Conference on Ageing and Ageism This Saturday

by Coillte, and proud of it! Tue May 02, 2006 16:54

The birth rate in Europe has also collapsed. Total Fertility Rate (TFR) in Greece 1.34, Italy – 1.28 (I identify with these countries through the study of compulsory Greek and Latin in the 1960s Ireland) UK - 1.66, France 1.84, it is even worse in the former Godless countries of Eastern Europe. We are lagging behind the rest of Europe but caching up fast; Ireland has the fastest drop in birth rate of any country in peacetime, TFR is currently 1.86. Despite massive immigration, Europe appears to be rapidly becoming a Black Hole where civilisations disappear.

Will the current generation of oldies in Ireland be shedding a tear for old Europe or looking after themselves? The country badly needs sound advice and it appears that you are our last resort. The Big Question is: Will we the Sixties Generation ever grow up? No matter what problems we elderly now have; it will pale into insignificance as to what our exploited youth will have in their old age.

by Plato Tue May 02, 2006 16:57

Did you find Latin and (Ancient) Greek much use to you in Italy and Greece?

by Coillte, and proud of it! Tue May 02, 2006 19:54

The study of the classics as a teenager brought me into a world of learning, a world of questioning. It never dawned on me to ask what I got out of it. It just somehow filled my mind with wonderful thoughts which helped to widen my vision and condition my approach to things. It thought me how little I knew. Without the time spend in learning these languages, I would never have spent much time on reflecting on what was written.

In contrast, learning French from textbooks which were based in the modern world was a pure bore. The study of the Gallic Wars, the story of the retreat of Xenophon and his army of 10,000 when they found that they had gone too far into Persian lands was exciting. To this day, I shout θaλλatta! Θaλλatta! on completing an assignment when under pressure. Physics and Chemistry were somehow linked into Latin and Greek, so was the teaching of Christian Doctrine. Greek and Latin were the foundation bricks. Everything was somehow linked into each other. One tried to be as brave as the Spartans, or the Roman soldiers on the sports filed. This ability to see linkages was a constant but is absent in modern society e.g.
• We complain about Hospital waiting lists. But we fail to see the link with the fact that no longer are women staying at home and that they don’t have time to look after patients (relatives) who can be medically discharged and therefore free up beds.
• The farmer’s friend is no longer with us. She who used to spend many hours preparing meals from locally grown crops etc. Now, the modern housewife has only 10 minutes to prepare the evening meal. This creates a huge latent demand for genetically modified crops from the other side of the world!
• Our economy is booming. But there will not be enough money to pay pensions of todays exploited young people. Even though they pay the pensions of the current lot of retirees. There is a failure to link this crisis to the unrestricted use of contraception leading one to the unquestionable observation that our society is unable to control the use of contraception for the long term health of society. Only the first lot of elderly (us present lot) appear to benefit from a society that adopts contraception.
• The government is now to make all workers pay pension premiums. The same people who frown on wage increases. Pensions have to be invested. What manna for the stockbrokers etc. Economic activity will fall as a result of demographics in the Western World. Yet pension fund billions will be looking to be invested. This will give rise to Stock Market bubbles, unless we invest in the youthful Arab countries of Bin Laden.
And so on. These are observations that today’s society appears unable to comprehend. A society whose formative years are taken up with the study of accounting, business studies, economics; French and German learned from books about Han and Bridget’s escapades in the kitchen, We are now a society that rejects over two and a half thousand years of hard learned wisdom; a society that knows everything and the value of nothing. For independently skeptical people, we ask few questions!

Plato, I was not sure what relevance an answer to your question would have for the subject of this tread; but I think that you will find a link!