You’d think that with the invention of writing eons ago, we’d have increased our intergenerational memory span. And figured out how to live in peace and prosperity. Apparently that’s not working out so well for us.

Like so many world changing ideas (see also the printing press and the Internet), writing has been used both to educate and to propagate misinformation. I wonder if our long-ago ancestors saw the advent of writing as  both game-changingly awesome and something to fear in the wrong hands. Probably both. But the idealists will surely have championed the written word as a means to teaching the next generations so that hard-learned lessons of today don’t get forgotten by our great grandchildren. Zero points to the idealists then!

I think the problem is twofold: oldies with the hard-won life lessons tend to start their words of advice with “in my day…” followed by how good things were and how badly everything has gone to pot. This is an immediate cure for hard-core insomnia. I’m not even that old, but even I can sound like an old fart: In my day, I used to have to look everything up at the library, but of course we were taught to read back in the days, and nobody had dyslexia and we all played outside and read our books, but you kids? With your Google and your YouTube?  Is it any wonder none of you can even spell any more?” some of this true (technically only the bit about going to the library), some of it is blatantly false, none of it was better. The young’uns of today know this. We know this. Jeez, we ‘invented’ dyslexia because we knew it was a long ignored thing, we invented the sodding Internet to avoid having to go to the sodding library… and we were no better at spelling than subsequent generations.

This blog is kinda like a note to my future self. Since I don’t expect to be exempt from the tendency that oldies have of glorifying the past while bemoaning the present, I can only hope I’ll have enough insight to look back on these posts and remember to be tolerant about the future generations. And while I’m sure I’ll always be very free with my (always unsolicited) advice, I’ll try to remember my pearls of wisdom will always  seem irrelevant to the next generation, even though it IS plausible that some of them might be worth heeding.

Because of course, that’s the second part of the problem: that the next generation isn’t terribly good at dealing with the gazillion would-be pearls we throw at them, sifting through them all to determine which are cheap plastic, which are natural beauties and which are decent mother of pearl replicas which could so easily be treated as the real deal. It’s normal that they’ll sometimes pick the wrong ones, or just avoid choosing altogether because frankly who can tell, and honestly, what are the chances of there being a totally genuine gem among all the convincing fakes.

Before the advent of writing and the printing press, there would have been a couple of elders who had lived long enough to have gained a wealth of experience, and, crucially, enough respect to be considered worthy teachers. They would be consulted by the next generation, but even then, they were not always listened to. But I dare say there was less conflicting advice to choose from. As soon as the written word became more widely available, almost anyone could pass on what they had figured out, for better or worse. The advent of the printing press made it easier to reach your target audience.  I suspect this practically irresistible urge to reach out to the yet-unborn is fundamentally human. I, for one, am doing it right now! Thereby contributing to the massively increasing the amount of useful information/useless drivel that will be available. And almost certainly ignored! Look, I’m a midwife. Midwives have an age-old tradition of gathering, storing and passing on the necessary knowledge to enable our sisters and daughters to defy the dangers of childbirth. As Cat Bohanon argues in her excellent book, Eve, humanity survived because of Gynaecology (basic reproductive medicine), to counter the fact that babies were evolving with bigger heads while having to get through inconveniently upright pelvises. And then I’m a mother. I don’t want to have risked my life and my pelvic floor for nothing! I feel compelled to teach my kids how to navigate the world based on my interpretation of it. That doesn’t mean I’m not painfully aware that my interpretation might be wrong. I’ve  tried to equip my kids to work out what is scientifically plausible, then trust them to become discerning adults.  But also, I have to accept that as scientific breakthroughs occur, what I knew as a fact a few decades ago might shift, or completely change. It has to work both ways. BUT. Both young and old need to be able to recognise good science and agree on how it is applied in the real world. 

The problem, of course, is that no decent scientist will say that her/his research proves anything 100% conclusively. They acknowledge that there’s always the possibility of error, albeit small.  These admissions of uncertainty are gleefully seized upon by those who find the conclusions inconvenient. Smoking kills? Well, not everyone, look at my 100-year-old chain smoking granny… Opioids are addictive especially where deprivation is high? Look at my grandmother, she’s been popping these all her life and she’s fine, as are her 12 kids that she delivered (underweight and preterm) without healthcare which she couldn’t afford. Lead in petrol affects brain development? Nah, my granny been inhaling fumes all her life, just won a Nobel! Vaccines hugely reduce your risk of dying from certain illnesses? Hell no, my 20-a-day, opioid-addled, lead-inhaling, grand-multip, Nobel winning  granny died of chicken pox despite being vaccinated… all this could actually be true. But even if it were, she’d be the exception. Not the rule. The science is clear on this. What also seems clear to  me is that the people who benefit from spreading these ‘alternative facts’ are those who sell tobacco, drill for oil, manufacture opioids. The ensuing lack of trust in these powerful companies means that other conspiracy theories can gain traction because why would we trust big pharmaceutical companies (who have unapologetically caused a disastrous opioid crisis) to manufacture safe and effective vaccines? To be very clear, vaccines are an amazing invention; the science is unambiguous on this one, several diseases have been wiped out or brought massively under control. But, and this brings me back to intergenerational memory: it wasn’t so long ago that dreadful illnesses such as polio and tetanus snd tuberculosis were ever-present risks. When babies were born with life-changing disabilities caused by in-utero exposure to rubella, when boys and men risked infertility due to stealthy, undetected mumps infection, when young children were left blind or deaf from measles gone bad.. it’s easy to forget what we never see, it’s easy to assume these illnesses are no longer a threat and we no longer need to protect our kids by vaccinating them against these infections. Parents have the right to choose how they care for their kids, obviously, but I’ve been in the room enough times, as a midwife, witnessing the appalling distress of pregnant women who discover they weren’t vaccinated against such diseases and now have to fervently pray to all the gods that their precious unborn child will survive unscathed following exposure to another unvaccinated, sick and infectious individual.  I just wonder how I’d feel if this happened to my daughter, how would I explain my failure to get her immunised? This is a next generation scenario that no vaccine-hesitant parent even considered back in the days. But it’s still insane to me that anyone would run the risk of letting their own beloved kids catch these deeply unpleasant illnesses (which were a scourge within living memory) when prevention was a readily available option (see my post on vaccines in which I go into more depth https://midwifemotherme.com/2024/01/01/the-vaccination-dilemma/ ). Because of one small, flawed, never-replicated study. And an an avalanche of fake news. Zero points to the idealists, obviously…

But we haven’t just forgotten about preventable diseases, we seem to have forgotten that not so long ago, trade wars devastated livelihoods, democracy wasn’t a thing, and wars were a very real thing. Somehow we are back to trade wars, fascism and actual conflicts, which make everyone poorer. Not the ruling oligarchs or their cronies, obviously. They get richer. They sell the weapons, the oil, the pharmaceuticals all needed to wage wars and they make sure that pesky tax laws which do not suit them are quietly revoked. I guess we could just reinstate workhouses and poor laws for those who are too sick or too old to work. Lazy sods. And we might as well scrap the NHS. Too expensive. Abolish weekend and holidays. Communist nonsense. Because that’s how it used to be back in the good old days when men died in wars or in factory accidents, and women died in labour or in factory accidents. But no-one was unemployed. And no-one got old. Thus high taxes were unnecessary (except when there was a war, which was all the time, but who’s counting…)  Also no jobs were too menial for the suitably desperate work force, thus no need for foreigners. Everyone happy, right?

Seriously. What. The. Actual. F*<k?

We get what we pay for.

A fair, just, tolerant, safe, secure society isn’t free. But it’s worth every penny.

How have we not worked this out by now? Despite all the warnings from all of history? As usual, us oldies are gonna have to rely on the next generation to sort out our mess. But since we can’t rely on them to learn from our mistakes (historically, that never happens), we’re going to have to lead by example. By being just, tolerant, decent and generous. It’s never too late. History is full of examples of good societies if we’re minded to search for the gems. And be guided by their light.