Digit-Killing (English version)

Aug 6, 2024

6 min read

Critical thoughts on a new form of intergenerational conflict

The old are being slaughtered

the world becomes young

[...]

(Erich Fried: Die Maßnahmen. 1957).

We hang our old people. Allowing them to wait for redemption like zombies in an intermediate world. Not only because of the care crisis and changed social, in particular family structures, which almost refuse to sacrifice their own freedom and self-development in the responsibility for ageing relatives - which becomes understandable when we hear the reports of children and partners who have gradually dissolved in their duty of care. (Almost like daughters and daughters-in-law have done for thousands of years and in all cultures. Fuck off patriarchy!) With all due love, this is too much to bear. The social approach is sui generis intertwined with a political “avoidance” of the core problems that have been crying out for state solutions for decades in the form of statistics and empirically proven reality with regard to the age pyramid in the population, the lack of specialist nursing and care staff, the legal gray area of end-of-life care.

In his book The World until yesterday, the American ethnogeologist Jared Diamond explores the question “What can we learn from traditional societies” (subtitle, Diamond, 2012). To this end, he conducted extensive field research worldwide among indigenous peoples living in the most difficult natural environments and, among other practices of these cultures, also took a look at the “murder of the elderly”. Diamond summarizes criteria that can be used to explain both the murder of old or sick members practiced by the clan and, conversely, the conditions that guarantee their survival. It is not difficult to guess how the old and wise at the edge of their lives could prevent the next generation from abandoning them in the desert, leaving them to starve in a corner, forcing them to commit suicide or even strangling them with or without their consent: One is the morally accepted taboo of killing (or even thinking about killing) one's father and mother The opposite is to honor them until they die, no matter how repugnantly they might behave. A crucial argument, explained in detail by Diamond, is the realization of why the elderly are spared and untouchable: they pro-actively give their own lives meaning & utility in the community, prove to be experts, bearers of knowledge, indispensable for children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren. They sometimes even tell the youngsters where to go, even if that doesn't suit them. (Okay, at this point it may well come to that war of the generations, which often ends in patricide or the poisoning of evil mothers-in-law). So in these cultures there is a kind of deal between the young and the old that the latter can hold their own until the end, even if they are already mad. Simply out of principle.

So if the unique selling point of old people described above really is that they know and can do something that younger people have not yet mastered, simply because they have gained less life experience, a kind of social paradigm shift in the way we treat and relate to each other would be conceivable: The hypocritically diffuse postulate of “participation in society” could actually become completely superfluous if every person in their environment took care, at least tried, to bring the elderly and old back into their daily consciousness, even somehow a little bit back into their own lives. In other words, not to let them disappear into oblivion and oblivion, but to encourage and support them to spend their twilight years as actively, self-determinedly and meaningfully as possible. As much as possible. In the best case, appreciated for their personality and life's achievements, for their wise advice and broader knowledge. Or, as far as I'm concerned, in arguments and disputes, as long as they are loud and lively instead of dead quiet.

In conclusion, I would like to take up a topic that I consider exemplary of our social and political inability to bring the generations above us into a shared life. The rapid introduction of digital processes and procedures into everyday life naturally presupposes that grandpa is interested in the latest technological achievements or that grandma has her granddaughter explain to her how a smartphone works and how to use an app. The great-aunt actually remembers all hundred PINs and has no fear of contact with an ATM or contactless payment. Not to mention the (still voluntary) use of online services, whether from banks, travel providers or shopping tools, which could make life easier, especially when walking becomes difficult and going out is a horror in itself, not to mention the days of preparation and planning that have to be done beforehand for this perceived trip around the world.

When I compare the adjustment processes my grandparents had to make around fifty years ago with those of my parents alone, it becomes clear to me what a quantum leap in development there has been in this short period of time. I remember very clearly: my grandfather gave my father the most modern stereo system available at the time for his 50th birthday. He had bought it himself shortly before and proudly and eloquently explained the complicated technology to his son - obviously forcing the younger man to his knees with technical terms. Television, telephoning, even operating an electric typewriter or a fax machine were still easy to learn, the progress was manageable and simply comprehensible. But with the victory of digitized technologies, the drumbeat of the Internet, the age that has suddenly dawned is leaving older people behind at an ever faster pace. Unless, of course, they were still fully engaged in their profession, which required them to have these user skills, or were simply interested in playing with unimagined possibilities like a child, as if it were a hobby.

The media, on the other hand, portrays us as fit, old, often very old people who can easily use Skype, chat with their grandchildren and brainstorm their own golden wedding anniversary with their children on the other side of the world via video conference. They are aging crooks and agents who are just as incredibly nimble as digit natives at cracking every password, crashing accounts, hacking security systems and cracking the enemy's secret codes anyway. What is not mentioned is the presumably larger proportion of today's septuagenarians or even octogenarians who stand helplessly, at the mercy of and naturally terrified by this artificial tsunami wave - like a deer in headlights.

Well-intentioned, but ultimately just a drop in the ocean, in my opinion, are offers for senior citizens to learn how to use and control all the little vehicles with which they too can finally glide into the World Wide Web like Superman over Metropolis. This is similar to the mostly pointless attempt to enlarge a cell phone to the mega dimensions of a walkie-talkie, to equip it with giant numbers and illuminated digits, in the hope, to put it mildly, that even blind, deaf and confused old people will be able to use it to call an ambulance.

No, in this respect, this digitized generation is even more ruthless than all previous ones combined when it comes to the personal and economic optimization of themselves, the embedding in abstract social structures of alienation and pseudo-closeness, the overwhelming flood of global information in which the world is suddenly shrinking in preparation for the final implosion or simply the black hole. I am waiting for an avatar of the grandchild to greet me tomorrow and tell me that I am now also part of the meta-reality and will therefore live on forever. (Oh, my God, no!)

It is obvious that there is only one chance of digital participation for the elderly, namely a mass-produced personal robotic AI that will simply do everything for the elderly in need of help: online correspondence with banks, authorities and family. Shopping, cleaning, cooking and washing. Even the treatment of pressure sores, emptying urine and feces bags, changing diapers, feeding, wiping asses and even determining the exact time of death of the human protégé.

Yes, that will probably be the only solution. And in all areas. A revolution that will totally optimize the deportation, hanging out, isolation and forgetting of the elderly, so that no one will ever again have to get their hands dirty by strangling or beating a relative to death.

References:

- Jared Diamond (2012): Vermächtnis. Was wir von traditionellen Gesellschaften lernen können. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main [The World until yesterday. What can we learn from traditional societies.]

- Erich Fried (1968): Befreiung von der Flucht. Gedichte und Gegengedichte. Claassen Verlag, Hamburg [Liberation from flight. Poems and counter-poems.]