Age and Power
The respect and roles a culture lends to different age groups (sometimes referred to by historians as a culture’s “age ways”) can heavily influence how it passes between generations and how people interact with those of different generations.
Age can relate to power in a few ways.
1. Extreme Deference to Elders
In extreme instances, like in Korea, one of the first questions you ask a stranger is what their age is, as it can determine the entire structure of the language you’ll use when speaking with them. You would think extreme deference would be great for older people, but it actually produces more negative outcomes for them than for young people. For example, because you are not supposed to have a “boss” who is younger than you, people who don’t move up the career hierarchy get overlooked for job opportunities much faster than they otherwise would be as they age. This is why so many ajummas (middle-aged and older Korean women) own restaurants—once you reach a certain age, running your own store is kind of the only option you have. Another negative externality of extremely strict deference to elders is exemplified by the famous chain of plane crashes tied to co-pilots not being willing to challenge their superiors.
An interesting solution to this problem developed by the South Korean tech company Kakao is to mandate that all employees refer to each other by their “English” names in the office, which does not require the same language change and, according to Kakao, allows for more creativity. That said, that a company feels like they need to sublimate their native culture to be innovative does not inspire us to consider elder-deference as a fitness-imparting “age way.”
2. Matriarchal or Patriarchal Families
While older generations are more respected within matriarchal and patriarchal families, one particular individual (a patriarch or matriarch) is respected much more than other family members. This individual is sometimes the oldest but not always. For example, if one family member runs a business that employs a lot of other family members, they may assume the role. In addition, status as the family matriarch or patriarch can be lost through actions that are out of line with the family cultivar’s moral framework (like having a child out of wedlock). Essentially, most of the respect within a family unit is reserved for a single (or a few) older individuals. This model is very common in Latin American cultures.
Of the traditional “age ways” we have studied, this model has the greatest number of advantages. It motivates cultural fidelity through generations, maintains a certain level of meritocracy within groups, and creates a de facto family governing structure without putting too much distance between parents and their children. In addition, it gives individuals a reason to follow their cultural rules (out of a desire to someday attain this status).
3. Recognition of Youth as Being in Touch with the Divine
Some cultures venerate the “wisdom” of the young (Quaker culture is an example here). They think youth either have a direct connection to the divine or some … untainted … perspective on the world, which gives their words unique weight.
We can’t even begin to fathom what evolutionary or logical advantage this perspective might impart to a culture. That said, it may be that this “age way” sometimes organically emerges from cultures with low birth rates, which could cause the opinions and views expressed by children to seem novel and interesting. As kids are known for having all sorts of blunt insights and fresh perspectives, it is not unreasonable that people unaccustomed to being around children would be shocked by youthful insights and conclude that young people in particular should be heeded.
That said, there is sparse evidence that granting disproportionate power to youth will impart greater fitness to a culture. Don’t get us wrong—kids do offer incredible perspectives and our kids blindside us daily with their insights, observations, and thoughts, unclouded as they are by bias and emotional baggage. It just happens that we can neither logically reason through the advantage of taking kids’ lead, nor can we find historical examples of cultures that heavily empowered youth and saw great results.
Consider, for example, the generation of youth that was given disproportionate power in China when Mao Zedong served as chairman of the Chinese Communist Party from 1949 until his death in 1976. During Mao’s Great Leap Forward, schools were temporarily shut down and through his support of the Red Guards, Mao gave disproportionate power to youth via a youth-led paramilitary social movement.
A Red Guard leader described the movement thusly:
“Chairman Mao has defined our future as an armed revolutionary youth organization. … So if Chairman Mao is our Red-Commander-in-Chief and we are his Red Guards, who can stop us? First we will make China Maoist from inside out and then we will help the working people of other countries make the world red … and then the whole universe.” [[47]](#_ftn47)
The disproportionate power given to Mao’s youth led them to become entitled, closed-minded, and arrogant. As adults, this lost generation is known for being relatively corrupt (for example, government officials from this generation are known for being more likely to accept bribes), amoral, and dysfunctional.
Don’t get us wrong; older generations have all sorts of terrible baggage and we, personally, don’t see them as being inherently deserving of power either. Nevertheless, there may be benefits to sublimating the power of youth to the power of adults—if only to give each new generation a baseline culture and morality that they, once adults, can choose to accept or reject.
4. Zero Relation Between Age and Respect
This model, which does not privilege any particular age, is pervasive in soft cultures that haven’t inherited other “age ways.” If anything, cultures holding this perspective view advanced age as a sign of being mentally addled. Per this model, respect is instead predominantly based on one’s position in a local dominance hierarchy (see The Pragmatist’s Guide to Governance for how these hierarchies are built).
While dropping age as a basis for power or respect can augment a culture’s general meritocracy, there is something to be said for granting specific powers to specific generations. It could be argued, for example, that general neglect for elders (with regard to power and respect) has been a detriment to many modern societies. Consider how in the United States, it is relatively common for perfectly healthy elderly people to live in retirement homes, entirely separated from younger generations and only occasionally visited by children and grandchildren. When we experimented with creating a new planned community centered around families and child rearing (https://Eureka.Town), we were stunned to receive ardent interest from retired people and empty nesters who wanted to join the community as well and play a critical role in providing childcare support to the younger families present. These people saw the idea of living in such a community and serving such an instrumental purpose as being far more appealing than moving to a retirement community or remaining in their towns and cities, ruled as they were by cultural defaults.
This made us realize that cultures with higher levels of elder respect weren’t just giving things to the elderly (like caring for elderly parents who live in your home); they also received a great deal of value (like childcare—anyone in the U.S. who has personally paid for childcare can relate). It could even be argued that older generations evolved to hold a special place in society in which, in exchange for societal support, they helped more-able-bodied-and-productive adults care for their young. There is actually a whole theory around this known as the Grandmother Hypothesis, which essentially posits that women evolved menopause (rather than maintaining fertility through old age) because at a certain point, it became more advantageous for elderly humans to care for the young and free up resources for younger, more productive adults.[[48]](#_ftn48)
This is all to say that it isn’t necessarily wisest or most efficient to pass on an opportunity to grant certain powers of levels of respect to certain ages when intentionally developing or shaping a culture.
5. Descendant Worship (Our Model)
While the concept of “descendant worship” does not automatically assign respect to a person who is young, it does assign respect to those representing future generations, with the expectation that each successive generation “stands on the shoulders of giants” and will iterate on, advance, and surpass the achievements of those who came before them (for a highly visual illustration of this, compare footage of a 1950s Olympic gymnast routine with one performed in the 2010s—you can find many side-by-side comparisons online).[[49]](#_ftn49) This concept therefore intrinsically expects the young to outpace their parents once they reach mid-to-late adulthood.
Our model of descendant worship does not assign respect by local dominance hierarchies (e.g., how much a person is respected in society). Instead, we assign respect based on proven competence, success, and fecundity—with the most respect going to those currently in the act of succeeding (e.g., a person who made a fortune 20 years ago is shown less respect than someone currently in the process of amassing a smaller fortune).
In our family we have a practice of saying, “Your grandkids would be proud of you,” when someone does something that aligns with our family values. This is a deviation of “Your ancestors would be proud of you” and helps enforce the cultural perspective that it is most meaningful to take action likely to have a reverberating impact through the ages. We also think this framing is “logically correct,” as a person’s ancestors lived in a different cultural context. What does it matter what obsolete generations think of you? In contrast, by attempting to predict the impact of your actions on those yet to come and how you will be judged by them, you can “future proof” your thinking to an extent.
One risk to this perspective is that a lack of deference toward elders can produce a degradation of cultural fidelity. If you don’t intrinsically respect your elders, then why follow their belief systems?
Here we believe in cultural “efficacy.” By that we mean: Did you enjoy your childhood? Did it prepare you for adulthood and happy, strong interpersonal relationships? If it did, even if you don’t understand why your childhood culture does everything it does, you are more likely to pass it forward—while of course modifying the bits that don’t work (and by that we mean, elements of the culture that didn’t produce positive outcomes, not just elements that were “difficult”).
Still, it is likely just wishful thinking that the above will work. From a cultural transfer perspective, the Matriarch/Patriarch model is the best “age way” that we have seen tested when it comes to instilling cultural fidelity. Can you think of other interesting ways you might structure age-based respect within your House?
Should you wish to dig deeper into this topic, we recommend Whatifalthist’s exploration of how family structure drives ideology[[50]](#_ftn50) in which he summarizes The Explanation of Ideology by Emmanuel Todd.[[51]](#_ftn51) Both present a compelling argument that family structure can have a massive impact at the level of state governance. For example, areas with exogamous communitarian families, where a large number of family branches live together but people marry outside their family, are much more likely to support communism not just between countries but within countries (as can be seen within Italy). While we don’t agree with the entire thesis put forward, if you like this book, you will probably enjoy the video.
If you found this discussion of age and power to be interesting and want maximum information on crafting a culture, see the following Appendix chapters (if this chapter was boring to you or you are short on time, skip them):
- “Childhood” on page 754*: Which, leveraging our childhood experiences as an example, explores how childhood experience shapes people and their parenting philosophies.*
- “Cultural Motivators” on page 762*: Which details mechanisms like maternal guilt and pride that cultures use to motivate behavior.*
- “Honor Sources and Codes” on page 774*: Which explores what a culture’s honor code can look like.*
- “Honor Code Example Set” on page 775*: Which provides an overview of how we are thinking about structuring the honor code of our intentionally-designed cultivar.*
Post-Death Family Engagement
On el Día de los Muertos (the Day of the Dead), family members visit graveyards to actively engage with deceased relatives, which in a way maintains them as active family members. Technology will soon allow us to go one step further and create simulacrums of our ancestors.
Earlier in this book, we mentioned the Infinite Conversation, an AI generated, never-ending discussion between Werner Herzog and Slavoj Žižek, which imperfectly-but-impressively mimics both the sorts of things they would say and the tonality of their voices. Training a more advanced iteration of this tech on large datasets amassed in future relatives’ lifetimes (we already passively amass reams of information about our thoughts and behaviors now merely by walking around with phones and communicating digitally) and throwing in some good deepfake tech could offer families something with far more agency, responsiveness, and real-world presence than even the most creative Victorian’s concept of a ghost.
People will also be able to create AIs trained to model specific books or ways of thinking. For example, a person could train an AI on the Pragmatist’s Guide series and give you answers to any question you had from our (Simone and my) collective perspective. What is meaningful about this approach is an AI trained on someone’s more polished, carefully-thought-through work (arguably their best intellectual selves) will manifest as something meaningfully different from an AI trained on someone’s emails, chat logs, recorded speech, etc.
How will future cultivars leverage this technology? Will a family create a mausoleum filled with the skulls of deceased relatives and use AIs trained on them to provide answers to those seeking advice? Will a family come to be permanently run by a matriarch or patriarch trained on a single ancestor? Will a family create a conglomerate identity trained collectively on all ancestors—or all ancestors that met a certain criteria (and if so, what qualifies one for entry into the family’s collective AI pantheon)? Will there be families represented by a single AI trained on all living family members’ online footprints and personalities?
The traditions various cultivars establish in the face of these technologies may significantly affect their trajectories and morality, as when the line between organic family members and AI family members begins to blur, new conceptions of “self” arise.