Going On and On: Why Our Longevity Threatens the Future by Lucinda Holdforth

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The difficult situation younger generations are in requires a major shift in policy and planning. The ethics of longevity at any cost should have been an integral part of the research into prolonging life. Policy planners should have approached housing as a human right. Corporations and the wealthy should have been paying their fair share of taxes instead of hiring canny accountants to milk the public purse.

And on it goes. We are in this mess because too many of our countries prioritize profit over people. I have witnessed this firsthand in the three countries where I have lived the longest – the U.S., Canada, and now Australia. The solutions Holdforth suggests are a good start. Still, pitting younger against older will not lift us. We all need to participate in a major re-thinking of how we humans can act responsibly and compassionately toward each other and the planet.



View all my reviews

Though my current literary and publishing efforts have been solo journeys, I look back on my consulting career and see the deep pleasures of collaboration. Two – and sometimes more – minds can take the seed of an idea and together create a blossoming that turns a flower into a garden. This post from OneTribune has added to my reading lists and awakened me to new possibilities.

The Power of “We” – Books That Capture the Magic of Collaboration

I was curious to know how, after the war, they explained their silence as Hitler’s vicious regime rolled steadily over Germany and the countries around it. If they had been Hiltler Youth or had uncles in the SS, how had they explained it when their own children grew old enough to ask questions?

At the time, I was a school librarian, fluent in English and French and with enough knowledge of German to read in the language. So I focused on young adult novels written in those three languages. They were by survivors of World War II, people who had recorded and reflected on their experiences in order to inform the next generation.

The research gave me nightmares.

I had access to the books at the International Youth Library in Munich, where I spent every week day. One day the kindly IYL receptionist called me aside and said quietly, “Frau Wellner, you must understand, in my family, we were National Socialists, but we were not Nazis.”

She and her family were, I’ve no doubt, among the good people, the quiet people, the keep-your-nose-down people. They joined the party because any whiff of opposition was dangerous.

After the war, they walked by houses confiscated from the Jews, where Aryan families now lived comfortably. Their cities were rebuilt with the help of funds provided by the Marshall Plan. They struggled to move beyond the lost years. And they wrote for the next generation, hoping to make sense of a horrifying time, hoping to explain to their children their suffering at the hands of the Nazis or their participation in the wheels of suffering they helped to grease.

How will MAGA adherents explain that they stayed silent as neighbours disappeared into the maw of ICE atrocities? How will GOP politicians tell the story of allowing Trump, Project 25, and all their enablers to dismantle freedom and democracy? How will the Supreme Court write its justification of support for a monster?

Every day, I hope for the kind of massive pushback that will stop The MAGAtts in their tracks, that will derail ICE, that will restore justice and sanity. Every day I am disappointed. But I am old enough to know that history goes through periods of chaos and calm. So I continue to hope.

ABC’s Radio National Breakfast is my daily background companion. This morning it surprised me by making me a little teary — a segment on the National Library of Australia.

National libraries have followed me around the world. My first book lives in the Library of Congress in the U.S.; later years added titles to the National Library of Canada.

Since arriving in Australia in 2021, I’ve published quietly — mostly for myself or family. With The Reluctant Farmer, I finally sent print and digital copies to the National Library of Australia. Today I checked, and there they were, already catalogued.

Which means my small book now sits somewhere in the stacks alongside Sir Donald Bradman’s cricket bat, James Cook’s journal, and Katherine Parr’s handwriting.

Not bad company for a reluctant farmer.

• Facebook
• Threads
• Bluesky
• WhatsApp
• ShareCopied to clipboard