“Old age is not exactly a time of life that most of us welcome, although globally speaking it is a privilege to reach it. In Western societies, the shocked realisation that we are growing old often fills us with alarm and even terror. As Simone de Beauvoir writes in her magisterial study of the topic, La vieillesse (1970) – translated in the UK as Old Age, and in the US as The Coming of Age (1972) – old age arouses a visceral aversion, often a ‘biological repugnance’. Many attempt to push it as far away as possible, denying that it will ever happen, even though we know it already dwells within us.”
So begins Kate Kirkpatrick‘s article “Old Not Other” over article over at Aeon. She is an Oxford fellow, and author of Becoming Beauvoir (2019).
A few excerpts:
Why do we neglect the condition we are all moving towards? Simone de Beauvoir has an answer: bad faith. “In her analysis of old age, Beauvoir expresses sadness and outrage at the bad faith of the not-yet-old with respect to the old. On her assessment, a characteristic attitude of the not-yet-old is ‘duplicity’. On the one hand, many acknowledge that the old deserve respect – at least the respect befitting any person, if not the greater, relative respect befitting a person whose life and learning are great. On the other hand, ‘it is in the adult’s interest to treat the aged man as an inferior being and to convince him of his decline’. Alongside preaching an official ethics of respect, in practice the words and actions of the not-yet-old are frequently demeaning.
“In fleeing from our own old age, we also seek to distance ourselves from its harbingers – from those who are already old: they are ‘the Other’. They are (with some exceptions) viewed as a ‘foreign species’, and as ‘outside humanity’. Excluded from the so-called normal life of society, most are condemned to conditions where their sadness, as Beauvoir puts it, ‘merges with their consuming boredom, with their bitter and humiliating sense of uselessness, and with their loneliness in the midst of a world that has nothing but indifference for them’. Beauvoir’s work sets out to show how old people are viewed and treated as the Other ‘from without’ and also – by drawing on memoirs, letters and other sources – to present their experiences ‘from within’. Her aim is to ‘shatter’ what she calls the ‘conspiracy of silence’ surrounding the old for, she insists, if their voices were heard, we would have to acknowledge that these were ‘human voices’ (emphasis added).”
She concludes:
“More than half a century has passed since Beauvoir’s Old Age was published, and many things have changed – and yet they have also stayed the same. The ‘conspiracy of silence’ has been replaced by a proliferation of public discourses about the old, who are now more often euphemistically referred to as ‘seniors’ or ‘the elderly’. However, for the most part, these discourses still treat the old ‘from without’ and their voices are not heard. Instead, they are presented as ‘problem’ objects: the old are a ‘they’ about which ‘we’ (the active members of the society of which they are no longer deemed a part) need to decide what should be done. But rather than considering how to enable people to flourish in old age for as long as possible, much of the focus is on what ‘they’ are said excessively to consume and how ‘they’ are harming society. An ever-growing number of those aged over 65 today belong to the post-Second World War ‘baby boomer’ generation, and it is about this so-called ‘gray tsunami’ that the silence has been displaced by voluble expressions of hostility and sometimes panic.”
To conclude, in addition to addressing our own bad faith, it is also vitally important to break the ‘conspiracy of silence’ about this furthest frontier of old age where Beauvoir herself did not venture. For it is the oldest of the old whose humanity is least recognised. It is they who are conceived as no more than bodies, who are treated as inert objects, considered outside humanity. And it is we who must resist their degradation
Read the whole thing here.
Tags: Simone de Beauvoir