Dialogue: If those were the days, we must have blown it

By DON DONOVAN

We sit at lunch and talk, my friends and I. Old men (not too old, mind, but when you get to our age you are considered antediluvian by anybody under 40; and The Elderly, to us, are one or two years older than we are). We talk of times past; but not routinely, for we are still of an age when we can hear ourselves turning into the geriatric mix of sages and old fools. We talk much more of times present; with regret mostly, for that is the way of old men.

Our little coterie is a treasury of experience, an asset which cannot be bought or learned. Our fluid population of absent and present friends consists of doctors, lawyers, engineers, captains of industry, military men, men of commerce, men of letters.

We are all fathers. Some of us are widowers. With very few exceptions, those who are married stayed in our old marriages for better (and if, perchance, for worse) because we were imbued as much with a sense of duty as of love.

We are, I think, a fortunate generation. With few exceptions, we were not born into privilege (indeed, some, like myself, are from very humble beginnings) but so fertile was the soil in which we grew that we were allowed to become achievers to varying degrees. Those of us who went to university did so when New Zealand was still so dazzled by its social enlightenments, so fundamentally wealthy, so earnest in its desire to see its children prosper that tertiary education was virtually free.

Others of us were never without a job in a land of full employment; opportunity was dangled before us so seductively that the effort to deny it would have been greater than to accept it.

We were cosseted. We thrived with straight legs and backs, keen of eye and steady of hand. Our healthcare - considered to be our right - came at little cost. Our food was cheap and abundant (although it might have concealed lipid time bombs) from days when milk was subsidised, butter was king, cheese came like limestone building blocks, we bought our lamb by the half-carcass and bread was fourpence a loaf.

Now we look at what came after us and deplore it. We deplore the graffiti in the streets; we deplore the muggers; we are contemptuous of the wet-bus-ticket sentences handed out to murderers, rapists and child abusers; we lament the present standards of education - nobody can spell any more, children have no respect for their teachers and elders. Lack of self-respect produces dress standards so impoverished that the parade of youth is characterised by baggy, shapeless, sloppy clothes over scuffing feet.

Our younger generation appears occupied by negative pursuits: dragging up the past to gain punitive compensation, performance-enhancing substances, benefit abuse, egocentricity.

Our political edifice has become dysfunctional, harbouring individuals of flaky character, pot-smokers and ex-dole manipulators ripping off a wrong-headed system of privileges and wasting the nation's money with spirit-sapping debate about how many beds are too many in an MP's house. What would we do about it?

Oh, we could fix it. We'd bring back something like conscription - perhaps community service - something to harness the energy of youth into gainful product. (We haven't had a war since 1945, you see; no external threat to galvanise the nation towards a common goal.) We'd tighten up in the schools; teach them that they have no rights without responsibilities. We'd make people work for the dole. All that sort of stuff. We'd put it right.

But, then, we might stop and reflect that whatever it is about those who come after us, and however much we might lament what we see, we have only ourselves to blame. We enjoyed our golden age because our parents and their contemporaries made it possible.

We were so busy enjoying it that we neglected to prepare a reasonable inheritance for our children. If we see a nation made up of too many listless weekend drinkers, too much child and family abuse, too many suicides; a nation with a willingness to stretch law enforcement beyond adequacy, to decline in health standards, with a deteriorating economy and an inability to finance satisfactorily its own education, defence and social services, then we need only to look at ourselves. We are the fathers of all that we deplore.

And then, perhaps, we'll also reflect that we, too, might learn from the experience of the ages that each generation, while unwilling to learn readily from the mistakes of its elders, nevertheless survives to find its own set of values, to crystallise its own new moralities and subsequently to view with regret the generation that is set to succeed it.

There are sayings that fit: "Youth is wasted upon the Young." "Those who forget the lessons of history are condemned to repeat it." "There's no fool like an old fool. And "Hope springs eternal."

* John Roughan is on leave. His column will return next week.