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For me, age is much more a condition of time and experience than wisdom. There is, after all, no wisdom in living through, as I did one night in Fridley, three tornados. Survival isn’t wisdom. There’s little gloriously wise in having an extended run except for one possibility. Perspective. 

Yeah, vantage point. 

Let’s take a look. 

There was, which a great many readers will not remember, Duck and Cover. Why that? To save us grade school kiddos from the bomb blasts. If that didn’t kill us then nuclear fallout would. If not that, perhaps Strontium 90 would turn our little bones to cancerous mush. We had it rough with so much to worry about hiding under school desks, ones retaining their ink wells. With lunch and recess mostly forgotten because the real bomb (ironically falling on me the same time as puberty) was population. We’d expand into extinction, meaning a whole lot of puberty going on. 

 Too many procreating people on the planet meant we needed a new diet. Less meat, more veggies were the fix. Bad news for lovers of burgers and bacon. But who had much appetite in a silent spring where birds, bees and bugs were gone, killed off by pesticides, namely DDT set to wipe us out, except for, in my experience, mosquitoes and leeches. 

Dang, why couldn’t these killers of humanity take out some of the pests? I’d be happy to see the horse and deer flies go. 

Not that there was much time to fret over insect life when acid rain and nuclear winter were in the near forecast. A guy had to wonder how long the ice fishing would last with no summertime open water providing fish food. Not to mention no more swimming in lakes, only heated indoor pools until poor old earth went dark and frozen. 

 Mentioning some of the bigger ones, war in Korea, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia was the death warrant for any and all. 

Not wanting to die, I stood 100% for nuclear disarmament and peace. Fight for peace. Lot of good that did, but somehow seemed a better way to go than any of the other ways I didn’t understand. 

Escape the above and a new ice age and or ozone depletion would freeze the remainders of society that were not all perished from skin cancers, or lung diseases from smog or any form of unclean air. 
Spending much of every summer outdoors around wood fires I knew very well the deathly way smoke followed wherever you moved. Killer air was out to get us and had been from the moment prehistoric ancient Sal invented cooking over a fire. 

I’m not saying individuals or societies should ignore concerns, but after a while I noticed a suspicious lot of alarms (false?). 

Take the here and now concern over microplastics. Something to be aware of? Surely. But for how many eras did people ingest wood particles, clay, sand, hide and so on in unglazed and glazed cooking pots or water carriers? 

As with smoke following a person around a campfire or smoke inside a longhouse there has always been exposure to less than pristine pure environments. The ability to measure (as we are currently able) things in minute detail doesn’t mean we know the impact good or bad of what’s measured. Is micro plastic or micro mineral in water more injurious than bacteria in water? 

There is an argument to be made that everything pure and santitzed leads to weaker immune responses. In my situation (obviously not for everyone) I accept warnings while trying to avoid the fear so often attached. 

Does anyone know the future. Reasonable confidence is one thing. Predictive certainty is, I’d say, mostly uncertain. After-the-fact certainty tends to be reliable, but even so is partially up for grabs depending on, for example, which freedom fighter is a possible genocidal monster. 

But and this is possibly important, I don’t find myself qualified in the big questions and issues dept. I wonder, maybe you find the big-bold concerns not only beyond reach but in large measure boring. Why fuss and agony over things outside my scope? 

Instead of great imponderables I try focusing on what might be more in my range. For instance when comes to politics I’ve often said I liked Joe Biden because he so reminded me of my father. And I can say with little hesitation I doubt I’d enjoy fishing with Donald Trump. 

I feel both my responses practical and down to earth. Good place to be. I’ll wager that I’ll never be friends with a device or an app and that Alexa or Sirri will drop by for coffee. Personally, I much resent any small appliance that presumes intelligence. A toaster needs to toast bread. Anything more is wasted. 

Pinning down to here and now concerns, I wonder how it came to be and is now the case that modern breads resist mold. Real bread of the past had that characteristic. What’s in the nature of newer food-product bread that says Mold Beware? I’ll ask right now, if a product isn’t friendly to mold then what about me? Why risk breads that are lethal to things like the modest bacteria found in a gut? 

Same seems true of milk. I need not blither about milkman days with glass bottles to note that today’s milk appears to be nature resistant. Is good shelf life good for me? It’s worth a passing wonder. But if I do wander into the way-back I can tell you that some while ago in the nasty evils of corrupt Chicago a duo of 10 year olds could do Saturday outings from far southside to famous museums. Alone. Streetcars and the El. Carrying a packed lunch. Did it often enough to memorize the coal mine spiel at Science and Industry and the microwave presentation at the field. Not so very long ago things were so awful a couple of kids could roam, grow and free range. Had someone insisted on holding my hand and keeping me safe I’d have obeyed, forced compliance I’d have hated being hand-held, tamed, being kept from life.