Today I started reading this book online
Quite interesting, specially at my present situation.
I have reproduces some excerpts which I liked a lot
"My sympathy and support went out to those few older persons who dared
to raise their voices: yes, they were in a wheelchair and had to live in a nursing
home; but no, they did not need anybody to think or decide for them—just
somebody to communicate with them as they would with any normal person
and to push the chair, thank you. Or it went to those who admitted that they
were eighty or more years old but didn’t need care, at least not more than
other adults, and would like to be taken seriously. Even when the tone of the
general debate changed to a new emphasis on the alleged selfishness of the
aged—those “greedy geezers” who would all live so long with their high pensions,
radiant health, and sun tans—it appeared that age-related generalizations
with their supposedly scientific prestige could offer a solid ground for
any collective character they were supposed to have.
Aging appears to evoke ambivalent cultural conflicts with deep roots in
many layers of our late modern existence. On the one hand, it appears that
negative generalizations about aging are a way to exorcise human vulnerability
from young and adult life (supposed normalcy) and reserve it for those
who have reached a higher age, so that life would seem safe. Thus, getting to
a higher age is identified with pathological senescing. On the other hand, the
overburdened “normal” adults tend to see aging as an indefinite extension of
the short vacation they are longing for. Here, aging becomes identified with
distorted, consumerist forms of a good life and defined as staying young, a
denial of aging as living infinite time. Both tendencies not only deny the
vulnerability of human life in general but also restrict the potential richness
and fulfillment of later life. As a result, the continuity of life, or the interconnection
between “normal” and older adults, is undermined, with detrimental
consequences for both sides"
"What still strikes me is a widespread tendency to see the aged almost as another
human species, demented or wise but not in a perspective of one’s own
possible future with all its uncertainties and promises. Such a perception of
aging persons blocks the possibilities of really communicating with them and
impairs not just the developmental opportunities of older persons but also of
the young, since they are constructing their own future aging process as an
utterly problematic and estranged one. "
"Measuring the time that people have lived has become part of a culture
in which the age of a wide variety of objects—cars, clothes, expensive consumer
items—is considered important. When persons reach a greater age, this
is usually a cause for celebration, but otherwise awareness of age usually develops
into a wish for replacement that has already been programmed into
the production of objects."
" The predominance of chronometric perspectives leads in late modernity
to a one-sided focus on living longer, but since aging has scarcely been integrated
as an important and dignified phase of life, aging well tends to be
equated with staying young. This leads to a broad culture of anti-aging,"
" One of them is the paradox of the “younger older”: on the
16 Aging and the Art of Living
one hand, the rising life expectancies can be interpreted as a slowing down of
processes of senescing; while on the other hand, a general cultural acceleration
results in a progressive societal senescing, where people are seen as old at
a younger age. This paradox however, also has another side that has emerged
as an anti-aging counterculture of getting older while staying young,"
" Weber conveys the merciless character of the doctrines of Richard
Baxter or Benjamin Franklin: “Waste of time is thus the first and in principle
the deadliest of sins. The span of human life is infinitely short and precious
to make sure of one’s own election. Loss of time through sociability, idle
talk, luxury, even more sleep than is necessary for health, six to at most eight
hours, is worthy of absolute moral damnation” (Weber 1976, 157ff.)."
\
" In earlier times one celebrated the day of
one’s patron saint and derived one’s place in the family, for instance, from
the order of birth. Definitions of who is “old” and when “old age” has arrived
have long been more dependent on the appearance and physical capacities of
individuals than on chronological age (Thane 2005, 266)"
" Engels recounts that after the introduction of mills in the industrial
town of Carlisle more than 47 percent of the children died before reaching the
age of 5, and more than 12.5 percent of adults died before age 39."
" The new civil legal system was accompanied by the overall
and continuous registration of the entire population, something far more
ambitious than the occasional censuses carried out in the Roman Empire. The
goal, however, was basically the same: the formation and fi nancing of Napoleon’s
armies by means of conscription and taxes."
" Typical
problems were child labor, disability, unemployment, poverty, and illness."
" the basic idea regarding the life course was
that children should be protected, adults might be helped for some period
of time but should take care of themselves, and “old people” should be supported
for the short time they would remain alive."
" In the Netherlands a child labor act
of 1874 prohibited children under 12 years of age to work in factories, a rule
that was, however, only implemented by the Act on Compulsory Education of
1901. In England the 1847 Factory Act aimed at restricting working hours of
women and children between the ages of 13 and 18 years to ten hours per day.
The 1883 Factory Act stipulated that children aged 9 to 13 were not allowed to
work longer than nine hours a day. Basically, these regulations could already
be found in the 1833 Factory Act, demonstrating that the proclamation of
new laws did not imply that situations would directly be changed but that
such new regulations needed to be embedded in their social contexts. In the
United States “oppressive child labor” was only declared illegal by the 1938
Fair Labor Standards Act."
" In the Netherlands a child labor act
of 1874 prohibited children under 12 years of age to work in factories, a rule
that was, however, only implemented by the Act on Compulsory Education of
1901. In England the 1847 Factory Act aimed at restricting working hours of
women and children between the ages of 13 and 18 years to ten hours per day.
The 1883 Factory Act stipulated that children aged 9 to 13 were not allowed to
work longer than nine hours a day. Basically, these regulations could already
be found in the 1833 Factory Act, demonstrating that the proclamation of
new laws did not imply that situations would directly be changed but that
such new regulations needed to be embedded in their social contexts. In the
United States “oppressive child labor” was only declared illegal by the 1938
Fair Labor Standards Act."
" In 1889 the first state pension,
introduced by Bismarck, was granted at the age of 70 years (Kohli 1985), and
other Western countries gradually followed with their pension acts."
"The major part of this
programmed route consisted of forty to fifty years of labor, preferably for the
same employer. Finally, there might be the reward of retirement, the worker’s
equivalent of a carefree old age, the Ciceronean otium cum dignitate (idleness
with dignity), that was previously the privilege of the elite, in particular the
feudal elite."
"Most workers of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries
looked forward to this period of inactivity in vain and died before they could
reap their pensions. This ideal, of entering a “carefree old age,” usually at
between 60 and 65 years of age, has only become a reality for the majority of
people since the 1950s and 1960s."
" often we are recognized
as a mere number in a databank."
" Historical studies tell us that many
children and old people lived in horrible situations and that there is no reason
to mourn the loss of a golden age of spontaneous, selfless care (Cole and
Edwards 2005; Hareven 1996; 2001; Laslett 1984)."
"Howard Chudacoff’s How Old Are You? (1989), which
showed how consciousness of age had developed since the late nineteenth
century, resulting in relatively strong and broadly shared ideas about one’s
position along the life course according to age and in the age-segregating pressure
to “act your age.”"
" the standardization of life course appears to have been fully developed
during the 1960s as retirement became a reality for a majority of people
(Kohli 2007)."
"e. In some poor minority
subcultures a standardized life course has developed in which it would be
normal for women to have their first child when they are 13 years old and become
grandmothers when they are not yet 30 (Burton 1996; Dannefer 2003a).
Also it appears to be normal, in some street gangs, for members to go through
a compressed life course, proceeding from being a Homeboy to becoming a
Tiny Gangster and later an Original Gangster, and ending up as a Veterano in
their thirties. Around this age they will also have reached their maximum life
expectancy (Bing 1992)."
" but retirees also move to other states or even to other
countries, like the North European pensionados who live in Spain or Portugal
(Uhlenberg and Mueller 2004; Vincent 1995, 2006)."
" Even in the United States, where mandatory retirement has
been abolished, the preferred retirement age (60 to 65 years) has remained
unchanged between 1965 and 1996 (Settersten and Hagestad 1996a, 1996b)."
"Some authors, such as Anthony Giddens (1990, 1991), Zygmunt Bauman
28 Aging and the Art of Living
(1997), or Ulrich Beck (1992), have highlighted the fl uid character of late modern
society, emphasizing that individuals are overburdened with choices rather
than being confronted with a regulated life course. There is little doubt that
late modern individuals have to constantly choose, over the course of their
lives, about everything from education to primary relationships, from types
of work to places to live. This is where theorists such as Giddens, Beck, and
Bauman are partly right: individuals have to choose from their options, and
if they don’t choose, others will choose for them. Moreover, they must assume
the consequences of their choices and cannot hold others responsible
for them'
"The debate about the (de)standardization of the life course has a sharp
edge, since it touches governmental concerns over the viability of the material
arrangements that were developed in connection with some major age-related
regulations, especially the laws that would guarantee income for citizens who
have reached retirement age."
"Louis Dublin calculated in 1927
that the maximum life expectancy would lie around the age of 65 years (Oeppen
and Vaupel 2000"
" In France, the normal age for defi nitively leaving the labor market has
become 55, and workers in their 40s are seen as “nearly old,” which puts them
at a disadvantage if they become unemployed (Guillemard and Argoud 2004)."
"Even in the United States, however, where mandatory retirement does not
exist, persons over 40 are referred to as “older workers” (Henretta 2001), and
they have the lowest rates of re-employment, typically in part-time positions
or jobs with low skill and training requirements, resulting in large wage losses
(Chan and Stevens 1999; Hirsch, MacPherson, and Hardy 2000)."
" some retirees will only fi nd employment bagging groceries or greeting customers; others will be able to take
up a new enterprise while they collect a solid pension from an earlier job."
"Given the tendency to exclude older workers from the labor market (unless
they are absolutely needed) and yet the importance of work for income, housing,
health, social contacts, and the articulation of personal identities, these
aspects of life may become increasingly at risk as people reach higher ages."
"In the late modern
life course, old age may be twice as long as “normal” adulthood, which may
not last much longer than 20 or 25 years. It does not take more than a few
moments to realize the absurdity of this situation"
"Taking care of others is not highly respected in current society: giving everyday
care, doing household chores, raising children, and taking care of ill
relatives bring little status and are often seen as lost work time. Although care
activities are of crucial importance for everybody and not just for those in
need of care, within a systemic culture of instrumentality, such activities can
only obtain a marginal position, even when they have been professionalized
and organized in institutions."
" The more a person is removed from direct bodily care, the
more he or she appears to be valued, with the managers of large care institutions
at the top of the pyramid."
" The base of the typical institutional care pyramid
consists nearly exclusively of female caregivers who increasingly come
from poorer countries. At the top are mostly persons who have been trained
in instrumental approaches and managerial models that are supposed to work
well everywhere and who, consequently, often have diffi culty seeing and understanding
the specifi c nature of caregiving."
"In spite of their unpleasant effects, the pressures of time limits are broadly
accepted and even seem to have a certain appeal because they are associated
with popular macro-narratives that connect acceleration with progress (as if
this cannot have a destructive side), youthfulness (as if this commercial image
would be the only way to live well), dynamic life (as if serenity, contemplation,
and time for each other have lost their meaning) and the “newest new.”
The flip side is waste, in which meaningful cultural heritages will be debunked
as old-fashioned things of the past and replaced together with yesterday’s
newest gadget. It may take some aging, at least some deepening of life experience,
to see that much of what is presented as new amounts to “more of the
same” and to make meaningful distinctions accordingly."
" In such a chronometric culture, it comes
as no surprise to encounter proposals to limit access to health care for people
in their seventies, because at such ages humans would have led a “full life”
and all that “unnecessary care” would get far too expensive in comparison
with what may be needed for people with lower ages (Callahan 1987).'
" Similar fundamental questions arise in the debates about
the acceptable costs of QUALYs or Quality Adjusted Life Years (years gained by
medical interventions) in which existential issues are not faced but are calculated
away (Hirth et al. 2000)."
" Think, for instance, of 60-year-olds. One would expect
enormous differences in terms of empirical data and personal experiences
between, let us say, a poor African woman, a Japanese man, or a homeless
American of that age—not to mention 60-year-olds in prehistoric times, in
the Roman Empire, in classical China, or among nineteenth-century factory
workers. One has only to look around to notice major differences between
people with the same age."
" The many faces
of aging between the extremes of a teenager suffering from progeria (premature
aging syndrome) and a vibrantly alive centenarian are mirrors in which
prejudiced citizens, scientists, or bureaucrats who count the ages should be
able to see their own distorted views."
"If we want to develop more insight into human aging, we need a broader
and deeper understanding of different temporal perspectives so that we can
understand more about aging as living in time. From a measurement perspective,
it might seem that the longest life would be the best life, but this is no
more true than is the claim that the largest painting is the best or that the
highest building the most beautiful."
"One of the macro-narratives behind chronometric practices is a technologically
inspired idealization of acceleration that speeds up the obsolescence of
technological generations and creates a general climate of intolerance toward
slowness or “taking your time.” In response to these developments, there has
sometimes been an idealization of slowness, but the problem is that some
forms of acceleration, such as giving help in case of emergencies, are meaningful."
"The first paradox of the “younger older”—living longer but being regarded
as old at an earlier age—has been an excellent breeding ground for the commercial
development of new ways of aging that are actually ways to present
yourself as “still young.” This leads to the second paradox of the younger older:
growing older while staying young"
J Bar oxford university press
