The Insults of Age
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The Insults of Age
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Re: The Insults of Age
#2Hmm.
It's easier on men, I guess. It does wound my vanity a bit when young women on the bus offer me a seat. But otherwise, being on the large size and generally glum looking, I don't get people baby-talking me or condescending much.
Re: The Insults of Age
#3Interesting story! To me it seems Ms Garner is ok with growing old and more fragile, but does not accept being viewed as inferior or respect-unworthy. Good for her! I wish more elderly people would decouple their loss of youth from their self regard.
Re: The Insults of Age
#4Interesting story! To me it seems Ms Garner is ok with growing old and more fragile, but does not accept being viewed as inferior or respect-unworthy. Good for her! I wish more elderly people would decouple their loss of youth from their self regard.
To me it seems Ms Garner is ok with growing old and more fragile, but does not accept being viewed as inferior or respect-unworthy. Good for her!
Amen. Not that I would want to live at the other extreme (such as in some Asian societies where age is venerated without qualification) but I think that our society's view of age is seriously broken.
Re: The Insults of Age
#5Interesting story! To me it seems Ms Garner is ok with growing old and more fragile, but does not accept being viewed as inferior or respect-unworthy. Good for her! I wish more elderly people would decouple their loss of youth from their self regard.
> I wish more elderly people would decouple their loss of youth from their self regard.
I think Garner's point is that we live in a society in which other people's regard for your worth is a function of your age.
Re: The Insults of Age
#6Interesting story! To me it seems Ms Garner is ok with growing old and more fragile, but does not accept being viewed as inferior or respect-unworthy. Good for her! I wish more elderly people would decouple their loss of youth from their self regard.
> I wish more elderly people would decouple their loss of youth from their self regard. I think Garner's point is that we live in a society in which other people's regard for your worth is a function of your age.
And yet, hypocritically, she negatively judges the youth as such.
Re: The Insults of Age
#7When you are this talented at communication in general it must be triply annoying to be condescended to.
Re: The Insults of Age
#8It's interesting that I've had the complete opposite experience as a white man. The older I get the more respect I get in public, for no apparent reason. The painting example was so apt. No one would dare step between me and a painting. It's a very odd thing, as I don't feel like I deserve any more respect than I did 20 years ago.
Re: The Insults of Age
#9When you are this talented at communication in general it must be triply annoying to be condescended to.
People overestimate the mental decline that comes with age dramatically. It's more sporadic: most people decline very little, while a few people (i.e. those with dementia) get hit very hard. Unfortunately, much of society forms its model of "old people" based on the "hit very hard" category, and not people like Jacques Barzun, who did his best work in his 80s and 90s.
There's something you observe with biological mental illness which is that it's more stigmatized than it deserves because people encounter the "raving, crazy" people with it (the worst-off 2%) and not the other 98% for whom depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, et al, are more accurately modeled as boring and often manageable health problems than as residence in an alternative universe. I think that the cognitive negatives of aging (typically mild to nonexistent, except in senescent brain diseases like Alzheimer's) get the same smear.
In fact, various studies have put the intellectual peak age (in healthy people) anywhere from 17 to 65 (except for in language acquisition, at which we peak in childhood). That's largely because the curve is so flat and individualized (e.g. some people peak early, some late) that it's impossible to tell.
Re: The Insults of Age
#10Interesting story! To me it seems Ms Garner is ok with growing old and more fragile, but does not accept being viewed as inferior or respect-unworthy. Good for her! I wish more elderly people would decouple their loss of youth from their self regard.
> I wish more elderly people would decouple their loss of youth from their self regard. I think Garner's point is that we live in a society in which other people's regard for your worth is a function of your age.
Not all cultures have this function in which worth is inversely proportional to age. It is something we are taught by society and choose (as individuals) to believe or reject. When you are young, it is inticing, because we are young and therefore this idea means we have great worth. The problem is most people hold on to the idea even when they are older and it becomes dysfunctional; they can't let it go and society tells them they are right to not let it go.
How we are regarded is largely a function of how we allow ourselves to be regarded. Rejecting other people's regard when it is based on faulty premises is one of the gifts of age, that, sadly, not everyone acquires.
Self regard is the cure for the disregard of others.