothing. We watch horrific clips on the morning news without batting an eye, and forget about it as soon as we set down our coffee cup and walk out the door.

It is a very real fear that our young society may never reach middle age. Making the rounds on the Internet right now are quotes attributed to Andrew Taylor, a Scottish historian at the University of Edinburgh, penned in 1787. Whether these quotes can be authenticated or not seems irrelevant; it matters not who said it, only that someone with educated foresight did say it:

“ A democracy will only exist up until the time the voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority will always vote for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy. The collapsed democracy is always followed by a dictatorship.”

Further,

“The average age of the world’s greatest civilization from the beginning of history has been about 200 years. During those 200 years, those nations always progressed through the following sequence: from bondage to spiritual faith….from spiritual faith to great courage…from courage to liberty…from liberty to abundance…from abundance to apathy…from apathy to dependence…from dependence back into bondage.”
Reading the alleged writings of Andrew Taylor writings will give one shivers of foreboding; even more so when one realizes that, if the writer were, indeed, Andrew Taylor, he was writing about the fall of the Republic of Athens, some 2000 years earlier.

How long do we have?