changing and adapting

Last week several of us, now all in our 80s, were chatting over cups of tea about how the world has changed in our lifetimes, and about generational differences in values and behaviour. Our remarks weren't original and I suppose much the same sentiments have been expressed by old people since Socrates' time, or before. But the changes in the world in our lifetimes may well have been more defining, more epochal, even more apocalyptic than in any previous period of 80-odd years. Personally, I feel very privileged to have lived in a period when it's been possible to witness all these changes. I also feel very lucky to have escaped so many very bad things that have happened in the past 80 plus years, like the worst consequences of wars and genocides, and very fortunate indeed to have benefited so much from some of the good things. First, though, a thought about values and behaviour. All who were alive during the great depression of the early 1930s are almost instinctively averse to extravagant spending. Back then when money was so tight, so hard to come by, we made do with what we had, altering or adapting it as appropriate. I can clearly remember seeing a car, a late 1920s model I suppose, that had been adapted so it could be pulled along by a horse that was harnessed to a pole attached to the hood; the driver sat in the passenger seat, holding the reins that went through the louvred opening in the windshield and occasionally flicking the horse's rump with the end of his whip as the car glided sedately along King William Road on its way towards Adelaide. He or someone next to him on the front seat, probably his wife I suppose, occasionally gave the steering-wheel a gentle nudge too. It cost less to graze the horse than to pay for petrol or engine repairs. We threw nothing away: everything was either mended, patched, or adapted to new and different uses. Both Wendy and I were conditioned in those hard times and have always been frugal because of it. When we have occasional bouts of extravagance we feel deliriously irresponsible. I first experienced a profligate, throw-away society when we lived in Burlington, Vermont, in 1964-65 and was shocked to see the kinds of things our neighbours put out for the garbage collectors each week: kitchen appliances that looked easily reparable, good clothes, and of course large quantities of food that was fit to eat. All of us 80-year-olds lamented the profligacy of today's youngsters, and for that matter, the profligacy of our own now middle-aged children. All sorts of horror stories are told about garbage, about the prodigious amounts of it and the increasingly troublesome problem of disposing of it all in ways that are sanitary, safe, and affordable. We hear too about the 'three Rs' - reduce, recycle, reuse - in relation to disposable items. This is a mantra nowadays taught to kindergarten kids. I wonder if they practise what is preached to them, and I hope they go home to pass on this message to their parents, in the same way that our kids came home from school with messages for us, their parents, about the correct way to brush our teeth - up and down, not side to side. There's a depression era song, there are many actually, "Buddy, Can You Spare a Dime?" may be the best, most famous, but another I'm thinking of now, "Hard times, come again no more!" may date back to an earlier slump in the late 19th century, because I think it's a Stephen Foster song. I hope our grandchildren never experience hard times like those, but I also hope that if hard times do come again, they can adapt and learn the frugal ways that we learnt from our own parents who were running things back in the early 1930s when we were young.