In 2019 an international study into The Future of Ageing was published.1
Asked to define the age at which someone became old,
the global average was 66.2 Asked
if they expected to be fit and healthy in old age, over 80% agreed in South
American countries, China, and Malaysia.
Tellingly, less than 50% answered in the affirmative in many European
nations, the US, Australia, Russia, and Japan.
Yet, with the exception perhaps of Russia, aren’t these supposed to be
the countries with the highest standard of living in the world?
A little commented upon aspect of the study looked at
wisdom. 14% of those interviewed thought
that becoming wiser was the best thing about aging.
Yet, the notion that age brings wisdom is a myth. Wisdom is identified with elderhood, yet, as
Stephen Jenkinson laments:
“The
proliferation of old people has not meant the proliferation of elders… The
presence of elders in a culture turns out not to derive from an aging
population. We’d be awash in wisdom if
it did. We are awash in information, and
an often inarticulate kind of mass blunt force trauma we call ‘experience,’
instead.”(3)
The study gives no hope for this sad observation to
likely change. Whilst 14% looked forward
to becoming wiser, between a quarter and a third of respondents said that they
looked forward to very individualistic futures (holidays, travel, hobbies, and
leisure.) Only 10% indicated they were
looking forward to being able to help others, through volunteering. This disparity in percentages does little to
suggest wisdom.
Yet, we live in a world today where wisdom, and the
functions of elderhood, would be greatly welcomed.
That wisdom comes with old age is a myth. Old age wisdom is a fiction.
Age old wisdom however may be more what we need. That means that those of us who are now of an
older age need to let go our pretentions towards a good life, towards the
comfort of old age. It means opening our
eyes to what is really going on in the world.
It means becoming aware of and awake to: the cries of young people, the
pain of indigenous cultures, the injustices perpetrated on our behalf by
transnational corporations, the degradation of landscapes, forests, and oceans.
If we had been aware of these issues in the previous
decades of our lives, now is not the time to sit back and take it easy. If we had not been aware in our previous
decades, then now is the time to get out of our stupor and discover what is happening.
Stephen Jenkinson is worth quoting again. This time from a talk he gave at a 5-day
immersion on Stradbroke Island (Queensland, Australia) in May 2019:
“Now
is not an okay time for okay people to be okay.”
Notes:
1. Ipsos, The Perennials: The Future of Ageing, February
2019.
2. I celebrate a birthday in a couple of days’ time that puts
me a couple of years into the “old” category.
3. Stephen Jenkinson, Come of Age: The Case for Elderhood in a Time of Trouble, North Atlantic Books, Bereley, California, 2018
No comments:
Post a Comment
This blogsite is dedicated to positive dialoque and a respectful learning environment. Therefore, I retain the right to remove comments that are: profane, personal attacks, hateful, spam, offensive, irrelevant (off-topic) or detract in other ways from these principles.