Spiritual_Wellness_Holistic_Health_and_the_Practic

Health Educators and the Future 59
the standard of living. The wage gap persists (women earn about 66 percent of what
men earn). This fact will continue to motivate women to push forward their agendas.
Obviously, minorities and women will exert even greater influence in all aspects
of American life in the coming decades: in the media, in school, work, and music and
art. Given the history of racism and discrimination in the United States, minority
groups that have grown in numbers are organizing for parallel growth in political
influence.
This means more and more citizens will be learning to be activists — to make their
demands heard and influence felt. It also means there is potential for culture clash as
different groups exert their wills.
In addition, older adults now and increasingly in the future will be organized and
constitute a formidable political influence. Currently, the American Association of
Retired Persons has a membership in excess of 30 million. Some writers have speculated
about “ age wars ” in the future as we struggle to support the older generations — to
meet their needs and demands — while at the same time serving their grandchildren
and great grandchildren (Dychtwald, 1990).
As the years pass and the flower children of the 60s and baby boomers of the 70s
reach maturity, there will be even more activism among the elderly, as these are groups for
whom speaking out has been a tradition and fitness and good health a preoccupation.
Finally, one thing we all have in common is the environment. Public awareness —
and in some cases wrath — is increasing daily about risks to the planet, not to mention
ourselves.
There is a real feeling afoot, especially among the young, that society has been
greedy and unthinking when it comes to the ecology. Americans lag behind Europeans
in the way they have organized socially and politically around environmental issues.
We will see more and more environmental activism in this country, and it will cross
age, economic, regional, cultural, and partisan lines.
NEW THINKING FOR A NEW FUTURE
This is a dynamic context in which all of us have to do the work of health education:
activism, changing sources of influence, clashes across cultures and generations, competing
values about what ’ s right, and good, and necessary, extreme cynicism about
politics and political leadership, and we can, of course, throw in a worrisome economy.
All these accompany the dramatic demographic changes we ’ re seeing.
Quite frankly, the turbulence of the current time depresses some people and scares
others. It is hard to maintain a sense of security and confidence when the old way of
doing business does not solve new problems. Why is it we have such trouble dealing
with change and why do we see it as so disruptive?
Two writers, Ornstein and Ehrlich (1989), have speculated that the mismatch
between what the society needs and what we actually do is a function of old minds
confronting a new world.