Innu grandmother and granddaughter (credit: Ansgar Walk via Wikimedia Commons)

Another example of the morés that guide our cultures can be found in a different area of life, in the laws of Moses. These instruct followers of the Hebrew, Christian, and Muslim faiths to “Honour thy father and thy mother, that thy days may be long in the land that the Lord thy God hath given thee.” (Exodus 20:12) The faithful are instructed to care for, treat respectfully, and consult their parents (therefore, by a small logical extension, all citizens of the community should be cared for in their old age).

Honouring our elders means consulting with them on all kinds of matters. Before writing was invented, an old person was a walking encyclopedia to be consulted for useful information on treatment of diseases and injuries, planting, harvesting, and preserving food, making and fixing shelters and tools, hunting, gathering, and much more. Knowledge and wisdom were passed down through the generations by oral means. By honouring elders, the people in a community preserved and thus had access to much larger stores of knowledge than if they had simply abandoned their elderly as soon as they appeared to be a net drain on the tribe’s resources. An elder’s knowledge often solved both small problems and major crises for the entire tribe. Over many generations, societies that respected and valued their elders gradually outfed, outbred, and outfought their competitors.

Imagine an elder in a primitive tribe. She might very well have said: “We have to boil the water. This sickness came once before, when I was seven summers old. Only people who drank soup and tea did not get sick. All who drank the water got sick and died.” Honoring elders is, every so often, a tribe-saving policy to have in place. It is, every so often, the difference between life and death for the whole tribe.