Memento Mori, Boris

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There is an unspoken social contract that underpins every society, and one element of it is gracefully formulated in a Quaker proverb:

 “A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they know they shall never sit.”

Society, the immediate snapshot of the continuity that is civilisation, is predicated on the principle that the old will make sacrifices for the future of the young. 

This is usually not a controversial statement; the entire world is constructed this way and always has been. Those who are older sacrifice their time and energy to provide safety and resources for those who are younger, so that when the young mature they have the ability to do the same for their own offspring. We are all beneficiaries of this unspoken agreement, because this is how a civilisation continues to exist.