AGE? FIRST TELL ME WHAT TIME MEANS TO YOU

Age is more than a mere tally of years; it is a reservoir of experience, wisdom, and history. Yet, in today's fast-paced society, age often becomes a basis for discrimination, leading to the unfortunate sidelining of invaluable expertise. From before the philosophers of ancient Greece, who revered the insights of their elders, to modern times, the narrative of age has been both celebrated and dismissed. This contrast emphasizes the folly of ignoring the deep reservoir of experience that comes with age. Understanding the relativity of time and valuing the lessons of history can enrich our present and guide our future, ensuring that the wisdom of the ages is not lost to the imprudence of a current bias based solely on the evident benefits that the energy of youth may bring.

Let’s Take Some Time for Time

For the last 30,000 years, humanity has recorded the movements of the Moon, the Sun and the Stars. Today, time seems fundamental and undeniable, present in everything and with each passing moment reinforcing its existence. Time proverbially "slips through our fingers," there is not enough of it, and it is the most precious of all commodities. It is the most successful accounting method for reality that we know, and humanity came up with it. But is it really there? Does the repetitive nature of something confirm its existence? Do we have time? Do we accumulate time in years as we age? Is it something real?

Consider Sherlock Holmes: a character written, rewritten, and adapted into audio and film, becoming one of the most recognized names and "personalities" worldwide. His influence in police work, diagnostic techniques, forensic science, literature, film, and creative thought is undeniable. Yet, his existence and influence—just like time—are only based on mere repetition. My 10-year-old daughter believed Sherlock was real because she encountered him everywhere. Yet, we—and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle—know better.

In the last century, Albert Einstein regarded time as an illusion, perceiving it as a rate dependent on the observer's frame of reference. He suggested that time is essentially not there (although very persistent) and that, in fact, there is no linear flow of time. We live only in an ever-changing now. Time, as we perceive it, would then be a social construct, while the universe exists in a state of 'dynamic timelessness.'

This means that the past and future have no actual reality beyond memory and prediction. Our sense of a linear flow of time comes from experiencing the universe through our brains and the filter of our thoughts. Since our thoughts flow linearly, one following another, we are tricked into believing the universe functions similarly.

Furthermore, the present is the fleeting rift between two nonexistent realities. So brief that it might be considered nothing. In "earth time," it is smaller than a nanosecond. Essentially, reality is a momentary sliver, a nothingness in human perception, between potentiality and nonexistence.

The early Greek philosophers, thousands of years ago, believed that the universe and time were infinite with no beginning and no end. In the 5th Century BCE, the Sophist philosophers asserted that time is not a reality and that what we call reality is limited to what exists in the instantaneous here and now, while the past and future are unreal and imaginary.

Interestingly, Aristotle saw time as an attribute of movement (way before anyone else) and as something that does not exist on its own but is relative to the motions of things. In fact, Aristotle argued that time is essentially a measurement of change and therefore cannot exist without some succession or variation. And so, to "exist," it also requires the presence of a soul capable of "numbering" the movement. Without the existence of man or a being capable of counting, time should not exist.

It was also Aristotle who framed, almost 2,300 years ago, the interesting paradox about the existence of time that we have already mentioned: if time essentially consists of two different kinds of non-existence (the future — “not yet-, and the past — “no longer”-) separated by a nothing (the instantaneous and vanishing present or “now”), how then can we talk of time as actually existing at all?

This brings us to a point a dear friend often makes, that we have discovered or thought nothing substantially new since the ancient Greeks. For those who cherish the idea of freedom and a slow-paced life, Athenian culture exemplifies the value of a leisurely, relaxed, and socially engaged lifestyle. The Athenians had ample time to enjoy the process of thinking, discussing, and gradually uncovering some of life's most intricate truths. Remarkably, they achieved this within a relatively short span of modern human history (circa 500 BCE - 323 BCE, extending to 30 BCE). It then took us over 2,000 years of exploration and discovery to refine and confirm their insights as we traveled our increasingly busy, understandably arrogant, and over the last 200 years, technology-driven lives.

Let’s Not Talk About Age. Let’s Talk About Experience

Reflecting on the nature of time highlights a crucial insight: the true value of what came before us lies not in a type of accounting methodology but in the richness of the experiences, traumas, discoveries, triumphs, and enjoyment we accumulate in our minds and bodies. The past exists for us in a limited fashion and only as far as it is kept alive through memory, experience, or documentation of some sort (which is also created by the human mind). And for the same reason—and this is one of those obvious facts that we so often miss—the amount of information we keep about the past probably represents, according to different studies and calculations, about 3% of the total human existence to date, while all history without human participation is completely lost (and what we manage to recover is all based on scientific inference). This means that more than 99% of non-human existence, and around 97% of human experience and history, just fades away.

The wisdom and knowledge accrued over time truly define our capacity to contribute meaningfully to society in every possible way—individually, as organizations, and as governments. This understanding underscores another fact: the importance of valuing experience over mere chronological age. In a world where youth is often prized over know-how, we risk overlooking the deep reservoir of insights and skills that come with years of lived experience, of history in the making. Through these accumulated skills, individuals gain the foresight to navigate complex challenges, making their contributions invaluable to all.

This is something we have always known. In almost all societies and throughout history, the role of the elders was precisely to be the living source of historical facts and accumulated experience for the group. Technology over the years, from the early books to computers and AI, cannot possibly replace the emotional and insightful experience of just having been there. While the advice of those who have gone through similar events in the past clearly improves the quality of the decisions we can make today, the way a written report may not help convey in the same way.

Furthermore, the focus on chronological age in 21st-century organizations often undermines years of investment by companies and individuals in learning and experience. Paradoxically, this is the type of investment which any start-up could never afford and in which most established companies channel significant investments to foster, only to then proceed to discard.

Just as we have created accounting rules that define time, age, and distance from the events in the past as in the future, society took advantage of these measurements to define the ability of a person to be useful in the workforce and, in many cases, to society itself. While these regulations may have made sense when the average lifespan was markedly shorter, they have virtually lost all meaning today, leaving them as simply mean. A cut-off point decided by law rather than a person’s ability to perform.

Even if we accept the widely held idea of preformatted and well defined characteristics of “age,” it is clear to all that, while sometimes chronological and biological age may coincide, it is increasingly common to see that they do not. As the population gets older in chronological age and younger in biological age, we should take advantage of this wonderful byproduct of our evolution, embracing experience and ensuring that we always have those who are wiser close to us.

As I have said on many occasions, wisdom is not only the byproduct of experience; it is more like a superpower. It is the incredible gift of being able to predict the future (or at the very least, the possibility of plausible future events based on our memory of past similar occurrences). In ancient Indian Vedic philosophy, time was not seen as solely linear. Instead, it had both linear and cyclical elements. In their view, the universe goes through repeated cycles of creation, destruction, and rebirth, expounding to a cyclic view of time—a “wheel of time” or Kalachakra, in which there are repeating ages over the infinite life of the universe.

Beyond the religious implications, these concepts are not as unusual as some may think. It is a fact of life that the structure of situations and events repeat, in general terms, over and over in our lives, while throughout human history, the cyclical nature of everything is clearly evident. In those circumstances, the one who has seen or experienced something similar before becomes like someone with a GPS. A beacon in the darkness of our own momentary experiential ignorance.

Don’t let wisdom wilt with time

The question here is begging for an answer: Are we prepared to keep discarding all these benefits to society and individuals, this immense value we have built and invested in, just because it seems too problematic to modify a system we created and put in place to benefit those whom today we mostly hurt?

I propose we end this self-defeating practice where a certain chronological age automatically disqualifies and forces a person to retire without consideration of experience, knowledge and capabilities. It is an evident discrimination that goes unaltered because legislation around the world protects it. Legislation that was created under the belief that this was beneficial to all: It helped open the way to new generations and gave well needed rest to those who had no longer the energy to perform. Today, that reality is no longer our reality.

Organizations need these individuals because they are vital to both their organization’s survival and growth, as well as to the rest of society. They are the connectors between generations, the ones who are here now and were there before. The ones who can help avoid the repetition of past mistakes or calm the restlessness of new/old events that very few today have endured in their own existence. By doing so, they provide us with the knowledge we lack, the experience we seek, and give us a much better chance to a thriving present, rather than allowing it to fall into a past that is quickly lost or leaving it to a yet nonexistent and unpredictable future.

©2024 by Ignacio Alperin Bruvera