Lets leave bursts check whether you will be allowed to hear me okay in back. Can you hear in backtoback is a great pleasure to be back in philadelphia today and to be back in this Wonderful Library r than small blinds, instead to give me an idea how many of you here this evening may find what i am about to tell you of practical value, would like to ask you to raise your hands to one or the other of two questions that i now pose. First, could those of you raise your hand who either are or over age 65 or hope to live past age 65. [laughter] or have a parent or grandparent over 65 . [laughter] many of you. All right. Then, the second group, let me ask, please raise your hand if you are under 65, have no intention of living past 65 and have no parent or grandparent to past 65. Raise your hand. [laughter] all right. Those of you in the first group, you are the ones to whom i think my talk this evening will be of practical value. [laughter] those of you in the second group, talk will not be of practical value, but i think use it will find the subject fascinating. [laughter] im going to talk about growing older in traditional societies. This subject is just one chapter of my latest book which compares traditional small societies with our big bottom society with respect to many aspects of society, such as growing old, bringing up children, health, danger, a settlement disputes, war, religion, and speaking more than one language. This book is my most personal book, my book of, i think, the most practical value to our daily lives, and, as a shameless author, i hope it is going to be my bestselling book. [laughter] it is about one i have learned from spending a lot of my time in traditional tribal societies in new guinea of the last 60 years, and it is about what friends and others have learned from other trouble societies around the world. The essence of living in big, industrial societies and permanent housing with central governments to make decisions with writing and books and the internet. Most people live past age 60, where we regularly encounter strangers, just as i am encountering you this evening, and we are most of us eating food food grown by older people. We forget that every one of those things arose very recently in Human History. Humans have constituted a separate line of biological evolution for about 6 million years. All of the things that i just mentioned did not exist anywhere in the world 11,000 years ago. They arose only within the last 11,000 years, and some of them, such as the internet, have the phenomenon of most People Living past age 60, rose only within the last century or two. The ancestors of all of us here living under traditional, trouble conditions until virtually yesterday, measured on that 6 billion year time scale of human evolution. Until youre europeans started to expand around the world 500 years ago trouble societies still occupied large parts of all of the continents. The tribal societies have recently been coming under the control of modern societies with state governments to the point where today the last travel society not yet under state control is confined to small areas of new guinea in the amazon basin. Those troubles societies which constituted all human societies and most of Human History are far more diverse than are our modern societies. All big societies who have governments were most people are strangers to each other are similar to each other and different from travel societies in many basic ways, regardless of whether our big societies are american, german, chinese, is really, or whatever. Tribes constitute thousands of national experiments, they constitute experiments from which we ourselves may be able to learn. For example, today if you think that modern American Children enjoy too much freedom, if you think modern American Children are not given enough children, you cannot perform the decisive experiment of designating 17 american states where kids have to remain strictly subservient to their parents and grandparents, 17 other states where babies will be given the freedom to make their decisions and to play to play with a sharp knives at the age of two on board. Sixteen other states were children continue to be treated as they are today. If we can only carry of the controlled experiment we come back in 40 years, compared children from all those states and quickly sell the question, whether it is better to raise kids with more freedom, less freedom, or the same freedom that they enjoy today. Unfortunately, it is impossible to carry out that societal experiment in the u. S. But, there are thousands of traditional societies in which children already did grow up with either much more or much less freedom than in the modern u. S. By examining what actually does or did happen in traditional societies that are much more varied than modern American Society, we may be able to learn things of practical value to our to decide how to raise our kids to achieve our older people, remain healthy and other things that we care a lot about. Tribal society should not be scorned as primitive, miserable, but they should also nobile di the idealized as happy and peaceful. When we learn of travel practices, some of the more horrifying, but there were other tribal factions which one we hear about them, we may admire and envy them and wonder whether we can adopt those practices ourselves. To get some perspective on how we treat elderly people in western, modern society, let me tell you the opinion of a friend of mine from the seat islands in the pacific to have visited the United States. There were some things my friends admired about the u. S. , other things that he did not like about the u. S. , but what he most loathed about the u. S. Was our treatment of older people. He almost shouted at me indignantly, you americans throw away your older people. Those were his words. By that, he meant that most old people in the u. S. In up living separately from their children and separately from most of their friends of earlier years in separate Retirement Homes for the elderly. In fiji and other traditional societies older people, instead live out there lives among the children, another load to other relatives and lifelong friends. The treatment of the elderly varies enormously among societies, for much worse to much better than in our modern societies. At the worst extreme, many traditional societies get rid of their elderly in one of five increasingly direct ways. The most indirect effort to get rid of the elderly is just to neglect them and not to feed them or clean them until they die. The second method is to abandon them when the group moves on. The third method is to encourage older people to commit suicide. A fourth, more direct methods, is to kill older people with their own corporation. For example, among the people of papua new guinea, a widow who does whose husband has just died asks her brothers or sun to come strangler. The fifth and most arrest to the direct method to get rid of the elderly is to kill them without consent or cooperation. In more tribal societies did children abandoned or kill their parents, it happens mainly under two conditions. One is an nomadic huntergatherer societies. End up physically incapable of transporting all people who cannot walk with the ablebodied young people already have to carry their Young Children and physical possessions. The other condition for getting rid of all the people is in societys living in marginal or fluctuating environments, such as the arctic or deserts where there are periodic Food Shortages and occasionally there is just not enough food to keep everyone alive. It whenever food is available has to be reserved for ablebodied people, still capable of contributing to the tribes survival and for the children who would grow up to be the tribes future adults. Kines still hero . Yes. Okay. To us modern americans its seems horrible to think about abandoning or killing your own sick spouse or elderly parents, but what else can those societies do . They face a cruel choice. They are old people that had to do it for their own parents and now know what will happen to them. For any of you who are still inclined to blame those tribal societies for abandoning or killing the elderly, let me quote the words of Winston Churchill about the behavior of the japanese admiral at the battle in october 1944 when the admiral had to choose between two equally horrible options. Winston churchill said, those of you who have endured a similar ordeal may judge him. In fact, many of you, many of us here have already faced or will face an ordeal similar to the ordeal faced by those cinematic or arctic or desert tribal societies when you are in the position or the relative responsible for the medical care and all person. And when you are the one who has to decide whether and when so hold further medical interventions and win just to administer pain killers and sedatives or 46 or parent. At the opposite extreme in the treatment of the elderly, the happy extreme, new guinea Farming Societies where i have been doing my fieldwork for the past 60 years. The Village Society of my friend and many other sedentary traditional societies around the world. In those societies older people are cared for him, said, remain valuable, and they continue to live in the same high or in a nearby hut near their children, relatives, and lifelong friends. In traditional new guinea societies where there are not dentists and where older people gradually lose their teeth and can no longer choose their to their own food, their Adult Children chew the food until it is soft , but the food and took up, and give that soft, prechewed food to the toothless old person to eat. I dont know if any modern western society in which such devoted care of older parents is retained. There are two main sets of reasons for this variation among societies in the treatment of all people who. The variation depends especially upon the usefulness of older people and on the societys values. First, as regard to usefulness, older people continue to perform useful services in Traditional Society and also in our modern societies. One use of all the people in Traditional Society is that often their still affected by producing food. For example, among the path of huntergatherers in tanzania, grandmothers of the most productive women and finding in digging up while commendable routes because grandmothers have much more experience than younger women at finding routes and often still have enough strength to dig them up. Hence measurements show that the growth rate of eight grandchild increases with the amount of time that the grandmother stands to get food for the kid. While older and together men no longer have the strength needed to spear a lion, and the men bay still be useful in their old age at following animal tracks and capturing slow or small prey. A lifetime experience of aldermen means that they know much more than a younger man about the habits of each species of prey animal and how best to hunt that animal. That value of the experience of older people in Traditional Society has also been confirmed from modern Farming Societies. Among 19th century Canadian Farmers and 19th century finnish farmers, each decade that a grandmother survives past age 50 was correlated with two extra grandchildren of that grandmother eventually surviving because of the grandmothers contribution to the resources while still alive. Another traditional use less of older people consists of babysitting their grandchildren, thereby freeing up their Adult Children, the parents of those grandchildren, to go Hunting Hunting and gathering food for the grandchildren. Another traditional value of old people is in making tools, weapons, baskets, ponce, textiles. In fact, older people are usually the people who are adept at those things. The older people usually other leaders of Traditional Society, and the people most knowledgeable about medicine, religion, politics, s songs, and dances. Tribal elders. To some extent, that is still true today. The average age of american president s, 54 years old. Finally, older people in Traditional Society have one more huge significance that would never occur to us and our modern, littered society where our sources of affirmation our books and the internet to. In contrast, in traditional societies without writing older people other repositories of affirmation. Their knowledge spells the difference between survival and death for the whole society in a time of crisis caused by where events which only the oldest people alive have had experience for example, 1976, i visited a remote polynesian island in the pacific ocean. In order to do an Environmental Impact study for proposed mining projects. As part of my study, i asked islanders tell me the name of each species of forest, tree, and the polynesian language and to tell me for each species weather the fruit or seed was edible. They began to answer me. This effort is eaten by people. That fruit is eaten by bats, but not by people. This trees root is eaten by birds, not bats our people, but that fruit is not edible to people or any animal, and so on. Then the islanders came to a tree which they said people eat this trees fruit, only after. [indiscernible] i did not know what that is, but i let the islanders keep talking about more food eaten by people or by birds or by bats, and then they came to another just eaten by people. And then several more evenly. What is this . Why are there some you eat only after. They answered me. But inside of which was sitting a woman who was now 80 years old, virtually blind, and unable to walk. Explaining to me that when that woman, that old woman was only a teenager the island had been hit by an enormous cyclone, which they called. [indiscernible] which destroyed all the gardens and much of the forest. That left people at risk of starving, and so they survived by eating certain species of wild fruits that they normally would not lead to, but that old people alive at the time he remembered having eaten at the time of the previous cyclone. From Historical Records a Pacific Island cyclones, i calculated that it had hit the island around 1910, when the old woman the people were showing me was just a teenager. She was the oldest person still alive at the time of my visit. If another big cyclone should hit the island now and again destroy the gardens and much of the forest, the only thing that would save the population from starving to death would be and memories of that one of woman. The sole person alive who remembered what fruits that are normally considered inedible were safe to eat when nothing else was available. Her knowledge was what would keep her fellow islanders alive until their gardens begin producing again. In the u. S. , though, we do not rely an aural memory. We, instead, like the answers to questions in books or bullet. Any incident in all my years working on the Pacific Islands, that story of that old blind woman in the hat on the island made me appreciate the overwhelming importance of the knowledge of all the people throughout Human History before there was writing, nonliterate traditional societies where the knowledge of all the people spells the difference between life and death of their entire society. The ways in which older people are useful in Traditional Society. Their usefulness varies among Traditional Society and contribute to variations in the societys treatment of the elderly. The other reason is that societys Cultural Values which varies somewhat independently of the usefulness of the elderly. For example, large societies that have had centralized governments for thousands of years, there is particular emphasis on respect for the elderly in east Asia Associated with the philosophy of confucius and with his doctrine of helio, obedience, respect, and support for elderly parents. Cultural values emphasize respect for older people, contrast with the low status of the elderly in the United States. The Older Americans are at a disadvantage in getting jobs. For example, sociologists carried out the experiment of committing dozens of job applications in response status by prospective employers. All of the applications gave fictitious names to women, and all the applications are identical except that behalf of the applications give the woman applicants ages 2540 or the other half of the application date ages 4560. The result of the experiment was that employers were twice as likely to call a woman aged 25 40 for a Job Interview as a woman aged 4560. Another example of the low status of the elderly in the u. S. Is an explicit policy in hospitals called age desk agebased allocation of resources. Listen to those words. Hd space allocation of health care resources. That expression is a cruel euphemism. It means that if hospital resources are limited, if there are only a certain number of hospital beds available or if only one donor heart becomes available for transplant or if a surgeon has decided to upgrade on only a certain number of patients from a Technical Glitch [laughter] should i take off my glasses, i think . Some of you may have seen that james bond movie of about 15 years ago in which that evil head of a hamburg Media Network had the lights turned out in his old building by james bond and the eagle head says short technical interruption. Im not an evil media head. We have a short technical correction. I was just talking about aidsbased allocation of health care resources. American hospitals have an explicit policy of giving preference to younger patients over older patients on the grounds that younger patients are more valuable to society, supposedly, because t