John Ramwell

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ARE WE READY FOR THE FUTURE? John J Ramwell 9th January 2017.

I attended a U3A presentation last week which was led by Dr Alex McMinn. Check him out; he has quite the pedigree. He was telling us about how we need to sustain our well-being in later life. It was fascinating as well as informative and I take up some of the points he made and, with the help of 'th'internet' I'll share a few of my own.

We all have ambitions and hopes; without them, life and the future would have little meaning. My Dad used to say that a man is as rich as the fewness of his wants. In other words, the more you want and cannot have the poorer you are. Expectations of plenty, or at least suﬃcient, are less likely to be met today than they were yesterday as we clamber down the ladder. We all know it is easier to climb up than scrabble down, even with gravity on side.

I used to visit local colleges to promote youth expeditions for organisations such as Raleigh International. I told my listeners that they needed four ingredients in their lives to succeed:One: Motivation. Two: Ability and Three: Opportunity. The Fourth: I'll leave you guessing.

If your ambitions are set low and you achieve or even over-achieve then you are fortunate. You will feel fulﬁlled and have a satisfactory life. You will have self-worth and can anticipate a retirement after work of contentment; content that you have made a diﬀerence and meant something. You have been there, have the ‘tee’ shirt and deserve the fruits of your labours. You will have self-worth, one of the important factors in mental health. Your role models may have been many and varied. You will have noticed those around you that have succeeded or are succeeding and they will have inspired you. Perfect.

Essentially, opportunity must come along with your ambitions and ability, otherwise, your plans will come to nothing. After the Second World War, we had plenty of opportunities as there was a dearth of manpower to rebuild the fractured world we had inherited thanks to Adolph. The point is that a trail of events gave the survivors of WW2 such a basket of opportunities that, given you were in the right place and at the right age, which most of us were, you were able to craft your plans for the future from a low base of being grateful that you had survived. All is relative.

Now move the clock forward today, 2017.

Young people are encouraged to have ambition. They are told by their parents and teachers that they have many advantages such as health, education, a good standard of living, justice. They are told they are inheriting a world of opportunity where their ambitions will, with a little hard work, all come to fruition. They are told that 'they are worth it.' Many have an inﬂated concept of their own abilities, believe that the world owes them and that the rewards will fall like over-ripe fruit into their hands. Parents. teachers, consumer advertising and society at large encourages this attitude and many kids of today have no understanding of what is entailed in surviving the future, of taking care of themselves, of ﬁtting in and making the most of the world and the society they have been thrust into. Of course, as a species, we are very resilient and soon discover just how demanding the big wide world can be and then 're-educate' ourselves to take care of it all.

But raising expectations among the young that are unlikely to be realised is damaging. They very soon ﬁnd the diﬀerences between what they have been led to expect and reality are stark. So there is harm in being told how wonderful everything is going to be. Surely we don't want to hear just how depressing life can be. We want good news and this is fed to our youngsters and students in abundance rather than preparing them for the world they are really going to inherit: a world with far less opportunity than existed in the middle of the 20th Century. And let's face it, opportunity is usually about money. Millennials are far poorer than their parents.

Today’s 30-somethings have about half as much wealth as those born in the early ‘70s had at the same age. Nor do most enjoy post-war perks such as ﬁxed contracts, holiday pay and pensions. The chain of 'go to Uni., get a job, rent for a while, buy your own home and raise a family' has many broken links.

Post-graduation. students leave Uni. with average debts of £44,000 against the backdrop of increasing personal and domestic debt of an average of £13,000 per. household. Nationally we are in hock to the tune of debt worth over 80% of our GDP. The pressure on the Government to ﬁnd suﬃcient funds for our health service, for our schools, our deteriorating infrastructure, for our prisons, etc. is unrelenting and unsustainable. A politician on the radio this morning said we should increase taxation to pay our way out of the current NHS 'crisis'.

The average wage earner takes home 57.28% of his or her salary. Let's hear it for more tax; I don't think so! In 2005 the UK National Debt was less that £0.5 trillion. But then came the worldwide ﬁnancial crisis of 2008 and subsequent recession. The National Debt increased rapidly and went over £1 trillion in 2011. At the end of the 2015-

16 ﬁscal year, the National Debt is expected to go over £1.5 trillion. If you want to compare that to the UK’s population, then the national debt attributable to every man, woman and child is in the region of £24,900 each.... yes, each! Even servicing this debt takes 8% of our taxes. Of course, it can be argued that if we were not spending our children’s and grandchildren’s inheritance we would not be enjoying the life style we have, or most of us have. Tell me, where are the ethics and morality here?

I mentioned Dr Alex McMinn at the head of this piece. When he talked to us recently he seemed to spend a lot of his time telling us about advancing technology and how we, society and Government, should be prepared for the changes that are on our doorstep. Some changes for the better and some for the worse; much depending on where you're coming from and going to. He spoke at length about driverless-less cars. On reﬂection, it makes sense, as this technology is an excellent example of how there will be winners and losers, as well as just how rapidly the changes are coming in. Losers will be those who rely on driving for a living, of whom there are many. Winners will be the

elderly who are unable to drive yet will be able to call up a vehicle and punch in a code and oﬀ they go. Only recently we were told that driverless cars were twenty years away. Wrong: they are with us now and in experimental use on our roads, so the pace of life and the associated technology is opening up opportunities for some, whilst closing them down for others.

It all boils down to opportunity and here is the nub of the problem for young people. It is all very well believing we will become the stars of the future; that we will win the 'X Factor' and that all we need is a good education and the world is ready for cracking open. Of course, there will always be winners and losers: the ratio of one to the other has been favourable for the last few decades but is now changing. Unlike change in the longer term, history, which apart from such huge events as the invasion of the Normans and the Reformation, has changed slowly over time and been fairly easy to digest. Now change is occurring so quickly it is impossible for many to keep up.

But change alone can usually be assimilated; it is the missing opportunities that matter. Take housing: to get a meaningful family life young people need a home and the current housing crisis is not going to fade in the medium term. Here is an extract from my Sunday paper published yesterday: 8/1/16:-

Youths’ fears for future at new high

Almost half of young people doubt their chances of getting a stable job or buying a house.

Young people are feeling gloomier and more concerned about the future than at any point in the past eight years, according to a report by the Prince’s Trust. The Trust’s Youth Index, which will be released tomorrow, reports that one in four youngsters between the ages of 16 and 25 do not feel in control of their lives and almost half feel that traditional goals such as getting a stable job or buying a house are unrealistic. The annual index has found that living costs, rising house prices and worsening job prospects contributed to the lowest happiness levels for the nation’s Millennials since it launched in 2009. The Trust’s report, based on a survey of more than 2,000 youngsters in partnership with YouGov, also reported low levels of self-conﬁdence. It says that 45% feel stressed about body image and 37% feel stressed about how to cope at work and school.

Professor Louise Arseneault, mental health leadership fellow at King’s College London, said the ﬁndings were a sign of a “big shift” in the attitude of younger generations. “What is worrying is that these things are found in this younger group of people,” she said. “Now the younger generation, instead of having dreams of making things diﬀerent, actually feel very gloomy about the future.”

The index will also report that 58% of young people say recent political events make them feel anxious about their future. Anna Gillies, 20, a student at Sheﬃeld University, said last year’s political events, such as the Brexit vote and the election of Donald Trump in America, had left her and many of her peers feeling the future was “uncertain”. “I think the overall consensus among young people is a sense of powerlessness,” she said. “It leaves me feeling uninspired about the prospects of not only the country, but also my own personal future“The phrase ‘the world is your oyster’ seems far from relevant in today’s graduate climate.” The ﬁndings will raise eyebrows among those who have nicknamed Millennials “the snowﬂake generation” and say young people have never had it so good.

Arseneault said it was not a case of life being more diﬃcult now but there being “less and less stability and security” today. Dame Martina Milburn, Chief Executive of the Trust, said: “This report paints a deeply concerning picture of a generation who feel their ability to shape their own future is slipping away.”

The report by the ResPublica Think Tank tells us how 1.2 million people are languishing on housing

waiting lists in England, while more than 6 million face tenure insecurity and no prospect of ever buying their own home.

Technology is bringing us a world that is unrecognisable from one generation to another. If my parents returned to Earth today they would only just comprehend the current world. Artiﬁcial intelligence, robots, computers and computerisation of our lives, both personal and professional, have brought many assets but also leaves us vulnerable, stressed and unable to cope. Advances in science, particularly medical science, are becoming quite profound. Soon we will be able to consult with a computer module with artiﬁcial intelligence, and it will use a combination of visual and voice recognition to more accurately diagnose our condition, and then prescribe targeted treatment that will be more accurate and reliable than the average GP. No more doctor shortages. Artiﬁcial Intelligence will be used to construct machines and computers that will go on to produce even more powerful machines and computers so that they may well take over; a concern often voiced by Stephen Hawking. These machines and computers will be unrecognisable and will likely have more relevant titles.

Check this out: http://cci.mit.edu/publications/CCIwp2009-01.pdf

So the future is going to lack so many opportunities we have taken for granted. The issue of climate change and pollution is going to place massive restrictions on how we behave. David Attenborough is often voicing his concern about the growing population of the world. In demographics, the world population, the total number of humans currently living as of August 2016, was estimated at 7.4 billion. The United Nations estimates it will further increase to 11.2 billion in the year 2100. The median age of the world's population was estimated to be 30.1 years in 2016, with the male median age estimated to be 29.4 years and female, 30.9 years. Some analysts have questioned the sustainability of further world population growth, highlighting the growing pressures on the environment, global food supplies, and energy resources. Estimates on the total number of humans who have ever lived range in the order of 106 to 108 billion.

The aged population is currently at its highest level in human history The UN predicts the rate of population ageing in the 21st. century will exceed that of the previous century. The number of people aged 60 years and over has tripled since 1950, reaching 600 million in 2000 and surpassing 700 million in 2006. It is projected that the combined senior and geriatric population will reach 2.1 billion by 2050. Countries vary signiﬁcantly in terms of the degree and pace of ageing, and the UN expects populations that began ageing later will have less time to adapt to its implications. Population ageing arises from two (possibly related) demographic eﬀects: increasing longevity and declining fertility. An increase in longevity raises the average age of the population by increasing the numbers of surviving older people. A decline in fertility reduces the number of babies, and as the eﬀect continues, the numbers of younger people in general also reduce. Of these two forces, it is declining fertility that is the largest contributor to population ageing in the world today. More speciﬁcally, it is the large decline in the overall fertility rate over the last half century that is primarily responsible for the population ageing in the world’s most developed countries. Because many developing countries are going through faster fertility transitions, they will experience even faster population ageing than the currently developed countries in the future.

As yet we don't know whether our older populations are living the extra years of life in good or poor health. A "compression of morbidity" would imply reduced disability in old age, whereas an expansion would see an increase in poor health with increased longevity. Another option has been posed for a situation of "dynamic equilibrium". This is crucial information for governments if the limits of lifespan continue to increase indeﬁnitely, as some researchers believe it will.

Research shows that many people are now fully aware of the ageing of the world's population and the implications which this will have on their lives and the lives of their children and grandchildren. Many believe, or at least hope, that immigration may be used as a viable means for countering population ageing, but we are discovering that this will not be the case. As fertility sinks further below replacement level, increasingly higher levels of annual net migration will be required to maintain a target of even zero population growth. In summary (at last!) we have explored the issue of modern living, technology and demographics as forces limiting opportunity for the younger and following generations. We should look at the human costs with a greater awareness. Modern living with its’ immediate demands for immediate responses, demands levels of stress and energy that sap the will to live in many at worst or commit others to simply give up. Suicide rates among the young, particularly young males, have nearly tripled between the 1960s and 1980s. For example, in Australia suicide is second only to motor vehicle accidents as it leading cause of death for people aged 15–25 and according to the National Institute for Mental Health, suicide is the third leading cause of death among teens in the United States. It is time to take mental health more seriously and I am encouraged to note that our Prime Minister agrees, when she spoke to the Nation yesterday. To do so will cost money, but there is none, and so if we agree that money and opportunity are synonymous well, don't hold your breath.

And the Fourth ingredient (as mentioned on the ﬁrst page, third paragraph) the young people will require as they proceed through life ....Luck. Without Lady Luck on side the other factors count for little. This is my take on it anyway.

I would enjoy and appreciate any feedback. jjramwell@gmail.com will ﬁnd me

John Ramwell