Quick Guide: Back to Methuselah (Electronic book text)

Shaw speaks of the pervasive discouragement and poverty in Europe after World War I, and relates these issues to inept government. Simple primitive societies, he says, were easily governable while the civilized societies of the twentieth century are so complex that learning to govern them properly can't be accomplished within the human lifespan: People with experience enough to serve the purpose fall into senility and die. Shaw's solution is enhanced longevity: we must learn to live much longer; a centenarian should be less than middle aged. (Shaw was in his mid-60s when the plays were written). This change, Shaw predicts, will happen through Creative Evolution (evolutionary change that occurs because it is needed or wanted-the Lamarckian view- and not as a result of natural selection-Darwinism) as influenced by the Life Force Neither Creative Evolution nor the Life Force were Shavian inventions.