Rob:
> Spot on. AFAIK (the anthropologists will correct) most pre industrial
> (pre feudal as well?) societies revered the elderly for their
> experience and their knowledge, not mention the fact they had survived
> to a venerable old age.
Right. My personal theory is that this is all to do with the evolution of communication. Disclaimer: I am not an anthropologist, although I'll admit to having more than a passing familiarity with the subject of genetics.
In a pre-agrarian world, those who are past childbearing age are of some value (that is, they increase the chance of your own survival, and the chance of you successfully raising offspring to childbearing age) in that they know more of the world than you. At this stage the knowledge cannot be conveniently and efficiently carried, so when your elders die, so does everything they have not yet taught you. You can only learn from the elders of another tribe in a limited fashion, through shared oral tradition and the like. However, in this environment, resources are very scarce, mobility is important, so each elder is in real terms more "expensive" for the community.
Once we move to an agricultural, but pre-industrial society, the knowledge that resides in elders is no less valuable, as the oral tradition still dominates over writing, but comes at a lesser cost as resources are relatively more plentiful and mobility is much less of a factor. IMO, this is the age in which elders are of their greatest value - or at least their best "bang for buck".
With the coming of the industrial age, and more importantly, the wide availability of the printing press, more knowledge can be stored and readily transmitted in the form of writing, and you don't actually need those elders around quite so much, and this is why I think we see their decline. Although they are still of use (and I gain increasing respect for how useful my elders are as I grow older myself), much of what they can provide can be stored in a semi-permanent record. As the technology for transmitting and storing information improves, and literacy increases due to more common schooling, the value of elders decreases, and so does the respect shown to them and the support given to them.
The internet age is what interests me - in theory it could completely obsolete elders, but the anonymity of online existence and the increasing number of worlds in which all interaction takes place through the medium of age-neutral avatars allows for the possibility that the status of "elder" will cease to exist, and all people who are literate (in a computer sense) and able to mentally function will be considered to be part of mainstream society once more. This would be a new and interesting thing. In addition, there's an argument that, although our ability to store and transfer knowledge relevant to survival is orders of magnitude better than it ever has been, the rate of change in our culture is similarly orders of magnitude faster, and there may yet be value in the elders remembering how things were in the dim and distant past of 20 years ago!
This all makes me think that, in Glorantha, the cultures that value their elders most will be the less mobile ones with plentiful resources and less than fully advanced communication "technology". This seems to fit my perception of the Gloranthan cultures that come to my mind right now.
Paul C
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