GROWING OLD – SOCIETY AND OLD PEOPLE 2
Today, in our rapidly changing society, old people tend to be discarded as unproductive, unable to adapt to change, often sick, a liability both to society and to their family.
It is ironic, too, that middle-aged people have a much greater ambivalence to old people than do young people, and their relationship to the old is much less understanding. A middle-aged man has been taught to treat the old with respect, and he fulfils what he sees as a duty. At the same time, he considers the older person physically and mentally inferior, a person whom he expects to conform to society’s image of age. If the old person shows that he will not, he is condemned as an ‘extraordinary’ old man, an old ‘duffer’ or a ‘dirty’ old man.
It is important, today, to ask ourselves why we treat the old in this way; why the old are so alienated; why so many old people are condemned by society to relative poverty, to exploitation, to loneliness, and to inferior living conditions. Goethe wrote, ‘Age takes hold of us by surprise’. Today, because of better nutrition, better sanitation, and better health care, an increasing proportion of the population is surviving to become old. In many Western countries, 12 per cent of the population is over the age of 65, and by the year 2000 one person in six will be over that age. Many of us will be among them, so it is to our own advantage to think about growing old. We must avoid age taking hold of us by surprise.
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