A recent poll by the Gilani Research Foundation and conducted by Gallup (Pakistan) tells us that there are fundamental shifts in our attitudes to the elderly. Two-thirds of us believe that respect for our elders has decreased. Elder respect is comparatively higher in rural areas, and 52 per cent of elders who were polled themselves thought that respect for them had declined. The role of elders in the education of the younger generation was also explored with 44 per cent saying that elders played a vital part in the imparting of wisdom to children, whilst 37 per cent felt it was a combination of books, school and elders that produced a rounded young person.
Surveys such as this may be seen as signposts on the road of change. We are a youthful population and will remain so for thirty years or more. That youthful population is more mobile than it ever was and travels far and wide in the quest for elusive jobs. Rural populations are falling and villages across the land are home to the elders who are left behind, increasingly having to fend for themselves. The shape of our traditional joint family is changing as well, and the care that elders might have expected to receive from their offspring in their declining years is no longer a certainty. The first 'elder homes' have opened as a reflection of this change, where old people live either from choice or because there is no one to look after them. That trend towards elder care can only increase and we need to look to more innovative ways of caring for our elders than merely warehousing them. 'Respect' is one of the bedrocks on which our society and culture are predicated. The change in patterns and depth of respect for elders that we now see is probably linked to the shift from a rural to an urban society. Elders are repositories of wisdom, but if fewer are listening to them then the pool of wisdom will shrink – and wisdom is something we can ill-afford to lose.
