Over and over again ...

These days I have the radio turned off and is silence at home because I worry that the sound of the voice of the sociopath in the Oval Office will trigger a PTSD event in me.  The fascist has killed even the simple pleasure of everyday life that listening to NPR was.

Damn those 63 million voters!

One of the segments in the NPR news programs that always educated me without fail was when they talked about contemporary popular music.  I need such an education because for years now I have been clueless about what the young people now listen to.

For instance, a year or so ago, back in the good old days when we met in person, a student referred to a Beyoncé song during a class discussion.  The rest of the class eagerly jumped into the conversation.  I, the dinosaur in the room, asked them what the song was and, well, you should have been there to have enjoyed the responses from students ;)

As we get older, most of us stop listening to new music.

Most of us stop responding to new music because we know better. You can read that sentence and its last word any way you want; it’s still going to apply. But even if we don’t know better, per se, we still know just as good, and so we know enough to understand that it’s been done before, whatever this is we’re listening to. 

Whether it is from the old country, or here in the adopted home, the old songs are the ones that I respond to the most.  Some are songs from even before I was born.

And the older I get, I seem to want to listen to the same old songs over and over.  There are some CDs and LPs that I have not even touched--other than to dust them.  Ella gets lots of play time, but practically nothing for most of the rest.

So, why do we listen to our old favorites over and over again?  "Because repeated sounds work magic in our brains"

It is all a long-winded way of saying that you can't teach an old dog new tricks.  Wait, do dogs listen to music, and do they have preferences?

Tyrannosaurus Elderex

It is not unusual for young people coming from traditional Asian and African countries to remark that here in the US we shunt away the old, unlike the importance of elders in their communities.  Pseudo-anthropologists rave about how in traditional societies the elders are asked to weigh in on important issues.

Are you nodding your head in agreement?  If so, well, by now you know that this blogger will have something to upset your stomach, right?

Let us follow up on the post from two days ago.  The presidential candidates are of Medicare-age.  Like I mentioned in that post, one-quarter of the US Senate is at least 70 years old.

That's two out of the three branches of government, right?   You want to start counting the number of old people in the Supreme Court?  The Notorious RBG is 83!  The decider--Kennedy--is 80.  Breyer is 78.  Thomas and Alito are 68 and 66.  Scalia died at 79, else he will be still be there.

On the financial scene, the gazillionaire Warren Buffett is 85, and he continues to make investing decisions as if he has another sixty years left on this planet.

In higher education, too, we often suffer from the tyranny of the senior-citizen faculty.  If old soldiers never die but only fade away, old professors seem to haunt the hallways forever.

Tell me again how we as a society do not listen to our elders?

It is one hell of a tyranny of the old.  It feels like they have a choke-hold on the rest of us.  Here, the elders rule, unfortunately!

"Unfortunate" because I worry that as we tend to become more conservative with age, councils of elders will turn out to be uber-conservative.  Progressive social change requires a lot of people with idealism in their heart.

Any man who is under 30, and is not a liberal, has no heart; and any man who is over 30, and is not a conservative, has no brains.

That is a quote you have heard/read before, right?

This maxim – variously attributed to Winston Churchill, Benjamin Disraeli and Victor Hugo, among others – neatly captures the common notion that to be on the left of the political spectrum is to be young and idealistic, while to be on the right is to be older and more pragmatic.

But then at the ballot box of democracy, the sheer numbers matter, and can't the idealistic young outvote the old?  "All throat and no vote":

Because Generation Y is the largest generation in American history, it’s a big deal if it remains one of the most liberal generations ever. But there’s a huge, inescapable problem with the viability of Millennial politics today: Young people just don’t vote. Between 1964 and 2012, youth voter turnout in presidential elections has fallen below 50 percent, and Baby Boomers now outvote their children's generation by a stunning 30 percentage points.

So ... unless the young take charge of their government, the rapidly aging societies will mean that the conservative elders will continue to make conservative decisions.  Brexit and Trump are, thus, no surprises.

I, too, was young once ... not too long ago

Re-posting this from two years ago
**************

"Did you watch the game, Dr. Khé?" asked a student when the class met on Monday.  A warm-up of a different kind before we got into discussing the learning materials. It was, of course, the joshing small-talk time.  So, nothing about what I did during the Super Bowl.

(If students were to read my blog, perhaps they will wonder why I am being so not revealing anything about myself in the classroom when I do that in a lot more public manner here in the blog. If they do, I bet they have also figured out why.)

During the conversation with the two women, when I asked the older woman about her growing up years, they remarked about how they, too, were young once.

That was a profound comment, I thought. As Ken Robinson noted in his hilarious, and thought-provoking, talk, we don't imagine Shakespeare as having been a kid once and giving his parents and teachers quite some grief, especially with his English!  When we see, meet with, people who are "old," we so easily think of of them as nothing but old. A grandma is a grandma is a grandma to us.  But, that grandma, too, was once a young girl, who ran and played and cried like any of us.

Over the winter break, when talking with my mother's aunt, I asked her about her childhood. It was back in the old ancestral village, in a traditional and orthodox Brahmin household. After she "came of age," the norms then precluded her from playing outside with other kids--even girls. She wasn't even allowed to sit on the steps outside and watch others play. It was a house-arrest of sorts!  That is a small piece about her childhood. But, it says a lot, doesn't it? About her life then. That she longed to play with other kids and she could not.

Every once in a while, in the obituary pages of our local newspaper, the photo of the "old" person who died is accompanied by a photo of that same person much earlier in their life. I have no idea what message they wish to convey, but to me the message is always the same: it is not merely the old person who died. That young person they once were also died. The kid that they once were also died. It is, after all, the kid who became a teenager, who grew into an adult, became old, and died.

Young we might be today, but we too will be nothing but old in the future--if we live that long.  Imagine if you were seen by others as nothing but an old man or an old woman, as if your lively and energetic childhood and youth and middle age never existed at all!

As this wonderful song from Romeo and Juliet put it,

A rose will bloom;
it then will fade
so does a youth;
so does the fairest maid

Nothing new, yes. As Yeats wrote, "That is no country for old men."

Retire already!

The lengthy diatribe of an email from some stranger named Jake Elder was in response to an op-ed of mine, and it began like this:

I see the Geography Department at O.C.E., opps!...Western Oregon University has  an individual who is somewhat challenged with grasping reality. You from India?  Maybe it's a cultural thing that makes it difficult to understand Western Civilization and the people who created it? Maybe there are also very obvious reasons why the 3rd world is just that...

One of the downsides in my pretentious existence as a public intellectual is, well, that word "public."  In addition to the constructive engagement with strangers who comment and email, there are these wackos as well who email me.  Of course, this guy Jake Elder's nonsense does not come anywhere near that hate email's content. What is scary in a way is what this Jake Elder notes in the middle of his rant: "a number of my former students."  He was once a teacher?  Oh my!

Such bizarre emails are not going to stop me from writing op-eds.  Heck, if my union ball-busting colleagues could not stop me, ... good to know that my insignificant life is hated by quite a few; I am not that insignificant after all, eh! ;)

After having written 178 newspaper op-eds (yes, I counted them when I came to typing this sentence) over 22 years, I wonder if I am battle-tested enough for a larger audience.  Hubris, I tell ya!  The best part about the 22 years and 178 op-ed essays is that they have not all been in the same paper and not even in the same geographic area.  In California and Oregon, and spread over four newspapers.  That variety makes me feel even better about what I have done in this commitment to public scholarship and engagement, even if my esteemed colleagues think I am not qualified to teach at any level.  Did I already remark about hubris? ;)

What about those columnists who have written for the same paper for years on?  Like Thomas Friedman.  Speaking of him, this commentary raises an interesting question: "does anyone even read Thomas Friedman anymore?"  I can't recall the last time I read his piece.  Or, even if I read it, I don't recall it making any impression on me.  But, he has been there for a gazillion years.  Shouldn't even people like him be term-limited out of their positions?

Why shouldn’t there be term limits for opinion columnists? It’s a fair question, given that the Times op-ed page too often feels weighed down by tired pundits who dispense the same thoughts long after they’ve curdled.

Exactly!

There are no writing positions at the Times more exalted than that of opinion columnist. It’s as close as a journalist can get to having tenure without having to teach, which may be why so many who hold the title cling to it for so long

A good point.  Further, by the time they write the column, well, we bloggers big and small have already discussed those issues anyway.  Their columns are stale and boring to us.

Such lengthy tenures at the supposedly truth-telling places concerns me.  Supreme Court justices serve for ever and ever until they croak.  And, of course, in higher education it is tyranny of the senior-citizen faculty.

It is one thing to provide a sense of job security when the task requires sorting out the truth.  Even I, despite all my insignificance, won't be able to write the op-eds that I write if I were not in a tenured job.  Early on in the op-ed writing I was not a member of academia.  One day, the boss asked me to meet with him and suggested that I stay away from certain topics that might bring attention to him and the organization.  When I reminded him about the freedom to express opinions, he said that maybe I could at least stop identifying myself as an employee of that organization.  As Socrates exemplified, truth-seeking and truth-telling is fraught with dangers.

Oh well.  Such craziness will continue on.  The same old columnists will spin the same stuff over and over.  The justices will drool and stumble.  Faculty way past retirement age refuse to go away.  No wonder that is a shocking surprise when the 65-year old "weeper of the house" vacates his seat.

Meanwhile, who cares for the truth, right?

Just say hello

"I feel isolated" said my father in one of our recent conversations.

His feeling of isolation might seem to be an exaggerated statement when viewed via a framework that is not his.  Father's world was, and is, defined by the old traditions in the old country.  The traditions where even the second and third cousins were as close relatives as siblings were.  A tradition in which the extended family was one hyperextended set of networks.  Interestingly, one of his cousin brothers, who is  a decade and a half younger than him, apparently expressed a similar sentiment as well.  My mother joked that the two (cousin) brothers were consoling each other!

Emotions and feelings cannot be countered with objective measures.  Emotions are emotions.  Thus, there was no use, I figured, in pointing out the reality that his everyday reports to me include the conversations and visits he had with different people.  And here he was expressing that feeling of isolation when we were Skyping!  A technological miracle that allows us to remain connected from our locations on opposite sides of the planet.

Back when I was new to this country, telephone calls to India were mighty expensive, even during the off-peak times, and especially on a graduate student budget.  Now, a telephone call is inexpensive.  But, father is no longer interested in the telephone--he has recently gotten used to Skype.  And that has its own problems--when the video doesn't work, because of network speeds in India, and all we have is an audio call, he loses the interest to chat. (It was when the video worked, a couple of days ago, that he made that remark.)

Of course, father's comment was not merely about his interactions with this son.  It was about the first cousins who have drifted away.  The second cousins who might not even know that he still exists.  The children of those cousins who perhaps do not even know of such a person.  In other words, a current world that is vastly different from his own old world in the old world.

The old traditions held that nephews take after their uncles.  While I don't know how much that is true, it certainly is the case with father.  Like his uncle, father, too, recited from Bhaja Govindam to underscore his feelings.  There is something powerful in the argument when one recites from memory the most appropriate verse, more so when it is in Sanskrit:

यावद्वित्तोपार्जन सक्तः
स्तावन्निज परिवारो रक्तः |
पश्चाज्जीवति जर्जर देहे 
वार्तां कोऽपि न पृच्छति गेहे
yávad-vittopárjana-saktas-
távan-nija-pariváro raktaç
paùcáj-jivati jarjara-dehe
vártam kopi na pøcchati gehe 

And then came the translation:

So long as a man is fit and able to support his family,
see what affection all those around him show |
But no one at home cares to even have a word with him
when his body totters due to old age.

Thanks to having lived this long, I knew better than to intellectualize his comments right then and there.  My first thought was that if that was expressed by Sankara a long time ago, even then he was aware that old people were sidelined?

More than that, I did not want to make a point that economic development comes with many variations of a Faustian bargain, and a complete redefinition of relationships is one of the ways in which we have paid the price.  Of course, it is also thanks to economic development that we now have plenty of people his age, and older--and on Skype--when a mere two centuries ago the average life expectancy for humans was less than forty years!

While father might express his isolation in one kind of an old-world framework, isolation and loneliness are increasingly characteristics of our existential angst. Not only among the elderly.  This is one of the issues that Oprah appears to have taken on, in which Sanjay Gupta writes:

According to estimates by University of Chicago psychology professor John T. Cacioppo, PhD, coauthor of Loneliness: Human Nature and the Need for Social Connection, at any given time at least one in five people, or roughly 60 million Americans, suffers from loneliness. By this I mean both the acute bouts of melancholy we all feel from time to time, as well as a chronic lack of intimacy—a yearning for someone to truly know you, get you, see you—that can leave people feeling seriously unmoored

So, what is a simple thing that you can do?
Just Say Hello!
Especially to your aging parents.

The tyranny of the old and the rested

Douglas MacArthur famously said that old soldiers never die.  Now, it seems like old politicians and professors don't either.  They hang around forever and ever, and even make a return just as we ease into thinking that they are gone!

The US Senate looks like it is some kind of a geriatric ward, where the older folks keep mumbling to themselves.  Representatives? Not!

Congress is decidedly older than the populace it represents: Although Americans may serve in the House beginning at age 25, only 10 percent of House members have been under the age of 40 in recent years. By comparison, 22 percent of the general population and 30 percent of registered voters are between 25 and 39 years old. The average American is more than 20 years younger than the person who represents him or her in the House. 

Watching India's political scene, one might erroneously conclude that very few kids are ever born in that country.  The following chart from the Economist points to the wide gap between the median age of the population and the average age of the governing cabinet:

With the prime minister at 80 and the president at 76, and with such a senior-citizen cabinet, no wonder they can't relate to most pressing public issues of the day!

How much of the Toyota hysteria is just that?

The Toyota joke that I came up with, which I shared with my students as well, was:

You know why the latest model Prius has problems stopping?
Because, when Toyota upgraded the battery, they used the Energizer batteries and now the Prius keeps on going :)

But, of course, there is a difference between joking around and systematically understanding social issues.  As I posted earlier, I think we are overplaying the Toyota recall issue.  And, as we get more into the data, well, I will use Megan McArdle's words:

[You] don't usually make a profit by killing your customers.  It's too risky, in this age of nosy regulators and angry consumer activists.

Their behavior becomes a bit more explicable when you consider this argument from Ted Frank:

The Los Angeles Times recently did a story detailing all of the NHTSA reports of Toyota "sudden acceleration" fatalities, and, though the Times did not mention it, the ages of the drivers involved were striking. 

In the 24 cases where driver age was reported or readily inferred, the drivers included those of the ages 60, 61, 63, 66, 68, 71, 72, 72, 77, 79, 83, 85, 89--and I'm leaving out the son whose age wasn't identified, but whose 94-year-old father died as a passenger.

 These "electronic defects" apparently discriminate against the elderly, just as the sudden acceleration of Audis and GM autos did before them. (If computers are going to discriminate against anyone, they should be picking on the young, who are more likely to take up arms against the rise of the machines and future Terminators).

And based on the data, McArdle has the following chart:

I tell you, the story is a lot more complicated than a simple narrative that we might prefer.

The other day, a colleague and I were walking from the parking lot to our offices, and I asked him if his wife was enjoying her retired life.  "Yes" he said, and added that she is recovering from an accident.  What happened?  His wife was walking towards her car with a couple of shopping bags when she was hit by a Lexus.  Nothing major, but nothing minor either. 
I asked him whether it was related to brakes/speeding up problems of Toyota--after all, Lexus is a Toyota product.  He said that the driver apologized profusely because it was her fault, and then he noted that it was quite an old woman who was driving it. 
Why mention this?  Because, McArdle reports that it is not only the age, but also ....

a slight majority of the incidents involved someone either parking, pulling out of a parking space, in stop and go traffic, at a light or stop sign . . . in other words, probably starting up from a complete stop. 

and has the following chart:

So, who you gonna believe? :)

In praise of boredom ... yes, "praise"

Colin Bisset writes in Philosophy Now (ht):

my idea of boredom has little to do with wealthy surroundings. It’s about a certain mindset. Perfect boredom is the enjoyment of the moment of stasis that comes between slowing down and speeding up – like sitting at a traffic light for a particularly long time. It’s at the cusp of action, because however enjoyable it may be, boredom is really not a long-term aspiration. It’s for an afternoon before a sociable evening. It marks that point in a holiday when you’ve shrugged off all the concerns of work and home, explored the hotel and got used to the swimming pool, and everything has become totally familiar. ‘I’m bored’ just pops into your mind one morning as you’re laying your towel over the sunlounger before breakfast, and then you think ‘How lovely.’ It’s about the stillness and familiarity of that precise moment before the inevitable anxiety about packing up and heading back to God-knows-what.

But, it is quite difficult to be bored as we get older.  Like Bisset mentions, I too felt bored when I was a kid.  Now, boredom is a luxury that not only can I not afford, but I feel guilty if I feel bored.  The guilt coming from a nagging feeling that I ought to be doing something ...
But then this might also be the reason why we feel time flies by as we get older .... because, we do not allow boredom into our lives.

NPR  had a segment on why life seems to speed up as we age .... As the NPR page says, read it before it is too late :)
If you don't want to read/listen to that, you can always watch this clip of As Time Goes By .... from one of my all-time favorite movies, Casablanca, with one of my all-time favorite actors, Ingrid Bergman :)

Congress and Court: The tyranny of the old

According to USA Today, the average age of a House member this term will be 57 — which is a day nursery compared to the Senate, where the average age now stands at 63. Both are records.

Thirty years after Ted Kennedy griped about Ronald Reagan's advanced age, the man serves as a 76-year-old, nine-term senator recovering from brain-tumor surgery Really, is there no one else available in the state of Massachusetts who can drop his Rs and vote dependably Maoist?

An average adult would not trust Sen. Robert Byrd (who is 91) to pet-sit their mutt for fear that the unfortunate creature might accidentally turn up in chili con carne. Yet, Byrd sits on the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee, where he doles out massive amounts of taxpayer funds for West Virginia landmarks with "Byrd" in the title. Fortunately, this session Byrd has lost his chairmanship to make way for a young whippersnapper in Hawaii's Daniel Inouye, who is 84.

That is from a neat column by David Harsanyi :-)

Youth today are far better than youth of the past

A few years ago, when we lived in Bakersfield, I wrote an opinion piece on how teenagers seem to be handling things really well, despite the environment being saturated with explicit and implicit messages that were all about but sex, sex, and more sex. I am not sure if I would have even completed high school in such an environment!

In other ways too, I find the youth to be far better--in general--than the youth of the past, and agree with Christopher Ferguson's observation in the Chronicle of Higher Education: According to several significant indicators, today's youth are actually faring much better than did other recent generations: They are less violent, less suicidal, less likely to use drugs and alcohol, and less likely to experience teen pregnancy (despite a small increase in teen pregnancies in 2006, they remain much lower than in 1991). But why doesn't anyone seem to know that?