Dialogue: Too many codgers walking on Bitterness Boulevard

New Zealand is becoming a nation of bitter old men, most of whom have not learned to compensate for losing workplace power, says DAVID HILL*.

I'm never going to be old. It will happen to the rest of the human race, but not to me.

If I do somehow succumb to the process, I hope very much that I won't become a dirty old man. I hope even more that I won't become a bitter old man.

Bitter old men are everywhere in New Zealand. You hear them at family reunions, bowling clubs and council meetings, saying that kids these days don't know how easy they have it; God knows what they teach them at school now; a good thrashing never did anyone any harm.

You see them in letters-to-the-editor columns. They are former defence chiefs accusing the Government of betraying our proud military heritage. They are ex-anyones complaining about refurbishment of the mayor's office, or renovations to the museum which only a few arty-farties use anyhow.

I have absolutely no polls to back me up, but I'm convinced there are far more bitter old men than bitter old women around.

Why? (And spare me the glib reply that men are genetically inferior. This is a social malaise we're talking about.) I reckon the main reason for our plague of bitter old men is power - more specifically, their loss of power.

Through their working and public lives, and in spite of New Zealand's top five, men still exercise more power than women.

Then suddenly they retire, often at an age set by the external world, which has little connection to their expectations. Or they are made redundant, which is even more of a head start along Bitterness Boulevard.

It's a pity and a fact that many men still define their worth in terms of their jobs and their effectiveness as providers.

Then retirement hits them and they are jerked from an environment in which their presence is important to the running of things, to one where things have got along fine without them for years, thank you.

They've stopped, but around them the world keeps changing. And since all change implies that what existed before was inadequate, and since men's working lives often involved designing or maintaining what went before, their self-esteem doesn't drop through the floor, it drops through the planet's crust. No wonder they are bitter.

It is specifically an Anglo-Saxon, Protestant work ethic power loss. There don't seem to be so many bitter old men in Maori, Asian or Mediterranean societies, where old men retain a titular and community significance.

And, as I said, it doesn't seem to affect women so much.

Women are less caught up in the power nexus. They have probably experienced the dislocations of retirement already - giving up work to have children, having the last of those children leave home. They still have an obvious role and status outside paid work.

I don't want old men to retain power, whether they are Chinese politicians, Islamic Imams or New Zealand city councillors. But it would surely benefit them - and those of us who will never be old - if they retained enough personal power and self-esteem not to augment the boom in bitter old men.

So I wish every old man a place to potter, a passion and a public purpose.

The nouns in Blokes and Sheds are generally used with head-patting condescension. That's silly, because all retired males should have an indoor and outdoor private reserve where they can move at male rhythms, arrange things from a male perspective. Anyone going to claim such rhythms and perspectives don't exist?

Old men also need an occupation. Or a preoccupation, if you like. Actually, they need two: one which is collecting and one which is creative.

It should be something significantly bigger than they are. Something which is a time-dilator, not a time-filler. Astronomy? Model A Fords? Veterans' Games? Two of those fill me with terminal boredom, but if they turn a day into something more than a lugubrious procession of hours for some people, then damn good.

Third, old men should make some paid or unpaid community contribution which is face-to-face, non-competitive and involves other age groups.

Examples? Some of the happiest, most non-bitter old men I ever saw when we lived in England were the lollipop men at school pedestrian crossings.

Along with them went a wondrously named group called Raw (Rent-a-Wrinklie), which provided helpers for preschool trips and as primary-school teacher aides.

Grumbled T.S. Eliot:

Do not let me hear

Of the wisdom of old men,

But rather of ...

Their fear and frenzy.

Yeah, right. But let's try a few things that mean we don't have to hear it all the time.

* David Hill is a Taranaki writer.