The concept of retirement you can say intrigues me because of the direct influence it has in all societies all around the world, which is one of the first human made concepts embraced all over the World, maybe with the few cultural exemptions where the people in those societies still embrace and follow the natural way of going out of this life;
When death eats the last remainder of your earthly bound soul and poops it into the other dimension, all the while happening when you’re (busy) living life.
We as humans, the beings able to read and comprehend (at least believe (or not) that they do) these words, have been blessed at inception/conception/birth to have been born as humans and that blessing also came with a great gift that came linked with a great responsibility, the power of knowledge.
To learn, to teach, to experiment, to discover, to document. These all are parts of what knowledge is, is formed and maintained.
Since the “invention” and mass adoption of the concept of retirement, especially with the concept of retirement where you get money handed to you by just having passed the right age set for receiving this money that you supposedly worked hard for (which some people don’t even need to work hard for it, or don’t even need to work ever at all to receive (some) retirement money), has made our global society massively lazy and individually opportunistic.
With full disclosure, these are all my personal opinion, backed by no scientifical studies, or none that I know of, so don’t just take this as a corroborated fact, but as a philosophical hypothesis on the state of our Planet, in this case a global psychological shared effect on a man made concept, that in my opinion is not only collectively holding us back, but is actually a great cause of (global) societal degradation.
I understand that this is a big statement, so I will try to explain it a bit more concretely. To start, let me start with myself, I am not planning on going into retirement, so I am not fixated on an age to stop working. Yes, it’s true that not only the businesses I’ve started some years ago are businesses with goals that must supersede myself if I’m successful in achieving their missions, so it’s not like I can just quit them and say fuck it, I’m done with them, because I then could never live with myself, so you could argue that only with just that I have a legitimate reason for not wanting to go into retirement, but I would argue that even if I didn’t have those (life long) projects I’ve started, and even not taking into account the new (life long) projects I’m currently in the process of starting (which are complementary to the first two, so I’m personally not deviating and/or taking my attention away of those missions), just the thought that my government commands me to stop working at xxx age is utterly disgusting and upsetting.
It still baffles me that so so so many people have actually let their governments tell them that they needed to stop working, especially while they were in good health, focus and energy to continue working (not to mention willing to continue working).
Sure, in a modern society where we take care of each other, as the Earthly family members we are to each other, it is perfectly acceptable for governments to inact laws/policies giving its citizens the assurance that if they pass a certain threshold age and they feel that they cannot go on in taking care of themselves, that the collective will support them in receiving a monthly stipend to live on, and if need be an extra stipend or direct help to help them take care of themselves with their daily lives/chores.
I would also inact policies that reward the people that ask for the retirement stipend (so that they can stop working) that go do (more) charity work instead. I would even go further and offer direct guidance in seeing if there’s other work that they might be able and willing to do, even if it’s only for a couple of hours a week, to which they’ll also receive rewards for staying in the workforce, even if partially.
The are 3 main issues I have with the way we perceive retiring now, first is the economic loss of productivity we lose each year because able bodied and minded people, either gets told that they need to stop working because they have reached an arbitrary age limit, or they gladly stop because for years/decades they have been living up to that arbitrary age limit.
Which brings me to the second point, the mass collective psychological effect an arbitrary retirement age has on people. The age set can be perfectly chosen with scientifically backing to why it needs to be 66 and not 65, but case in point being that for an individual without having an age set for them, in the modern society we live in, especially in Western societies, they might be able to work and take care of themselves for decades after the chosen retirement age, but for most people it turns not to be true, because not only they have been told that at that age they are done, but they will also start to feel like it is true. Not to mention the other psychological effect retirement has on people that makes them think that they are “done” with contributing to society, because they become “full receivers-until death” now.
Which third point being that, because of the retirement concept, we are taking able bodied and minded people directly away from connecting with the collective society, by segregating them and hindering them in actively participating with the daily collective. This right here, is what is massively undermining the (direct) sharing and passing of knowledge (through daily interactions). The elderly are the humans carrying the experiences and knowledge passed down through time. For example, in interactions with them (our elders) they can and most are not shy to correct a behavior that they deem inappriopate, and if you don’t agree with that, you can go into discussion and maybe one of you will learn something new and/or valuable that day.
Such serendipitous moments happens less and less in our modern societies, because we are segregating ourselves and this didn’t start with the internet, it started long ago with the introduction of retirement policies that take our elderly citizens from the streets and daily interactions with each other.
