Another Item On Progress’ Price List

A few years ago, a friend of mine was contemplating a major career change. He weighed the options, ran the numbers, talked it over with his wife and then called his father - in Egypt.

My friend holds advanced degrees; his father, though not exactly a peasant, has no professional training. My friend, a longtime resident of the United States, is fairly sophisticated about the way business is done here. His father knows little of such matters. Still, as my friend explained later, it simply never occurred to him to make such an important decision without consulting the old man. Tradition, you know.

My friend said his father listened to the options he outlined, asked questions about them, and then recommended the path the son had pretty much settled upon. The transoceanic consultation, as I would learn, was partly in recognition of the wisdom the father had accumulated over the years, partly in deference to his age. But that dichotomy exists only in translation. In my friend’s tradition, wisdom and age are taken to be virtually synonymous.

Nor is this some peculiarly Egyptian artifact. Cultures around the globe have accorded at least symbolic obeisance to the wisdom of age.

It used to be a tradition in America, too, until a number of trends conspired to kill it.

For instance, fewer Americans are living and working in their hometowns, a trend that separates us physically from our familial elders. One result is that as our parents age, we find ourselves thinking about them less as resources than as problems. What are we going to do about Mother?

In addition, our need increasingly is for wisdom that is beyond the ability of our parents to supply. When we needed to know when to plant, how to fix something or how to convince an employer of our loyalty, the wisdom of the old folk was a wonderful resource. The hard questions nowadays are likely to involve technology or contracts, or worries about such issues as how to manage our careers when even the boss has no loyalty - either to us or to the company we both work for - or how to plan for our financial future.

What do the old folk know about financial planning? To them, “mutual fund” may evoke the petty cash jar in the cupboard, “401(k)” an apartment number. That’s exaggeration, of course, but it is true that much of what we need to know is beyond the ken of our elders, whose experience-based advice (avoid debt and pay off your mortgage as soon as you can) may be financially unsound.

But it isn’t only in families that the wisdom of the aging has undergone devaluation. Just the other day, The Wall Street Journal had a front page piece on the job difficulties of “middle-age managers.” A few years ago, these moderately successful workers might have been viewed as valuable assets, representing the accumulated wisdom of their companies. Now, many of them are struggling to learn new skills, master new technologies and keep fit enough to work ridiculous hours, lest they lose their jobs to younger and more energetic challengers.

“A generation ago,” the Journal said, “most managers in their 50s had security. They were seen as a company’s institutional memory, mentors to younger workers. These were the years many managers spent more time with their families and, with the company’s blessing, became more involved in community activities.”

Chris Toal, the 54-year-old manager featured in the Journal’s report, put it more poignantly: “You’d think that with gray hair and wisdom there came some kind of respect.”

Sometimes it does. Walter Cronkite, Lloyd Bentsen, Helen Thomas, Pat Moynihan, Ben Bradlee, Lloyd Cutler and C. DeLores Tucker come to mind. Maybe you can think of dozens of others.

But it seems to me that their numbers are shrinking, giving way to upstarts and hotshots - the streaking meteors who light up the sky and then are gone. Who consults Grandpa before buying a new computer, a new sound system or a new global fund? Who needs the old folk?

As Chris Toal put it:

“Things are not what any of us anticipated - that with natural talent, hard work and good moral values, there would come some sense of stability. There is no security and no stability.”

Maybe the nameless wit said it better: “Tradition isn’t what it used to be.”

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The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = William Raspberry Washington Post