We Need Younger Ideas

Have you really thought about how human life in general works? We have some strange mechanisms at work…

One thing we seem to be completely blind on is the role that young people played – and should still play – in all decisions and activities. I’ll get back to this, it’s the main point of this article. For now: – why is there a slight imbalance in Sex Birth Ratios? What effects does it have?

• There’s been a correlation noted between body pH (acidity/alkalinity) and effect on the two sperm genders. Female sperm survive slightly longer in acid (low pH) environments and in general swim faster, male sperm are smaller and thus can generally penetrate the egg more easily.
• There’s also a correlation between alkaline vs acidic bodily pH in that both sperm are less motile and less viable in acidic environments. I’m not sure if one gender’s motility is more affected than the other because I haven’t come across this piece of data and also I’m not sure it’s important.
• Bodily pH reacts to a poorer and more plant-based diet by becoming more acidic, and to a richer diet with more nutritional vegetables and including more meat by becoming more alkaline.
• In general, it’s shown that the average SBR is 100:104 meaning that the male population increases slightly faster than the female population.
• However, when that good time happens then in a few decades, the surviving offspring may balance slightly in favour of females due to earlier mortalities of males.
• It’s thought that the slight skew towards males in normal times is because males typically die younger due to being – to be frank – sillier and more physically competitive and thus the death rate skews slightly the other way.

In other words – good times, birth rate goes up, and produces slightly more males; in bad times, birth rate goes down, more equal rates. So in good times, the male population is slightly skewed towards males (during their teens and tweens) before the inevitable happens and some activity results in some young man’s future suddenly amounting to zero. But the overall population increases because it’s during the early years that most reproductive activity takes place, so it’s kind of like compound interest – the population graph climbs.

When you have a skewing towards a younger population it seems that more advances are made, possibly driven by the necessity of doing things more efficiently to feed, clothe, and house an increasing population. There could also be more conflict over resources.

You have to note that while older, greyer heads came up with many inventions and theories a) they weren’t really all that much older due to the overall population age shift and b) many practical inventions were made by the younger people wanting to spend less time on the onerous tasks like minding livestock and planting gardens and trapping and hunting. 4

And policy was often decided by everyone in the group. Which now had a greater proportion of young people. The saying about it taking a village to raise and educate a child also applies to the laws and culture as well.

The Role Of Youth

It’s also thought that most breakthroughs are made in the first three decades of a person’s life, with mental acuity declining from the on, preconceived ideas becoming embedded in thought processes, and the new crop of young people pushing up and occupying the resources that the older person will eventually lose to them.

A University only has so many research offices and laboratories. The farm will more and more be run by the incoming younger person – that starts taking over the tasks and responsibilities that the older person can no longer do. Usually due to failing health, and other duties such as teaching the youngest taking up more of their time.

We know all of this but our government consists mostly of a gerontocracy, far too many elder persons whose aims and ambitions don’t coincide well with those of the younger group that they govern as a whole, and of the younger segment of the population.

And it’s a shame. I recently posted on Mastodon about an advance in finally turning a waste product into a resource. Knowing academia only slightly, I am going to say that there’ll have been quite a few under-credited young students involved, because academia is another place where older and younger can and do collaborate successfully.

Government is a place that needs younger demographic but it’s being hampered by the ensconced old guard. People like Greta Thunberg are held up as examples of young people acting for their generation, and you have to agree that her climate concerns are now also becoming ours. But she’s just a voice, a single voice, against an entrenched Old Guard.

We’ve had school students acting in unison to bring more voices to various causes, and they are making a difference. When they’re seen.

The media covered these actions (from Greta to the present) at first because of the novelty value, then because it made the media appear to have social responsibility, and finally now you hardly see any articles in the news referring to the more recent actions because it’s no longer novel.

It’s no longer an attraction for the media’s readers. And that’s me. And you. We still watch and view and read the news that the mainstream media pumps out, when what they really need is a good kick up the pants from smaller groups and social media. We’re in that phase right now, trying out new ways to discover what’s really going on in the world around us.

Here’s another example – these two young people developing a way to filter microplastics out of water deserve far more than they received for this concept. But far from just being a reward, the money they won will either have to go towards further development or they can just – stop.

What they really need is a corporate sponsor to offer them development finance and assistance, but orporate sponsors are not keen to “waste” the profit margin on something that might eventually supplant them…

A young Chinese gentleman came to Australia and studied solar engineering, developed some advances n solar panel technology – and had to take it back to China for lack of support and funding here, and in fact once he earned money he sent large donations back here to UNSW (University of New South Wales where he studied) because he felt it was not being funded well enough by the Australian government.

(Remember the gerontocracy? In Australia, it’s never been never better personified than by the Liberal / National Party Coalition, which seems hell-bent on taking us all back to the time when young men *needed* to do stupid things and die in order to push the species forward… Yeah, that demographic is well-infused into government…)

We need a lot more input from young people. That means that we older people also need to make an adaptation – stop dissing young people’s ideas in favour of that elder segment. Treat each idea with as much respect as any other.

We also need to stop dissing new ideas from anyone at all, treat those with just as much respect.

And you

… can help by letting me know about any new advances in any of these fields, about any activism by any group whatsoever, any wrongdoings by that gerontocracy and the corporate world, and sharing this article and others from this site with everyone. Thank you.