Bombastic Boomers and the Succession Crisis

Aging, Cognitive Decline, and Institutional Sclerosis

My moderately-sized religious denomination made Drudge recently for an incident involving the “stated clerk,” essentially the CEO handling day-to-day business. Since he’s from the moderate wing of the church, many conservatives were quite worked up by his actions. Upon finding out the poor guy is almost 71 upon his subsequent resignation, I felt much more charitable towards him personally. The real issue is the people who thought appointing someone his age to an executive position was a smart move.

This was an unwise decision for several reasons. First, technological illiteracy. He was daft enough to hold up a small, handwritten “enemies list” of critics on a live, HD podcast, and then make several claims about the men on the list. Smart anons immediately screenshotted and enhanced the few milliseconds of frames to elucidate the names on the list, exposing his claims about them as self-evidently defamatory. Friends of his are claiming the blame lies with those who captured the frames, rather than him for holding it up, assuming it would be illegible. It’s sad when people fundamentally misunderstand how the Internet works, which again underscores the need for leadership that didn’t spend most of their careers in obsolete media ecologies.

Second, possibly, and most charitably for a long-serving church officer, cognitive decline. We all have unspeakable, uncharitable thoughts about people all the time; our filters keep developing until about 45 and decline beginning at 65, giving us a preciously small window of maximum wisdom and sharpness¹. In a previous era, errors like this would be removed in post before the DVDs went to production, or dropped from a text draft by a smart editor. Men in the public eye could work later into their twilight years without risking their legacy on an offhand comment. This paradigm is no more.

Third, outdated mental models. This relates to technological illiteracy, but also to an inability to forecast cultural trends and then doubling down on failed strategies. This same individual brought controversy last year by inviting, and then being forced to disinvite, the notorious David French to address the general assembly. For conservatives trying to productively channel the (justified) radicalism of young Christian men tired of being dumped on in the culture, inviting the neocon Never-Trumper squish French — who believes the magic words of the Constitution, not effective smashmouth politics, to be a universal salve in the face of American Gomorrah — only feeds the flames of their suspicions that church institutions are obsolete in addressing, if not complicit in, today’s actual problems.

Institutions with much to lose with their reputations must be led by men who are old enough not to say something dumb on purpose, and young enough not to say something dumb by accident, and particularly avoiding the grumpiness and annoyance that comes from old age in men when they are past their cognitive prime but don’t want to admit it, and when they are prone, due to lack of mental energy, to respond irritably to criticism, legitimate or not. My advice to the PCA for their next stated clerk: hire the smartest, most media-savvy 50-something you can find, and set a mandatory retirement age of 65.

That, however, seems unlikely given the track record of Boomer succession. Instead of elevating rising voices, they will tend to hold onto prominent positions way past their expiration date and end up saying silly things to fend off challenges to their position.

The Succession Problem

Admittedly, this is tough. This man, Bryan Chapell, at his prime, was a slick verbal operator. Name recognition and talent go a long way for many media-centric ventures, and every leader today representing an institution is arguably a media personality. Dave Ramsey, wiser than many older leaders, has been diligently trying for years to expand his media company beyond his singular talents and natural charisma, with mixed results at best. The personal connection people feel with media personalities is difficult to scale under a common brand umbrella.

Second, Boomers have been blessed with amazing advances in medical science. Whereas a member of the WWII generation might have been dead by 60 with a heart attack — and that generation’s early mortality was why many Boomer leaders have had such long careers, promoted to high levels of leadership in their 30s — advances in remediation of cardiovascular disease and diabetes have given them an astounding health span compared to their parents². The widespread availability of PDE5 inhibitors and TRT clinics, just as their generation began late middle age, has caused many older men’s essential bodily virility to far outpace their mental capacities and judgment, giving false signals of seemingly eternal youth. Just like there’s no liberal like a Southern liberal, there’s no fool like an old fool.

Those older men who are fitness enthusiasts, like George Gilder, who still runs miles per day in his 80s, can remain productive far beyond the typical midcentury elderly, who, as the first to live in a post-scarcity world, lacked knowledge of the compensating necessity of exercise and nutritional restraint, and lacked great alternatives to cigarettes for delivery of the world’s greatest nootropic. And since retirement is particularly bad for men, who generally base their self-worth on their productive capacities rather than family relationships, who are we to demand that talented people stop using their talents because of age?

And there is much to learn from this phenomenal generation. Aaron Renn recently posted on the virtues of Boomer self-confidence, using John Piper’s “seashells sermon” as an example, contrasted with Gen X’s “too cool for school” detached cynicism. The content of Piper’s message, which was a manipulative guilt trip about the inadequacy of ordinary Christian vocations, is besides the point, but rather that he felt confident enough to give specific advice — even casting himself as everyone’s “spiritual father” like some kind of Pope — rather than vague analysis. Regardless of the merits of the message, people find this attractive. The reason it’s entertaining to listen to Dave Ramsey is to hear him rant at people for their poor financial decisions and tell them exactly what to do. The other “Ramsey” hosts are boring because it’s all Millennial uptalk and therapy-speak. Maybe part of the reason for the succession crisis is because members of subsequent generations are simply less likely to show leadership qualities, so hung up on displaying personal “authenticity” or “vulnerability” that they are unable to be effective³.

As I’ve said before, many people want to be told what to do, and if reasonable voices don’t fill that void, unreasonable ones will. The paradox of this is that the people most hesitant to give advice, because they are thoughtful, are the most qualified to give it. Now, maybe part of Gen X’s cynicism was caused by observing Boomer leaders’ unjustified confidence. But that cynicism is itself taking a position! And if we think we’re right, for example, in distrusting the pietistic guilt trips to which guys like Piper are prone, then we ought to have the courage to take our own side, publicly and confidently, in a real argument!

Cognitive Decline

These are undoubtedly circumstances unique to the Boomer generation that deserve sympathy. Yet the iron law of death and taxes remains, and while the latter is addressable with good CPAs and attorneys, the former remains only delayed, not solved⁴.

And there are problems well before death. Fluid intelligence (raw IQ) declines rapidly, about 1 point per year, beginning at age 70, with the average person being a full standard deviation, 15 points, lower by age 70 than they were at age 25. Crystallized intelligence, or knowledge, peaks later, at age 40 (and this would tend to peak somewhat later the more complex and/or critical the role), but is likewise almost a standard deviation below its peak by age 75. This is all, of course, mitigated or accelerated by personal fitness.

IQ is a tricky concept. Formally, it is always age-adjusted since it is by definition a relative number with 100 as an arbitrary mean and a standard deviation of 15. Referencing raw scores, a 12-year-old, for example, with an IQ of 100 is equivalent to an adult score of 85. Raw scores on tests peak at age 28, which is coincidentally when individuals in fields most dependent on raw IQ, like physics and math, reach maximum productivity. Since most fields are not like this, raw competence, or crystallized intelligence, seems to peak in most things at 40. Executional competence, which might be defined as the functional mix of raw IQ, crystallized intelligence, and wisdom, seems to peak in the early 50s for economic endeavors, which is incidentally, according to the data, when entrepreneurs are most competent in starting successful new enterprises, and is the modal age for CEOs⁵.

Since, for most of one’s adult life, one becomes more, not less, competent, with increasing age, it can be difficult to accept that this process eventually runs in reverse, and declines more quickly than it ascended. But for every man, there comes a point where grandpa needs to step away from the keyboard, or at least be heavily edited, and younger, more capable leaders make major decisions. It seems like every leader needs an exit plan to emeritus-advisory status by age 70, which means picking and grooming a successor by age 60 so that there is a full decade of institutional knowledge transfer before handing over the keys. Leaders in the media spotlight probably need to make this move five years earlier⁶.

The Active Emeritus Solution

And I think this requires rethinking how many organizations work, particularly the “up and out” culture that only allows promotions or retirement, never demotions. There’s a great Lebanese proverb shared by Taleb that says, “If the beard is brown, pay attention to the reasoning but ignore the conclusion. If the beard is gray, pay attention to both the reasoning and the conclusion. If the beard is white, ignore the reasoning but pay attention to the conclusion.”

Take Bryan Chappell. As a whitebeard, directionally, he was correct that there does exist a class of people who make it their vocation to bitterly criticize those in leadership, but it was an error in reasoning, and likely just old-age grumpiness, to link that to a specific list of people he personally finds annoying and then to further link that to a sweeping statement about their faith and morals; he probably got confused thinking of one or two good examples and mixed it up with this list. Maybe this observation could have been synthesized by a graybeard or a team of editors into a coherent commentary that would have been beneficial rather than corrosive. But critically, he shouldn’t be in charge of deciding whether his raw statements are suitable for public consumption!

The ideal leadership team would seem to be a sort of council where a 50-something graybeard has final executive authority, but is informed by both younger advisors for execution and older advisors for wisdom. And the best older advisor would be the former graybeard-in-charge!

This solves two critical problems. First, it prevents organizations from growing sclerotic due to elderly men with impaired reasoning skills and increasingly outdated mental models of the world. Second, it provides those same men with something valuable to do without retiring, for retirement is grim for men⁷. Such an option may reduce some of the grumpiness of aging, an existential fear, because men ultimately are only valued and respected for what they do and produce⁸. The older former leader should be allowed to take a pay cut, enjoy reduced hours and responsibilities, but be looped in on decisions where his intuitive wisdom can often prove invaluable. He can even still do media if he has name recognition and notoriety, as long as it’s not real-time and offhand comments can be edited out.

Unfortunately, most Boomer leaders, who tend to prefer command-and-control structures with clear reporting lines, would never have put up with an emeritus advisor who used to do their job. But perhaps Gen X, as we ascend to leadership one funeral or ill-advised outburst at a time, and being more comfortable with flatter organizations, can be gracious and keep our elders around in advisory roles for their and our benefit. Likewise, seeing this example, Millennials and Gen Z will hopefully be kind to us as well in our twilight years.

Now, about that pay cut, which probably just rubbed some senior leaders the wrong way. Everybody wants engaged younger leaders, but few are willing to do what it takes financially to make that happen. Boomers need to recognize their incredible luck at being born at the right time. My generation, Gen X, didn’t have it quite as good, but as I documented in my analysis of the economics of the middle class, we were closer economically to Boomers than the dystopia of the Zoomers.

Young people, because they feel like they are getting a raw deal, are historically alienated from our society’s institutions. Many are turning to various Absoloms online, like the odious Andrew Tate, for validation. No doubt, being frozen out of opportunities and good paychecks, and observing the lack of advancement opportunities to the very top for their immediate elders in their late 40s and 50s, Gen X, adds to their cynicism and desire to burn it all down.

All institutions must make better efforts at providing opportunities to our best young people, and not just for appearance’s sake. This was the case with DEI tokenism, now clearly both immoral and illegal, which often featured an older Boomer leader surrounding himself with younger people based on arbitrary demographic characteristics rather than competence.

I can’t help but think this was a feature, rather than a bug, for many aging leaders, who would feel less threatened by non-meritorious hires. Thus, in many bureaucracies, including arguably the PCA, key mentorship opportunities for 30 and 40-somethings in the last decade often excluded the bulk of its constituency, who couldn’t help but notice that the opprobrium for “stale, male, and pale” just so happened to exclude the head Boomers-in-charge.

Pulling up the ladder is not only wrong, but a bad strategy. To paraphrase LBJ’s famous quip, edited here for a family audience, you want the young, energetic men inside the tent directing their efforts outward to your common enemies. If they start to think you’re the enemy, good luck preserving your institution.

1. Chappell looks good for 70 years old, undoubtedly takes care of himself health-wise, and is a good reminder that aging comes for everyone, even those who do well mitigating it.

2. I know of one chain-smoking, hard-drinking lady, now in her 80s, with “congestive heart failure” that has been successfully managed by modern medical science for almost two decades.

3. I am reminded of the brilliant but realistically profane HBO series Succession, which features an aging rags-to-riches Boomer media mogul, Logan Roy, who is at death’s door but cannot in good conscience turn the keys over to his Gen X children, all afflicted with various cultural pathologies. The least defective heir is Kendall Roy, who, besides having a recurring drug problem, is a pathetic man, who, unlike the elder, high-gravitas Roy, has to hype himself up with the low-class braggadocio chants of gangsta rap before entering business negotiations. The winner of the story ends up being Tom Wambsgans, Logan’s son-in-law, who is relentlessly mocked by the other characters for his déclassé’ upper middle class upbringing in, can you believe it, Minneapolis. Only Tom, with his fresh blood from the hinterland, eventually shows the necessary amorality and cunning to tame the patriarch’s wild daughter and eventually take over Logan’s empire.

4. One does wonder which Boomer spiritual leader will be the first to clone himself into an AI avatar in an attempt to hold onto influence forever. Gen Z would have fun trolling PiperGPT with creative prompting!

5. A great analogy can be made to racquetball, which is an unusual sport in that people often peak in their 30s and 40s despite its extreme aerobic demands. For naive players, the sport involves so much sprinting that the superior aerobic fitness of 20-something players is tapped out quickly. Knowing where the ball will be, avoiding wasted effort, based on repeated experience in a sport with perhaps the highest statistical degrees of freedom for legal moves — not unlike the real economy — comes to dominate a slightly better ability to get to it in time.

6. This would also depend on the nature of the role. Dave Ramsey, who, within certain limits, will become more popular the more he rants, is more antifragile to losing his filters than the institutional head of a Christian denomination.

7. I once knew a grizzled older Aggie in my hometown, a kind gentleman who would take my Dad to games and the students from our area out for BBQ when he was in College Station. He once told me that despite being wealthy enough to never work again because he had sold his industrial valve company, he would never retire, and would at least putter around with various real estate investment activities, because otherwise his wife would see him sitting around the house and view him as available stoop labor for various landscaping projects, and ultimately lose respect for him. I’m heavily paraphrasing, as his language as an older Southern man was much more compact and colorful than this, but cannot be repeated in polite company today.

The life expectancy of men in the top 1% of wealth is within a year of that for their female peers, compared to 6 years for the poorest men, which I link to the ongoing wealth management obligations of wealthy men (like my older friend’s real estate ventures), even after technical retirement from a job or executive role, and too much free time and isolation, combined with cognitive decline, is especially dangerous in today’s world. Men have more of a will to live when they have something productive to do every day.

8. Incels whine about this, but it’s liberating once accepted, because it also means you will always be valued if you find a way to do productive things. Never stop lifting or going to the office!