Why do
different rules
apply to women?
Hamish Mackay
Those Oban fireworks
She had the eternal youth
that an inquiring
mind possesses
Judith Jaafar
Wake up, Arab world
The Cafe
Professor Walter Humes’ article on ageing (9 November) rang a few bells (fortunately, I was wearing my hearing aid). I spent nearly three decades lecturing to nurses, medical doctors and clinical psychologists on old age. There is one cardinal principle: people do not age uniformly, neither in degree nor in all functional areas of activity and cognition.
Having the right genes, but also establishing good habits, can both determine how ageing progresses – to say nothing of the considerable differences in socio-economic background that our Scottish population has to live with. To date we are lumbered or blessed with our genes and have to live with them. (Try living without them). But we can give ourselves a better chance of not boring, irritating, confusing or exasperating younger generations by deliberate efforts.
To give what is perhaps a trivial example, among the circle of surviving friends we see regularly, we have a rule that for the first 10 or 15 minutes of our meeting we have free rein to talk of our new pills, the big operation, and the near genius grandchildren we all seem to have. Then the portcullis comes down on such self-indulgences and we are committed to talk for the rest of the day/night about current affairs.
There are several encouraging developments which have emerged alongside the fact that there are more of us and that we are older. My old dad used to witter on about his ‘three score years and ten’ and anticipated an early demise which in fact took 15 more years to come. Now (and I may be tempting fate) my senior friends and myself look forward to perhaps another decade, and one in which we may read, travel, talk sensibly, indulge in appropriate sports and activities. But we do try. We exercise regularly, walking, playing golf, dancing. We engage with young people and reciprocate our laughter at the curious behaviours of our different generations. We aspire to our five daily portions of fruit and veg, we don’t smoke and we drink moderately. We are lucky. We all know others who have suffered ill health through no fault of their own, who have been workless for years before becoming OAPs. Their experience of ageing has to be different – and even discouraging, morale-sapping and limited. Their behaviour patterns will be hugely variable in quality and over time.
My lectures of yesteryear were not aimed at them, but at those who might have been able to affect directly what sort of ageing process they, and their patients, may have demonstrated. I do hope I was successful.
David Findlay Clark
Today’s banner
Kingston Bridge, Glasgow, at dusk
Photograph by
Islay McLeod
Faces of Scotland
A month of character studies by Islay McLeod
9. Love and affection
Corporate culture
remains firmly in
the ascendancy
Walter Humes
The approach of that annual festival of conspicuous consumption (otherwise known as Christmas) should encourage us to reflect on the values that dominate our society. It is, of course, still possible to construct a positive narrative of the significance of Christmas, with its message of faith, hope and charity.
The narrative would include reference to nativity plays, advent calendars, carol services, charitable giving and the exchange of gifts. For some individuals and families, the symbolic value of Christian worship, with its appeal to our better selves through the example of Jesus, is inspirational. Even those whose religious credentials are modest generally see Christmas as a special time when family members come together, with a particular focus on children, celebrating shared experience.
However, it is not hard to construct an alternative narrative, in which the Christian message is submerged. This would feature aggressive marketing, extravagant spending, rising debt, over-indulgence and unreasonable expectations. In a time of recession, it is implied that, for those who can afford to do so, it is their duty to indulge in serial shopping, as a contribution to the survival of businesses and the maintenance of employment. Meanwhile, people who are on the margins of society look on with envy and a sense of failure, unable to meet their children’s appetite for the material goods which other parents can provide. Viewed from this perspective, Christmas is a time when inequality is highlighted and social division exacerbated. It is not surprising that shoplifting and burglary increase at this time of year.
If there is a battle between God and Mammon, the latter seems to be winning comfortably. But, it is worth asking, should Christianity and capitalism be seen as opposing forces or, in some sense, as mutually reinforcing? Historians disagree about the precise relationship between these two philosophical and ideological systems. Although the Bible contains many prohibitions on usury (the charging of interest on loans), the early (pre-Reformation) church was an important agency in the regulation of land and property, controlled through a system of canon and civil laws – features which some historians see as essential pre-conditions for the post-Reformation flourishing of capitalist interpretations of social and economic life.
No doubt seasonal messages from religious leaders will contain familiar homilies about the need to remember the ‘real’ meaning of Christmas and the dangers of equating happiness and success with wealth and possessions.
The Church of England provides an interesting illustration of some of the forces at work. Henry VIII’s break with Rome was as much driven by his desire to acquire the riches of the Catholic church, as by his dissatisfaction with successive wives. In this he was aided and abetted by a pliant clergy who, in many cases, saw advantage in succumbing to the king’s wilful demands. The corrupt political atmosphere which this engendered is brilliantly delineated in the novels of C J Sansom.
The subsequent history of the Church of England is, at one level, a story of similar compromises, reached under various forms of political and economic pressure. Its institutional structure, with a hierarchy of clerical posts, and competition for preferment, might also be seen as a reflection of the class system, a system that is sustained through economic inequality. The recent episode at St Paul’s Cathedral, which was closed for a time because of anti-capitalist protestors, then reopened partly because of the loss of income from tourists, is also symptomatic of the uneasy relationship between spiritual and material values. Disputes about the extent to which the investment policy of the church can be considered ‘ethical’ are another feature of the morally ambivalent stance of the C of E.
Some Christians, of fundamentalist or evangelical persuasion, manage to effect a clear separation, in their own minds at least, between the spiritual and the material. They see belief as a matter of accepting biblical authority, and faith as essentially a private commitment, a personal resolve to seek salvation through prayer and worship. The social and economic context in which such acts are expressed is of secondary importance to them, though believers usually provide strong community support to each other. It is rather a convenient position to say that faith and money are separate spheres, one that is seriously undermined from time to time when certain preachers in this tradition are exposed as money-making exploiters of the gullible.
No doubt seasonal messages from religious leaders will contain familiar homilies about the need to remember the ‘real’ meaning of Christmas and the dangers of equating happiness and success with wealth and possessions. However, all the signs are that, for the majority of the population, the response to those messages will be, at best, tokenistic and, at worst, cynically dismissive. Corporate culture remains firmly in the ascendancy, despite the manifest failures of the politicians and financiers who promote it as the only route to the good life.
Walter Humes held professorships at the universities of Aberdeen, Strathclyde and West of Scotland and is now a visiting professor of education at the University of Stirling
