Old Men Knew

     The passing down of knowledge (and wisdom) in a society is an important step for civilization.  Without this passage of information (from one generation to the next), each new batch of babies would have to learn every lesson from scratch, much of it learned the hard way.  Mankind could never get beyond simple hunting and gathering.  This  idea seems ridiculous unless one removes the concept of communication, everything would have to run on instinct.

Mankind is a communicator, however, and we have seen how one epoch could communicate important information with mimicry, oral tradition, and even cave art.  It wasn’t long before symbols were used in place of pictures, and then chipped into stone or scribed into wet clay tablets, at least I think that’s how writing started.  Oral tradition was used for thousands of years to pass on important information that needed to transect multiple generations.  The simplest form of communication was parents teaching children. Oral tradition (with its complicated memorization) was only used to pass on esoteric, moral, or profound lessons.  The day to day information of hunting, fighting, growing of crops etc was simply taught from father to son in day to day activity.  Not saying that fathers didn’t teach moral lessons to children, they did, but oral tradition was used as a touchstone to ensure that those important ideas didn’t get warped over time.

With the advent of writing, oral tradition began to take a backseat to knowledge chipped into tablets or written on parchment.  Now the most important knowledge could pass through the ages unchanged.  Some great efforts were made to ensure that some ideas NEVER changed, after all, parchment and ink can be falsified. The Ezekiel tablets are interesting, the words are not chipped into the stone, the letters are in relief, with all the other stone chipped away; impossible to manipulate.  This article, however, will not continue to follow the line of progress from tablets to internet. We are going to explore the simpler idea of things passed on from the old men to the young.  In this day and age with the internet and state education, however, I would be remiss if I did not point out how easy it is for information to be manipulated by a few nefarious and soulless individuals.  Maybe, in the future, the only REAL information that will be accepted will be from the mouth of someone you know.  One thing I do know, the chain of wisdom that has been passed from father-to-son is disintegrating, and that is a real loss; because the old men knew.

It was a bright and warm early summer morning and I was walking with my grandpa to the store.  We stopped in front of the Pair O’Dice convenience store, an old man sitting on the bench out front hailed us. My grandfather knew him, I’m sure, everybody knew each other in this little northern Alberta farming town.  The old man’s wrinkled and work swollen hands rolled tobacco from a paper and cellophane packet as he expounded on farming, and the condition of the country.  My grandfather held his own as to the price of beef and the condition of the hay that year, but it was all very boring for a small boy. Politics entered in, as it always does when one talks economics and farming, that’s when the old man’s voice cut through the cigarette smoke, crossed the generational gap, and held my attention.

“Guvmint’ only cares about the oil biznuss these days, lettin’ all the farmers go hang. That’s just short sighted and damn stupid, farmin’ is the backbone of any country.” At this point the old man’s gaze wandered to my young eyes, he had my attention, looking right at me he atoned. “ Before the war the Englishman had let their farms fall apart, too small, they could get cheaper food from th’ mainland; then the Nazis rose up and shut the borders”. He took a puff and let it out, the smoke causing one eye to close. “If we wouldnt’a shipped ‘em grub by the ton, half of ‘em woulda starved.” The old man turned back to grandpa, “seems we should learn don’ it?” Papa readily agreed.

I was very much into listening to the ol’ ones (for a kid), actually, I was fascinated. I ran into many old men willing to talk to someone who was young, but interested. The old men were not educated, nor necessarily ‘domesticized’ (by todays standards) but they knew stuff, no doubt. The old ones knew stuff they’d learned from older men, they lived by a simple code and a simple wisdom.

Let’s do some some math for a moment. A 60+ year old man has the knowledge he’s learned (much of it the hard way), plus, he’s learned things from his dad. His dad is the same, plus, he’s gained wisdom from his dad. Simple math tells us we’re talking 180 years of knowledge, give or take. All things considered, these men could all know each  other, any gaps in our example would be taken care of if gramps can tell a few wise sayings from his Great-grandfather.  Do you begin to see why family becomes so important to the well being of a civilization?

Here are some examples of what the old men knew:

ON DISCIPLINE- The old man in question didn’t say the word quite right, the pronunciation  made it more intriguing, he said it like diss-IP-lin.  “All this touchy feely stuff in schools now? Kids need strong outward diss-IP-lin so they can grow self diss-IP-lin.  Gonna end up with a bunch a’ adults that, when hard stuff happens to ‘em, they’re gonna have to go somewhere and suck their thumbs and cry”.  I believe those places are called “safe spaces” today, blankees and colouring books are often provided.

ON SEXUAL DEVIENCY- This old man knew his stuff but also said the word wrong, he said dee-vents. “You let the dee-vents outa th’ closet and they’ll soon be paradin’ it in the streets and wanten-ta’ teach it in the schools” I was a teenager at the time, and thought this was not only cranky; but absurd.  I had a “they’re-not-hurting-anybody” and “get the government out of the bedrooms of the nation” idea on the issue at the time, but that old man was downright prophetic.

ON SCREEN TIME (TV)- “Turn that damn boob-tube off an get outside an do something, go get the stink blowed off ya. You’ll learn nothing watchin’ that thing. Gonna have a country full of people with wide, soft asses and even softer heads”!   And that was just TV with two channels.  Now we got Netflix, games, social media, etc- and a “boobtube” you can carry in your pocket.  And, yes, a lot of wide, soft asses.

ON GENDER- “Cut yer damn hair, you look like a girl!  This keeps up, boys lookin’ like girls & girls lookin’ like boys; folks’ll hafta start lookin’ in their pants just to see what they are!”  If those old men could see us now, where even “lookin’ in the pants” doesn’t mean anything.

It’s unfortunate for the younger generations, society has “aged people” running around, but most of the “old men”, as I remember them, are gone.  The old men that carried the simple wisdom of their elders stopped at the boomer generation.  The boomers decided they were smarter than their elders and “didn’t trust anyone over thirty”.  The 60’s generation traded wisdom for “education”. Anything “new” is automatically “approved”.

Someday, however (as the poet Rudyard Kipling stated), the “Gods Of The Copybook Headings” will be back to explain it once more.  Things will take a tumble, and the young men will have to learn how to be “old men” the hard way.  Might be better, as individuals, to start learning now.

-Ranger