For many centuries, generational relations have been simple. Older people worked to take care of the young, and then when the young grew up they took care of the old. Everyone had a turn at helping and at being helped. This all ended with the Boomers. The Boomers took their turn at being helped, and then ripped up the social contract to run society exclusively for their short-term benefit.
The old systems worked on the basis that the elderly would teach the young wisdom. The problem today is that the elderly have little wisdom to teach. The elderly of previous generations had survived wars and great depressions, and taught the following generations not to trust authorities and to think for themselves. The Boomers, by contrast, teach that if it wasn’t true, they wouldn’t be allowed to say it on television.
The approach of the right wing up until now has been to offer old people the fattest and most luxurious pensions possible. Pensioners in France receive more money on average than the average working-age adult. So when it comes to distributive justice, Boomers take the lion’s share, and the people that actually build and maintain society live off the scraps. This, predictably for anyone aware of the First Rejection, has led to stagnation.
The Boomer-first approach also violates the First Acceptance by leading to revolution. Long-term societal order is predicated on fairness; without fairness, the disadvantaged become resentful and begin to support an overthrow of the existing social order. So far, smartphones, pharmaceuticals and cheap protein have combined to limit revolutionary fervour. But the housing situation has become so bad in the West that true hatred of Boomers is starting to appear in the hearts of Gen Z and some Millennials.
The alt centrist does not believe in impoverishing old people. But they must not have luxuries at the expense of the young. This is why the alternative centrist approach to generational relations involves cutting pensions to the level of unemployed young people. No state pension should be higher than the lowest unemployment benefit.
The idea that old people have been promised luxury pensions, and therefore they have the right to force young people to pay for them, is utterly rejected. The idea that the pension age is a “finish line” at which people can stop contributing and get waited on by the young is also rejected. The universal basic income (see The Alt Centrist Approach To Welfare) puts an upper limit on the extent of the burden that old people can impose on the young.
The alternative centrist approach is to rapidly euthanise anyone old enough to become a significant burden. In the past, dementia patients were kept alive in the hope some miracle cure would be found. This was not a major problem because other conditions killed the vast majority of people before they could develop dementia. It is believed that global costs of dementia will hit USD2.8 trillion by 2030. In New Zealand alone the costs are billions of dollars annually.
All this misery and expense would be prevented by an alternative centrist government under the Fourth Rejection. It is cruel to keep dementia patients alive in the vain hope of a miracle cure, and thus they would be euthanised.
Already those aged 65 consume half of all healthcare expenditure in New Zealand. The cited report claims “The average 85 year old uses 16 times more healthcare than the average 40 year old.” Much of this expense goes to cancer treatment, which can keep old people alive for decades beyond their natural life span. The alternative centrist opposes spending billions on lost causes. Thus we support euthanasia for old people riddled with cancer.
The combined cost of pensions and healthcare represent a titanic burden on younger generations. The alternative centrist would remove this burden and let younger people breathe freely.
Generational relations are destroyed by the unwillingness of older generations to have children, and to contribute to raising them. If there are no younger generations, there are no generational relations. Birth rates collapsed when the Boomers hit adulthood and decided to drink booze instead of raise families. Ultimately, today’s problem with generational relations all come down to monumental selfishness on the part of Boomers. Boomers are a Cluster B personality disorder on the scale of an entire generation.
This selfishness is all downstream of the philosophical approach of Boomers, which is nihilistic and materialistic, suggesting that life has no meaning other than to consume. Therefore, much of the solution to poor generational relations is spiritual (see The Alt Centrist Approach To Spirituality).
A properly spiritual approach will teach people that they are all part of the natural cycle of birth, maturity and death. It would also teach people about karma, and therefore that selfishness towards the young will be reciprocated in a future life.
In a state of Nature, people incarnate into their bodies and think they are their bodies. Over time, some wake up and realise they are fragments of God consciousness, eternal and invincible, and that’s there’s nothing to worry about. Usually these people are old, which is why the various teachers and gurus that are well known to history are old. So in an alternative centrist state, the elderly would be strongly encouraged to teach spiritual lessons to younger generations. The middle-aged and the young can deal with the material world, with business, manufacturing, retail, etc. The elderly would be taught that they were earning a more auspicious rebirth this way.
In summary, generational relations today are coloured by the extreme selfishness and narcissism of the Boomers. The alternative centrist belief is that the following generations will be normal, and therefore generational relations will be normal. Once normalised, the old can be encouraged to raise the young rather than exploit them.
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This chapter is from The Alternative Centrist Manifesto, the upcoming work of political philosophy that offers the answers to the political problems of the West.
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