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EDITORIAL: Cherishing our seniors... always

With so much technology around us we have never had more access to data and information.

With access to a virtual worldwide encyclopaedia we can quickly research just about every conceivable subject or issue when sitting down to a computer hooked up to the internet.

We only have to consider expressions such as ‘Google it’, now part of contemporary vernacular in reference to fingertip investigation, to realise just how ‘in touch’ we are – be it about what has happened, what is happening and what might happen. And of course, mixed in with all sorts of furphys as well.

But just imagine if this electronic overload was our only source of the information we needed to exist as empathetic and well-informed humans. 



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We might as well be electronic machines ourselves.

The reality is that we are rationalising creatures and the type of information we store in our own incredible biological databanks, based on ‘human’ as well as academic assessment, is critical for everything to work and move forward.

All the academic and scientific breakthroughs and developments, ultimately, are simply attachments to this nuance-based human-style learning.

We shouldn’t need reminding that we don’t need to plug in some of the best sources of information we often automatically have on hand – they are with us in everyday life and exist in the form of mums, dads, grandads, grandmas, uncles, elderly neighbours and friends and so on.

Some of these ‘computers’, albeit like most things that occasionally get a little rusty, can often tell us more about life than any machine. They are wonderful assets.

Victorian Seniors Festival week, despite being subject to all sorts of modifications due to the pandemic, provides a reminder about this large and often untapped life-experience ‘filing cabinet’. 

There is an old expression that ‘you can’t learn everything from books’. A modern application might be that you also can’t learn everything from computers.

Human experience and understanding remains one of the greatest of teachers across generations. 

Our very existence is the result, at some stage, of one generation handing down information to the next.

We know and understand that geniuses from any era are far and few between and modern understanding and rationalisation has superseded plenty of old ideas and beliefs.

But anyone who has had a lifetime of experience, regardless of how old-fashioned or out of touch they might seem, can usually offer something to new generations to at least consider.

It is important to remember that some of the most enduring cultures the world has seen have based their society structures on cherishing their elders.

So, let’s ensure we always take time to celebrate and respect our elderly and senior members of society. They are simply reflections of who we are today.

The entire October 13, 2021 edition of The Weekly Advertiser is available online. READ IT HERE!