As they grow old, they want to be able to depart this world with a sense that they have helped build it with their own hands, and that it is in safe hands and will exist in perpetuity. They want to feel assured that the traditions they have inherited and passed along, or the ones they have helped establish, will be adhered to, honored and passed along after they are gone.
Even if all of the above does not result in a high level of physical comfort and luxury but involves hardship and privation, considerable personal danger, and even if many lives are cut short as a result, people can remain happy—satisfied and fulfilled—provided they get to contribute freely to a common cause. When they are deprived of any and all these things, they cease to be physiologically and psychologically normal.
When deprived of any and all of these things, they lose self-respect and interest in their work, and just try to get by, just doing the bare minimum. Some even give up on trying to do the bare minimum and just drift along, helpless and hopeless. They are unable to convince themselves that it is still worthwhile for them to make an effort, convinced that it would all go to waste.
They begin to dress shabbily and stop minding their manners. They lose interest in other people, and especially in the younger generations, feeling that they have nothing to offer them, and that even if they had, their advice would not be heeded and their contributions would not be respected.
As their physical and social environments are transformed out of all recognition, they no longer feel that they belong anywhere and become desensitized to being trapped in a dismal built-up environment full of graceless, utilitarian buildings, run-down infrastructure and hostile or indifferent strangers. Often the result is mental anguish, which drives them to psychiatrists, who in turn prescribe them antidepressants. In many cases, these either don’t work and/or exacerbate the very biochemical imbalance they were intended to correct, cause additional impairments and may drive them to suicide.
Their mental state also negatively influences their immune system, causing it to weaken, making them susceptible to infections, or to go haywire, causing autoimmune disorders and allergic reactions. They project all that is wrong with the world around them onto their own bodies and develop psychosomatic ailments, especially chronic pain, and especially in the one part of the body which is particularly capable of self-generated pain: the spinal chord. In an attempt to alleviate the pain, many of them begin to self-medicate and fall into alcoholism and drug addiction.
This is all perfectly normal and is perhaps exactly as it should be.
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