The status of the elderly also depends on both individual and societal decisions. Increasing numbers of older people make themselves valuable in new ways, ease the lives of their working adult children, and enrich the lives of their grandchildren and of themselves, by providing high-quality one-on-one child care to their grandchildren. Those of us who are parents between the ages of 30 and 60 may be starting to wonder what quality of life we shall enjoy, and how our children will treat us, when we reach old age. We should remember that our children are now watching how we care for our own elderly parents: when it comes our own time to be receiving rather than giving care, our children will remember and be influenced by our example. Society can enrich the lives of the elderly as a group, and can enrich society itself, by not requiring retirement at some arbitrary age for people able and eager to continue working. Mandatory retirement policies have been falling by the wayside in the United States in recent decades, have not led to incapable older people clinging to jobs as initially feared, and have instead retained the services of the most experienced members of our society. But far too many European institutions still require employees at the peak of their productivity to retire, just because they have reached some arbitrary age in the absurdly low range of 60 to 65 years.
In contrast to eating slowly and providing crib bilingualism, which we can do independently ourselves while waiting for changes in society as a whole, combining the advantages of traditional justice with the advantages of state justice will mostly require societal decisions. Two mechanisms that I discussed are restorative justice and mediation. Neither is a panacea, both appear useful under some circumstances but not other circumstances, and both require policy decisions by our court systems. If you see possible value in these options, your role as an individual is to join movements promoting these mechanisms in courts; you can’t adopt them by yourself. But you may be able to utilize by yourself the New Guinea emphasis on informal mediation, emotional clearance, and reestablishment of relationships (or of non-relationships) in disputes the next time that you find yourself in a private dispute where tempers are rising.
The societies to which most readers of this book belong represent a narrow slice of human cultural diversity. Societies from that slice achieved world dominance not because of a general superiority, but for specific reasons: their technological, political, and military advantages derived from their early origins of agriculture, due in turn to their productive local wild domesticable plant and animal species. Despite those particular advantages, modern industrial societies didn’t also develop superior approaches to raising children, treating the elderly, settling disputes, avoiding non-communicable diseases, and other societal problems. Thousands of traditional societies developed a wide array of different approaches to those problems. My own outlook on life has been transformed and enriched by my years among one set of traditional societies, that of New Guinea. I hope that you readers as individuals, and our modern society as a whole, will similarly find much to enjoy and adopt from the huge range of traditional human experience.
Acknowledgments
I acknowledge with pleasure my debts to many colleagues and friends for their help with this book. I owe special thanks to eight friends who critiqued the entire manuscript and poured time and effort into suggestions for improving it: my wife Marie Cohen, Timothy Earle, Paul Ehrlich, Alan Grinnell, Barry Hewlett, Melvin Konner, Michael Shermer, and Meg Taylor. Those same thanks and more are due to my editors Wendy Wolf at Viking Penguin (New York) and Stefan McGrath at Penguin Group (London), and to my agent John Brockman, who not only read the whole manuscript but also helped in innumerable ways at every stage from the book’s conception through all stages of its production.
Michelle Fisher-Casey typed and retyped the whole manuscript, many times. Boratha Yeang tracked down sources. Ruth Mandel tracked down photographs, and Matt Zebrowski prepared the maps.
I presented much of the material of this book to my classes of undergraduates at the University of California at Los Angeles, where I teach in the Geography Department. Those students constantly confronted me with fresh and stimulating outlooks. The department’s faculty members and staff have provided me with a constantly supportive environment. At a workshop that James Robinson and I co-organized at Harvard University, participants brainstormed about many topics of this book.
Earlier versions of some paragraphs or material of several chapters appeared as articles in Natural History magazine, Discover magazine, Nature magazine, the New York Review of Books, and The New Yorker.
Over the last half-century, thousands of New Guineans, Indonesians, and Solomon Islanders shared with me their insights, life stories, and world views, and lived with me the experiences that I relate in this book. My debt to them for enriching my life is enormous. I have dedicated this book to one such friend, Meg Taylor (Dame Meg Taylor), who was born in New Guinea’s Wahgi Valley and grew up in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea. Her mother was Yerima Manamp Masi of the Baiman Tsenglap clan, while her father was the Australian patrol officer James Taylor, leader of the famous Bena-to-Hagen patrol in 1933 and the 1938–1939 Hagen-to-Sepik patrol. After studying law at the University of Papua New Guinea and Melbourne University (Australia), Meg became private secretary to the first Chief Minister and then Prime Minister of Papua New Guinea, Sir Michael Somare, as the country transitioned from self-government to independence in 1975. She practised law in Papua New Guinea, served as a member of the Law Reform Commission, and pursued further studies in law at Harvard as a Fulbright Scholar. Meg was Ambassador of Papua New Guinea to the United States, Mexico, and Canada from 1989 to 1994. She has served on the boards of international conservation and research organizations; Papua New Guinea companies in the natural resources, financial, and agricultural sectors; and companies listed on the Australian Securities Exchange. In 1999 Meg was appointed to the post of Vice President Compliance Advisor/Ombudsman of the World Bank Group. Meg is the mother of her daughter Taimil, and aunt to many young family members in the Highlands. She will return home upon completion of her current World Bank assignment in Washington, D.C.
Many friends and colleagues generously helped me in connection with individual chapters, by sending me articles and references, telling me of their experiences and conclusions, talking through ideas, and criticizing my chapter draft. They include: Gregory Anderson, Stephen Beckerman, Ellen Bialystok, David Bishop, Daniel Carper, Elizabeth Cashdan, Barbara Dean, Daniel Dennett, Joel Deutsch, Michael Goran, Mark Grady, K. David Harrison, Kristen Hawkes, Karl Heider, Dan Henry, Bonnie Hewlett, William Irons, Francine Kaufman, Neal Kaufman, Laurel Kearns, Philip Klemmer, Russell Korobkin, Ágnes Kovács, Michael Krauss, Sabine Kuegler, David Laitin, Francesca Leardini, Steven LeBlanc, Graham MacGregor, Robert McKinley, Angella Meierzag, Kenneth Mesplay, Richard Mills, Viswanatha Mohan, Elizabeth Nabel, Gary Nabel, Claire Panosian, Joseph Peckham, Lloyd Peckham, Dale Price, David Price, Samuel Price, Lynda Resnick, Jerome Rotter, Roger Sant, Richard Shweder, Charles Taylor, Minna Taylor, Eugene Volokh, Douglas White, Polly Wiessner, David Sloan Wilson, Lana Wilson, Bruce Winterhalder, Richard Wrangham, and Paul Zimmet.