The concept of the village elder may make a comeback - if we are lucky. You know the type I mean. They served as repositories of knowledge in areas where knowledge was in short supply. Village elders mostly went away in Western societies once the great bulk of people learned to read. People did not need the elder as a depository of knowledge.
They used books for that purpose. In fact, books often gave better advice that the village elder, because they were the words of the wisest elders in the nation on that given subject.
Things accelerated.
Access to information continued to explode.
Now we have TV, cable, radio and the Internet.
But while our culturehas gained the means to distribute information, it has lost a coherent world view and, to a large extent, respect for truth.
The variety of voices has turned into a cacophony of noise all pushing conflicting agendas and messages. We have instant access to tons of advice, but we don’t know what to believe. An information overload can produce some of the same problems that a dearth of information produces, especially when the information is contradictory.
In this post-modern agewe know that people lie, corporations lie, governments lie and the mass media which is run by the previous three can’t be trusted any more than they can. Young people are swept up in a flood of conflicting information.
Since this deception and confusion has been going on for many years, many young people have parents who are not a reliable source for wisdom. One noise cancels out another, and the practical result is the same as silence. Young people don’t know where to turn or from whom to take their cues on how to conduct their lives.
How can they sort it all out? I think the answer lies in a somewhat of a comeback for the idea of a village elder. For mostof us, if we think about it, there will be a person in our community who has lived a long time in a manner we can respect.
There will be someone who has successfully navigated through the lies and misinformation of the post-modern age.
Like the village elders of old, they are a repository of knowledge, and many would be wise to seek out their council.
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Editor’s note: Mark Moore is the lead writer for an Internet blog on matters pertaining to Arkansas culture and government, Arkansas Watch, and on Tuesday nights is the host of an Internet-based radio program, Patriots on Watch. He can be reached through The Times at [email protected].
Opinion, Pages 4 on 12/14/2011