Think About Aging
Aging. We’re all doing it. Yet most of us do not know much about growing older. Many of our ideas about what aging means are mainly projections – both fears and hopes – about our future selves. Why do we age? Were we always afraid to age? In a long-lived society, when does old age begin? On this web page we will explore what we need to know to think about our own aging.
Aging
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All over the world, more people are living longer, a triumph of modern medicine. Yet, especially in the U.S., we dread old age because our culture teaches us that aging brings relentless physical and mental decline. It also depicts older people as unhealthy and incompetent—as has-beens, to be pushed out of the workplace, sometimes years before they are ready to retire.
The Silver Century Foundation exists to tackle these problems:
- To challenge cultural assumptions about aging and about elders
- To get those assumptions out in the open so that all of us can see them for what they are
- To explore the ways in which our later years can become the most fulfilling time of our life.
Because ageist beliefs about life’s later years are everywhere in our society, we absorb them without thinking. As friends’ birthdays roll around, instead of congratulating them, we sympathize. We crack jokes, but the underlying message is, “It’s too bad you’re getting older.” When we finally cross the threshold into our mature years, we expect the worst—and expect very little of ourselves because we’ve bought into the cultural stereotype of weak, doddering older people.
Several myths about old age buttress our cultural biases.
1. Those who want to live a long time in good health must choose their parents carefully. While to some extent longevity does seem to run in families, a research study by the MacArthur Foundation estimated that genetics accounts for just 30 percent of an individual’s health in old age. The rest is lifestyle—the choices we make about diet, smoking and exercise, for example. In addition, the study found that people who feel useful function better than most, both physically and mentally. The bottom line is: genetics notwithstanding, we can do something about our health and quality of life in our later years.
2. Because brain cells begin to die as we grow older, mental ability inevitably deteriorates. In fact, if we exercise our minds regularly with a variety of cognitive activity, especially learning new things, most of us can expect to maintain our cognitive skills well into old age. Neuroscientists now know that throughout our lives, our brains are capable of rewiring themselves and reorganizing to compensate for losses. Tasks that were handled by one part of the brain in youth are taken over by another part as we age. Researchers today have begun to develop computerized mental exercises to help older people stay sharp.
3. Old age begets misery. At least one study indicates that the opposite is true. Between 1972 and 2004, University of Chicago researchers did periodic interviews with about 28,000 people, asking them how happy they were. The participants ranged in age from 18 to 88, and the oldest were always the happiest—in fact, the odds that individuals would say they were happy increased by 5 percent for every decade of their age. The investigators speculate that elders may have lower expectations and so are more content with their lives. Whatever the reason, older people are far from miserable.
At SCF, we believe that old age is what you make of it and that, if we’re going to outlive previous generations, we should find ways to make those bonus years count. To do that, however, we need to forget everything our culture has taught us about aging and come to grips with what it really is and what it can be.
Our purpose with this website is to help visitors do just that.
