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Comment by xeromal | Hacker News Reader

Yeah, I've noticed in the US that we've lost sight of the old way of ensuring care for your elders and it makes me sad. I understand that "proper" first world countries should take care of them through social programs, but I'm just surprised it only took us a few generations to completely abandon the obligation to take care of grandma, grandpa, mom, and dad when they get too old to work.

My buddy is a latino and as soon as the elders got too old, they just moved in to the family house and their needs were met.

* I do understand that some level of care is unable to be met by normal families but I'm talking about the situations where its really just room, board, food, and love.

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> we've lost sight of the old way of ensuring care for your elders

The "old way" is the current way. It hasn't changed, which is why we needed socialist programs like Social Security. Why? We live in a high trust society that is more individualistic. Families in low trust societies tend to adopt a more "clan" like mentality where you even know your distant cousins pretty well, see your cousins on a regular basis, and it's common for three or more generations to live in the same building. Why? Because in a low trust society, you will lean more on people who are related by blood when it's harder to rely on 3rd parties like the government or anyone not related to you. Conversely, we don't have that issue, so our families tend to be more distant.

Sorry, I guess I had some implicit bias. I grew up in Appalachia which is a bit more clanish. It's not strange to have 3-5 close families living on the same plot of land in trailers.

I truly believe that one of the ways to measure the evolution of a society is how it takes care of the vulnerable groups: children, elders, and people with disabilities.

Of course there are other social problems, and inequalities, like racism, unemployment, sexism... but the difference is that these groups still have strength and a voice. The vulnerable groups are exposed and left at the waves of the society.

While people were complaining because they had to stay some weeks inside, you have countries where the elder are still in isolation after 9 months, only to finally get the virus to creep in slowly and start to wipe a lot of them. It's borderline criminal.

It's sad, and it makes me worried for when it will be my turn. If we're this detached from the problems of old age, we won't have a good end.

It's an age old issue. Christianity, before it became the religion that it currently is, was known as the religion of widows and orphans when founded. It was meant as an insult as it wasn't prestigious at the time, but clearly there was a fundamental lack of care for those groups that caused them to cling to a new religion.

There are 80,000 post Luther Christianities, so it’s not as monolithic as implied.

The earliest Christians followed principles described in this first century document here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Didache

The most famous at the time was loving neighbor as self. Pagans at the time left the sick to die in the streets. This is one reason Christianity had such a positive feedback loop for community life that it became generally the world’s largest belief system.

I mean the religion christianity is today is even more caring of the widow and orphan. The catholic church alone operates a shocking 26 percent of the entire worlds medical facilities. That doesn't count protestanrts or the orthodox.

The difference of course is that the cultural hegemony of christianity has made charity expected

Japan has a culture of obligation to take care of your parents but it has side effects. Dating sites for example you list if you're the oldest because people often don't want to marry the oldest since their obliged to care for the parents. Worse, it's often left to the wife to take care of the husband's parents.

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