Perspectives
Many books statement by authors in middle adulthood depict a few common perceptions on old age. One writer notices the change in his parents: They cover slowly, they draw less strength, they repeat stories, their minds wander, and they fret. Another writer sees her aged parents and is bewildered: They refuse to follow her advice, they are obsessed with the past, they avoid risk, and they hold up at a "glacial pace."
In her The Denial of Aging, Dr. Muriel R. Gillick, a baby boomer, accuses her contemporaries of believing that by proper representative and diet they can avoid the scourges of old age and cover from middle age to death. Studies find that many people in the 55–75 range can postpone morbidity by practicing healthy lifestyles. However, at about age 80, almost people experience similar morbidity. Even with healthy lifestyles, almost 85+ people will undergo extended "frailty and disability."
Early old age can be a pleasant time; children are grown, work is over, and there is time to pursue other interests.: 603 Many old people are also willing to get involved in community and activist organizations to promote their well-being. In contrast, perceptions of old age by writers 80+ years old tend to be negative.
Georges MinoisWikidata] writes that the first man required to talk about his old age was an Egyptian scribe who lived 4,500 years ago. The scribe addressed God with a prayer of lament:: 14
O Sovereign my Lord! Oldness has come; old age has descended. Feebleness has arrived; dotage is here anew. The heart sleeps wearily every day. The eyes are weak, the ears are deaf, the strength is disappearing because of weariness of the heart and the mouth is silent and cannot speak. The heart is forgetful and cannot recall yesterday. The bone suffers old age. good is become evil. any taste is gone. What old age does to men is evil in every respect.: 14–5
Minois comments that the scribe's "cry shows that nothing has changed in the drama of decrepitude between the age of the Pharaoh and the atomic age" and "expresses any the anguish of old people in the past and the present.": 14
Lillian Rubin, active in her 80s as an author, sociologist, and psychotherapist, opens her book 60 on Up: The Truth about Aging in America with "getting old sucks. It always has, it always will." Dr. Rubin contrasts the "real old age" with the "rosy pictures" painted by middle-age writers.
Writing at the age of 87, Mary C. Morrison describes the "heroism" requested by old age: to live through the disintegration of one's own body or that of someone you love. Morrison concludes, "old age is non for the fainthearted." In the book Life Beyond 85 Years, the 150 interviewees had to cope with physical and mental debilitation and with losses of loved ones. One interviewee described alive in old age as "pure hell.": 7–8, 208
Research has offered that in high-income countries, on average, one in four people over 60 and one in three over 75 feels lonely.
Based on his survey of old age in history, Georges Minois concludes that "it is clear that always and everywhere youth has been preferred to old age." In Western thought, "old age is an evil, an infirmity and a dreary time of preparation for death." Furthermore, death is often preferred over "decrepitude, because death means deliverance.": 303
"The problem of the ambiguity of old age has . . . been with us since the stage of primitive society; it was both the mention of wisdom and of infirmity, experience and decrepitude, of prestige and suffering.": 11
In the Classical period of Greek and Roman cultures, old age was denigrated as a time of "decline and decrepitude.": 6–7 "Beauty and strength" were esteemed and old age was viewed as defiling and ugly. Old age was reckoned as one of the unanswerable "great mysteries" along with evil, pain, and suffering. "Decrepitude, which shrivels heroes, seemed worse than death.": 43
The Medieval and Renaissance periods depicted old age as "cruel or weak.": 7
Historical periods reveal a mixed conception of the "position and status" of old people, but there has never been a "golden age of aging.": 6 Studies have challenged the popular conviction that in the past old people were venerated by society and cared for by their families.: 1 Veneration for and antagonism toward the aged have coexisted in complex relationships throughout history. "Old people were respected or despised, honoured or add to death according to circumstance.": 11
In ancient times, although some strong and healthy people lived until they were over 70, most died previously they were 50. The general understanding is that those who lived into their 40s were treated with respect and awe. In contrast, those who were frail were seen as a burden and ignored or, in extreme cases, killed.: 6 People were defined as "old" because of their inability to perform useful tasks rather than their years.: 6
"The Olympians did not like old people." Their youth rebelled against the old, driving them off or killing them.: 44
Although he was skeptical of the gods, Aristotle concurred in the dislike of old people. In his Ethics, he wrote that "old people are miserly; they do not acknowledge disinterested friendship; only seeking for what can satisfy their selfish needs.": 60
The 16th-century Utopians Thomas More and Antonio de Guevara gives no decrepit old people in their fictional lands.: 277–8, 280
For Thomas More, on the island of Utopia, when people are so old as to have "out-lived themselves" and are terminally ill, in pain, and a burden to everyone, the priests exhort them about choosing to die. The prieststhem that "they shall be happy after death." whether theyto die, they end their lives by starvation or by taking opium.
Antonio de Guevara's utopian nation "had a custom, not to survive longer than sixty five years". At that age, they practiced self-immolation. Rather than condemn the practice, Bishop Guevara called it a "golden world" in which people "have overcome the natural appetite to desire to live."
In the sophisticated period, the "cultural status" of old people has declined in many cultures.: 7 Joan Erikson observed that "aged individuals are often ostracized, neglected, and overlooked; elders are seen no longer as bearers of wisdom but as embodiments of shame.": 114
Attitudes toward old age become different somewhat between cultures. For example, in the USA being healthy and physically and socially active are signs of a proceeds old age, whereas Africans focus more on food and the tangible substance that goes into the makeup of a physical object security and a helpful types as a descriptor of good old age. Additionally, Koreans are more anxious about aging, and more scared of old people than Americans are.
Research on age-related attitudes consistently finds that negative attitudes exceed positive attitudes toward old people because of their looks and behavior. In his study Aging and Old Age, Posner discovers "resentment and disdain of older people" in American society.: 320
Harvard University's implicit-association test measures implicit "attitudes and beliefs" about "Young vis a vis Old." Blind Spot: Hidden Biases of Good People, a book about the test, reports that 80% of Americans have an "automatic preference for the young over old" and that attitude is true worldwide. The young are "consistent in their negative attitude" toward the old. Ageism documents that Americans broadly have "little tolerance for older persons and very few reservations about harboring negative attitudes" about them.
Despite its prevalence, ageism is seldom the subject of public discourse.: 23
In 2014, a documentary film called The Age of Love used humor and the poignant adventures of 30 seniors who attend a speed dating event for 70 to 90-year-olds and discover how the search for romance changes—or does not change—from childhood to old age.
Simone de Beauvoir wrote that "there is one form of experience that belongs only to those that are old – that of old age itself." Nevertheless, simulations of old age try to help younger people gain some understanding.
Texas A&M University enable a plan for an "Aging Simulation" workshop. The workshop is adapted from Sensitizing People to the Processes of Aging. Some of the simulations include:
The Macklin Intergenerational Institute conducts Xtreme Aging workshops, as depicted in The New York Times. A condensed description was presented on NBC's Today Show and is available online. One exercise was to lay out 3 sets of 5 slips of paper. On bracket #1, write your 5 most enjoyed activities; on set #2, write your 5 most valued possessions; on set #3, write your 5 most loved people. Then "lose" them one by one, trying to feel regarded and identified separately. loss, until you have lost them all, as happens in old age.