Well duh! Anyway, a recent article in Science News (June 24) reporting research on the emotional effects of aging offers evidence for what I see as the only solution to humankind's 'problem'. First, the 'solution',... (see Ethics: Do They Work Anymore? for the full thesis.)

There may be a silver lining
As the average age of a population increases, so does its average wisdom. The longer each of us attends the school of life, the more we experience personal dead ends. We become wiser as we realize our own mortality and ignorance. A wiser population can not help but lead to a more mature and ethical culture. Surely, humanity will think and act differently when the average age is 100+ compared to Roman times, for example, when the average age was probably in the teens. Thank you modern medicine! A falling birth rate also moves a population's average age upward. Wealthy populations have declining birth rates, so let's spread the wealth! All in all, things are looking up, . . . and not a moment too soon!

Older but Mellower: Aging brain shifts gears to emotional advantage
Here are a few excepts from this article. There were also some very dramatic and convincing brains scans, but I have no way to show these here.

* Advancing age heralds a growth in emotional stability accompanied by a neural transition to increased control over negative emotions and greater accessibility of positive emotions,

* In contrast, people under age 50 experience negative emotions more easily than they do positive ones. These younger adults' emotion-related activity centers on the amygdala, a brain structure previously implicated in automatic fear responses.

* This gradual reorganization of the brain's emotion system may result from older folk responding to accumulating personal experiences by increasingly looking for meaning in life.

* The researchers studied 122 males and 120 females, ages 12 to 79, who had no current or past mental illnesses and good physical health. Scores on a questionnaire that assesses emotional stability rose steadily from adolescence into the senior years.

* The new results provide a neural framework for growing evidence that, unlike young people, older adults focus on positive information and downplay negative events.

This last paragraph sums up the significance. After all, it is our "negative emotions" with the ensuing impulsive reactions that spins much of life out of control. "Downplaying negative events" makes a reflective response more likely. This helps minimize the 'knee jerk' reactions which propel us to extremes, e.g., Bush at age 90+ would have been less likely to rush to war in Iraq than he did at 50+.

Oddly, for me anyway, is how unconvinced many are when I mention this 'solution'. Has the notion 'the old the wiser' been diluted with 'don't trust anyone over 30'? Of course, thought always tends to paint us into a corner of preconceptions making it difficult to conceive of anything outside that corner. But this idea is no big leap, although it didn't occur to me until just a few years ago. But then my mind is that of a fool - how blank!

Andy and I were discussing this as he is unconvinced that 'old is wiser'. So, I asked him, which is wiser, a young racoon or an old racoon. "A younger one", he replied without hesitation. So Andy, 'older is wiser' applies to all animals except humans? Mmmmm... What do you think?

Have you ever eaten an old male wild pig? Anything but mellow, my friend. errr... That isn't what you were talking about, was it?