Young Elders - The Quality Of Life

2023 Author: Oswald Adamson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-08-25 11:55

In 2050 there will be about 2 billion people crossing the threshold of their 60th birthday. For the first time in human history, the number of elderly people on Earth will exceed the number of children (up to 14 years old).

First of all, we are talking about the fact that the age limits, the boundaries of psychological transitions from adolescence to youth, from youth to maturity, from maturity to old age have completely changed. The outlook of humanity has radically changed. An aging society is people whose life expectancy, whose active activity has not only increased immeasurably compared to the 19th century, but also acquired a fundamentally different temporal dimension.

GIVE 70

Not so long ago, ACNielsen conducted an interesting research among the users of the World Wide Web. More than half of the respondents, especially Europeans, believe that the new 30s are the previous 20 years, and the 40s are the recent 30s. Another generation of our parents in the 70s of the last century took care of the period of midlife crisis, which, according to the "classical" time scale, fell on 37-40 years.

Our contemporaries, as ACNielsen found out, are quite ready to move the time of the onset of the notorious crisis to … 60 years. And 65 years become that … the peak of active life, about which the pre-war generations would have said quite calmly and seriously: "This is complete old age."

Now in some countries 65 is the time of retirement, but the idea of raising the bar once again is being actively discussed: "Give 70!" - as if the former "deeply elderly people" exclaim. It is at this age that modern Americans and American women do not want to receive free or preferential tourist tours to all countries of the world, but … a new profession. Designer. Fashion designer. Consultant. Psychotherapist. Educator. Painter. Operator. And these are not initiatives of singles or local organizations of old people's clubs. These are programs that are seriously considered at the level of the US government, for which money is allocated, for the implementation of which new teaching methods are being developed. The image of an elderly pensioner who, as modern youth often thinks, is wandering around the world with a camera in hand, is becoming a thing of the past."We want new opportunities for self-realization!" - say the elderly citizens of the planet. And more and more often business leaders in all developed countries come to understand that the experience and skills that 70-year-olds possess are incomparable with the energy and pressure of youth. Because “wisdom” is not only a poetic or cultural metaphor, but precisely that state of “crystallized intellect” that a person acquires after 60 years.

"Wisdom" can be examined and even "measured." You can and should understand its structure. Of course, not every person acquires it immediately after the onset of 60, just as not every student receives a gold medal and not every student receives an honors degree. But the fact that "wise" people who are far beyond the specified age can give not three or four options for the development of events, but about 10, and even those that simply cannot come to the mind of the winners of student Olympiads is a fact. Moreover, we are talking not only about the analysis of some fantastic projects or strategic prospects for overcoming the crisis and the post-crisis world, but also about the analysis of elementary everyday situations: marriage, family, relationships with children, with colleagues. In the latter questions, young specialists lose, as they say, outright.

Of course, such a radical restructuring of a person's biological clock is impossible without a change in the image, the entire appearance of a person. Even 20-30 years ago, psychology was actively interested mainly in children, adolescents, adolescents, young people, and the age after 50 was not of interest for serious research. Now the state and dynamics of the psyche after 60 is the object of multifaceted, large-scale research in all developed countries. For about 20 years, with the support of the MacArthur Foundation, a special MIDMAC program has been operating, whose specialists and experts are engaged in deep and serious research in the middle age, that is, those people who are over fifty. Not so long ago it was difficult to find in search engines such directions as "philosophy of aging", "metaphysics of old age", but now, perhaps, it is difficult to find a university or research center,who would not be engaged precisely in the "philosophy of aging and old age." Research on aging is also a new area of culture, science, centers, institutes and laboratories. These are government programs, training courses, research projects. The world seeks to see itself as it is rapidly becoming and will inevitably become in the next 30 to 40 years.

Pierce Brosnan and Meryl Streep in the recent Mamma Mia! show boys and girls, students and students how to "light up". It turns out that 50-year-olds can and can have fun in such a way that modern youth only opens their mouths. And more than half of the men and women surveyed in this study now believe that the image, and most importantly, the lifestyle in the current 60 years is not much different from the lifestyle of the previous middle age. That is why more than half of the surveyed Europeans, including Russians, do not have anything against plastic surgery services, and there are 10% more men who are ready to visit a surgeon than women. And what is most curious - Muscovites and Petersburgers are confidently leading among Europeans in these polls by ACNielsen.

The desire to look younger among men was not so long ago either condemned or even considered a sign of psychological "inferiority". If you look closely at the heroes-symbols, for example, the 50s-60s of the last century, then courageous men, devoid of any pretty features, and not "boys" were the ideal of beauty and strength. It is these "heroes" who could be heroes in politics, in cinema, in literature, and in art. The current "youngsters" Brad Pitt or Johnny Depp could not have acted as role models next to Jean Gabin or Jean Mare for the post-war generations. Mikhail Ulyanov in the 60s embodied a real man for representatives of many Soviet generations - a warrior, leader, defender, next to whom such heroes as "slender" Oleg Dal or "ageless" Dmitry Kharatyan were impossible. At the turn of the 80s, the tough and unapproachable 40-year-old man Gleb Zheglov could have had as his antipode the young and early Vladimir Konkin in the role of Sharapov, but for modern men it is absolutely unthinkable to look like what Vladimir Vysotsky looked like at 40. And the point here is not at all in the image and lifestyle of the famous bard of the Soviet era.

AGING SOCIETIES

A modern man not only strives to look much younger and attends gyms, but also cosmetologists, does not disdain botox, anxiously follows fashion news and the slightest glimpses of gray hair and - yes, he is really ready and in fact actively uses the services of plastic surgery. In their aspirations to stay in the period of "eternal youth", men can easily compete with the beautiful half of humanity in terms of the level of radicalism in the fight against any signs of aging. Even voluntary … castration is quite seriously considered, discussed and carried out by representatives of the stronger sex precisely with the aim of eliminating the "poisonous" effect of testosterone - the male sex hormone. And although this operation is prohibited, except for specially "prescribed" medical cases, the public knows the confessions of voluntary castrates,as well as cases of illegal implementation of such operations, as they say, in clandestine conditions, for example, in the USA.

“Aging of societies” is an unfortunate term precisely because it does not at all reflect the essence of the processes taking place throughout the developed world. It certainly covers all countries and continents, and for European countries this process is developing against the background of a catastrophic decline in the birth rate. In fact, we are talking about two parallel processes - there is a direct relationship between an increase in the level of duration of an active and rich life and a decrease in the number of children in families. According to the world's leading demographic experts, the indigenous population of 30 European countries is steadily declining, in other words, dying out. And what is most surprising, in terms of the rate of extinction, that is, the decline in the birth rate, Russia does not outstrip, but does not lag behind countries such as Switzerland, Germany, Italy, France. The average number of children in a "civilized" family hardly reaches two, and in this striving to free themselves as much as possible from any obligations and concerns that could hinder full self-realization throughout their lives, people willy-nilly "align" any standards: and the time of entry into marriage, which is consistently increasing both in Russia and in Europe, and the term for the first child …

Well, the "young elders" of the new millennium will now feed themselves with freshness and energy … The day is not far off when the phenomenon of “aging societies” will give way to the phenomenon of “eternal youth in the bodies of the very old” - this is precisely the strategy of the developed countries of our time.