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« Is It An Emergency? | Main | Embodied Aging: Gets the Call »

January 9, 2008 |Permalink |Comments (2)

Age Changes Us All

Plenty of people are aware of, think about and talk about religious, ethnic, and racial diversity in American society.

Scott E. Page, a professor of complex systems, political science and economics at the University of Michigan, is suggesting that diversity is one of the mainsprings of productivity in the business world. NY Times article here.

I'm good with that but what bothers me is that the VALUE of aging as a source of diversity is routinely discounted.

The myth is that "all old people are alike."

Not.

My hero, T. Franklin Williams tells doctors in training...

"When you've seen one old person, you've seen one old person..."

In other words, age is the most distinctive, diverse, part of the entire life cycle.

Put another way...

Infants are the group of people in America who are the most like each other. Despite what their mothers might believe, any given newborn is very very like all other newborns.

People in their 80's, however, are very very different from each other.

So if diversity is good and contributes in a healthy way to the overall diversity of our society...

We need to make sure that a diversity of ages is a part of the mix.

This is why I am generally opposed to the standard and unthinking practice of segregating older people from people of other generations.

Comments ( 2)

Dr. Thomas,
you make a very interesting point. You say that infants are quite homogeneous (one might say boring) but yet, their mothers would disagree with us. Most of society would disagree as well. Why? Because we have chosen to take the mothers' perspective on the VALUE of infants who have managed to convince us that infants are exceptionally unique.
Likewise, if we make a choice, as a society, to take a different perspective on aging, we may surprise ourselves with how diverse we find old people to be. If we find the true meaning of aging, we inevitably discover the value of old people. Once given a meaning, our whole perspective on aging will change.
But if we rely on the covert ideology that has shaped the science of life span development, or on the media's definition of "successful aging", or on the philanthropic ideals of institutional caregivers (like myself), then our definition of aging would be so narrowed and skewed by our self-imposed perceptions that we will never see the diversity and uniqueness of our elders.
Thats' all I am sayin...

Posted by Dorothea Johnson
January 9, 2008 10:36 PM

In our society, one becoming increasingly more diverse each day, Age Defines Us and Segregates Us, yound and old. Grrrrr.

Posted by Judith Shapiro
January 11, 2008 9:24 AM

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