Gerontocracy: The Preferred Version for Dictators

Gerontocracy: The Preferred Formula for Dictators

Gerontocracy, the preferred formula for dictators, as reported by Iran Gate, means the rule of the elderly. This term was used in ancient Greece to refer to a specific type of governance, but today it is used to describe a situation that any government might experience.

In a gerontocracy, age and experience hold sanctity or reverence for religious or customary reasons, and thus the opinions of the elderly are prioritized in decision-making. Therefore, in the allocation of political and managerial positions, the elderly are favored over the young, and the seats of power are often held by the elderly. In ancient Greece, in the city-state of Sparta, members of the governing council had to be at least 60 years old.

Gerontocracy actually stems from a fundamental view of human life that can be summarized as the sanctification of experience. Hence, gerontocracy is not only a political implication but can also be prevalent in general culture. Gerontocracy is certainly one of the foundations of conservatism, but revolutionary political regimes also fall into it. For example, in the last two decades of the 20th century, the core power in the Chinese Communist Party was held by eight people who were so old that Western media dubbed them the ‘Eight Immortals’, a reference to a myth in Chinese folklore.

Mao, the leader of Communist China, was 82 years old at the time of his death and was separated from power only by death. After him, Deng Xiaoping came to power, who was also 82 years old at the time of his death. The last three leaders of the Soviet Union, Brezhnev, Andropov, and Chernenko, died of old age in 1983, 1984, and 1985, respectively, and left power. Gerontocracy in the Soviet Union began in the 1970s and played a significant role in the Communist Party’s lag behind the social changes in the country. In the 1980s, the average age of members of the Soviet Communist Party’s Central Committee was 70.

Critics of gerontocracy in Communist China also sarcastically said that in China’s leadership cadre, the eighty-year-olds summon the seventy-year-olds to decide on the retirement of the sixty-year-olds.

In current America, the competition between Biden and Trump in the 2020 presidential election and their potential competition in the 2024 election is certainly a sign of gerontocracy. In tribal societies, the right to rule naturally belonged to the elderly. Similarly, in the more advanced societies of the ancient world, older individuals usually held power, meaning that the culture of many primitive or complex societies of the ancient world agreed with the governance of the elderly.

However, the concept of gerontocracy originated in ancient Greece. This famous quote by Plato is the shortest and most eloquent definition of gerontocracy: ‘The elder commands and the younger obeys.’ Since this idea was ingrained in the cultures of various societies, gerontocracy was not confined to the domain of the state but was also an unquestionable principle in various areas of society, including tribes, clans, and families.

In fact, in the ancient world, authority belonged to the elder, and denying this authority was only justified under special circumstances. This principle was also one of the foundations of the family, and for this reason, in the modern world, where the democratization of family structure is discussed, special legal protections have been extended to children to protect them from potential harm due to parental decisions.

In other words, democratization is not only about the domain of the state and politics but also requires society and culture to embrace democratic values. The most important implication of democracy is the distribution of power, meaning that if an autocratic ruler is obliged to distribute their power with the political representatives of the people, individuals must also be ready to distribute their power with their subordinates in various areas of their social and personal lives.

And since in the family, power belongs to the parents, democratizing the family structure requires that power not be concentrated in the hands of the parents. To achieve this situation in democratic and advanced societies, necessary laws have been enacted to reduce the power of parents and increase the power of children.

Although it seems that parental dominance over children for emotional, physiological, and other reasons never completely disappears, a degree of curbing parental power and distributing power within the family is necessary to reduce gerontocracy, meaning decision-making by the elder and obedience by the younger.

Completely eradicating gerontocracy is, of course, a cultural and educational matter, and it requires enhancing respect for children and young people. Although conservatives and other proponents of gerontocracy emphasize the importance of experience and view tradition as the product of accumulated experience, essentially arising from several centuries of rationality, and oppose disregard for the wisdom of the past, critics of gerontocracy argue that democracy means rejecting the rule of the dead over the living.

Therefore, anything that relies on tradition and the wisdom of predecessors is not necessarily worthy of following. Following it depends on its validation by the contemporary rational mind. For this reason, if the political and familial structures of the ancient world placed special emphasis on the governance of the elders and the obedience of the younger, such a principle is not acceptable in the new democratic world.

Thus, just as rulers must submit to democracy, parents and family structures must also become democratic, or else the present and future of many young individuals will be ruined under the wheel of elder authority.

Dismantling the authority of the elderly becomes even more important when we remember that with increasing age, individuals’ ability to abandon their vices and shortcomings diminishes. As Rumi says, a human is like a thorn-picker, and if they do not remove the thorns of their vices in their youth and middle age, they will not be able to do so in old age because those vices have become ingrained, and their ability to confront them has diminished with the passage of time.

Additionally, Elon Musk, the famous capitalist, in explaining why he does not financially support the project of long life or immortality, considers this project contrary to the progress of societies and says that people mostly do not change their opinions but rather have beliefs and stick to them until their day of death arrives.

Therefore, if their death arrives much later or not at all, it hinders the transformation and progress of society, especially if they are in positions of political power and responsible for decision-making for a society full of young people who have different and newer perspectives.