A very well attended Drop-in Philosophy class grappled for almost two hours over the vexed subject of an ageing society as a new philosophical conundrum. The leader inevitably came to the basic fact that we now have an ageing society. That has brought with it a name-calling impasse about misallocation of material resources across so-called Boomers, Millennials and Gen X. It is now said, for example, that pampered older people should now give up their (bigger) houses in favour of younger people who find (small) home ownership all but impossible.
We wondered if that sort of analysis was addressing historical symptoms rather than facing up to the hard issue of our day i.e. that humans live on a constant birth-to-death loop in which young inevitably become old; in numbers we cannot actually know till we get there. Even then matters will always be in flux as against an ever-changing social backdrop as the world economy waxes and wanes.
What makes the loop concept crucial is that the young have energy and will gain knowledge, the old accumulate life experience to add to their knowledge which then equates with wisdom. Both groups have value but for different reasons and with different potential utility.
Nowadays it is foolish even to try and say when “old age” really begins. All of us are just living beings who age over time. The unique younger end needs the unique older end and vice versa and for a growing myriad of reasons. In a nutshell “Ageing is inevitable but our attitudes towards it doesn’t have to be”. One group does not have to plunder the other in order to survive. Cooperation is the best way to ensure survival.
The “get older people out fo their ill-gotten houses” is just a symptom of making ageing/the elderly invisible as a crude and unthinking means of dealing with them. Yet it is no benefit to younger folk that their elders are often “warehoused” in places that are unloving and socially isolating (built for efficiency in numbers rather than quality of life). That simply breaks the human bond between people (both young and old) wherein all are part of supportive multigenerational families and homes. That leads to a widespread perception that the only care older people require is a form of social palliative ‘care’ meant only to keep them alive until they die while their desirable assets survive them.
The following useful questions were raised. What is old age for? What key role can elderly people play in modern society? What can society consciously do to help ALL its citizens thrive through ALL parts of their lives?
A good start is to take the labels off people of all ages. Stirring up hatred between generations is surely the worst way of addressing the new reality where older people now form a highly significant and productive part of society (rather than dying on cue at around 70 as so many did until fairly recent times.) They should be valued as an opportunity not hidden away as a liability. As Einstein once observed about the nuclear age “Everything has changed except our thinking”.
