Ageism

[Philos]

Folks ,

As an old man I am well placed to experience ageism, and fortunately it is rare for me. However, it does happen and allows an insight into the prejudiced mind.

A few years back I was attending university as a mature student. The lecture hall was quite full and there were just two seats left, next to me. A young Asian student and his friend came along and the Asian pushed his friend into the seat next to me, saying .. “I am not sitting next to a mature”. That was a nasty surprise, but gave me an insight into the feelings prejudice brings to us.

More normally I have found that ageism is expressed in silent behaviour, either being studiously avoided by the young or just invisible to them. This is in stark contrast to the open hearted, who treat us just like anyone else. I find that ageism is mostly absent in the very young and is something that grows in some people. Maybe it is to do with fear, I don’t know.

I will claim that I have never been ageist in my life, either towards the old or the young, and I think that (like all prejudice) it is a characteristic that people are better without. However, that raises a broader discussion, morally and politically, which seems apposite to the present day.

What are your feelings?

A.

 

[untermensche]

Why care?

We know our age but we are not our age.

If one worries about getting old I suggest eating well and regular exercise. And not a bunch of passive entertainment. You have to exercise your mind too by continuing to learn.

 

[Toni]

Heh. In my work place, by some co-workers, I'm told that people my age are resistant to change and adverse to technology. The funny/not funny thing is that I am much more welcoming to change (good change, that is. Change can be good or bad) and am more tech savvy than some co-workers more than 15 years my junior. Fortunately, this ageism hasn't seemed to affect my professional evaluations and reputation.

 

[Beer With Straw]

Ageism?

You could be a baby growing up and eventually have to admit to yourself that you're smarter than both of your parents.

 

[rousseau]

In the past I've experienced ageism from the opposite end of the spectrum. Up until I was about 28 I looked really young and many people would assume I was a dumb, punk kid. Nowadays, at my current employer my youthful look works to my advantage, as the median age of the office is really high.

I heard it said once that most people are really easy to hack. For the most part you are always going to be judged by people's prejudice, and not executive functioning. This is mostly a survival mechanism of the brain from pre-historic days.

 

[abaddon]

The kid's joke was probably intended to razz his friend, not you. Which was mindlessness, and that's the typical state of human beings generally.

Offense at things like that is a mind torturing itself because reality won't obey its wishes.

It's not other people's judgment that hurts, it's your reaction to it that hurts. Choose another reaction.

Stoics had many practices to inoculate against insults. One is to agree but reaffirm what your values are. "Yeah, I'm an old man and smelly too. Now that that's cleared up, onward with feeding my curiosity about the world".

Marcus Aurelius: "Is your cucumber bitter? Throw it away. Are there briars in your path? Turn aside. That is enough. Do not go on to say, ‘Why were things of this sort ever brought into the world?’"

 

[thebeave]

I can kinda relate to ageism, having recently entered senior citizen territory (well, 55+ anyway). I am definitely feeling the effects of aging (lower energy & stamina for working long days, reduced physical strength, balance and flexibility, mental acuity, etc), compared to just 10-15 years ago, when I had little problem with any of the above. So, if I'm honest with myself, all other things being equal, I can understand why an employer would prefer to hire a younger person instead of me. I would cost more (due to seniority), have lower work output and probably be a less creative problem solver. To insist that I'm somehow entitled to a job given my age issues seems delusional. That's just the real world. And if I ran a business, I would definitely prefer a younger person over an older one (except perhaps for specific functions that heavily value experience).

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Heh. In my work place, by some co-workers, I'm told that people my age are resistant to change and adverse to technology. The funny/not funny thing is that I am much more welcoming to change (good change, that is. Change can be good or bad) and am more tech savvy than some co-workers more than 15 years my junior. Fortunately, this ageism hasn't seemed to affect my professional evaluations and reputation.

What I've seen is that the older people get the more likely they are to be resistant to change but that it's an individual thing. Long ago I was a lab assistant in a room used for a computer literacy for seniors class. An awful lot of them couldn't get it no matter what the teacher or I tried but some were fine.

My father absolutely couldn't get it about the computer and persisted in treating it like a typewriter. He was using it to write stuff, I ended up having him do no editing whatsoever. I would go over it, fix obvious mistakes and print it out, let him mark it up for me to edit. My mother did fine with the computer, though, despite being blind and having to use a speech synthesizer. (Obviously I had to set things up in the first place--until the drivers loaded she was helpless.)

 

[rousseau]

The kid's joke was probably intended to razz his friend, not you. Which was mindlessness, and that's the typical state of human beings generally.

Offense at things like that is a mind torturing itself because reality won't obey its wishes.

It's not other people's judgment that hurts, it's your reaction to it that hurts. Choose another reaction.

Stoics had many practices to inoculate against insults. One is to agree but reaffirm what your values are. "Yeah, I'm an old man and smelly too. Now that that's cleared up, onward with feeding my curiosity about the world".

Marcus Aurelius: "Is your cucumber bitter? Throw it away. Are there briars in your path? Turn aside. That is enough. Do not go on to say, ‘Why were things of this sort ever brought into the world?’"

Agree with this.

Anymore I take most people's judgements with a grain of salt. The vast majority of people out there don't have themselves figured out, let alone you.

 

[Philos]

Folks,

Thanks for the replies.

A.

 

[rousseau]

As for it growing in people as they get older, it's just one of those things. When we're young we don't realise who does or doesn't have value to us, everyone is just a person who we like or don't like. Then once we gain a bit of awareness those selfish instincts that keep us alive kick in. After all, there may be good reason to be prejudiced against the old, can't mate with them, might have out-dated skills, and on and on. There is no survival value where there is no survival value.

But then, I once heard a saying: blessed are those who can see the usefulness of the useless, and the uselessness of the useful.

In more explicit terms, if one goes their whole life only looking out for their material interests, they've ridden blind.

 

[braces_for_impact]

I have watched my mother and uncle both reach a certain age and suddenly find it terribly hard to find gainful employment, which is concerning to me.

 

[rousseau]

I have watched my mother and uncle both reach a certain age and suddenly find it terribly hard to find gainful employment, which is concerning to me.

Pro-tip: dye your hair if it turns grey, and don't reveal how old you actually are

This is apparently a problem in IT, too. I'm hoping I can just ride out my current job until retirement, and hopefully maintain my youthful look.

 

[bilby]

Folks,

Thanks for the replies.

A.

You are welcome, old man.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

The kid's joke was probably intended to razz his friend, not you. Which was mindlessness, and that's the typical state of human beings generally.

Offense at things like that is a mind torturing itself because reality won't obey its wishes.

It's not other people's judgment that hurts, it's your reaction to it that hurts. Choose another reaction.

Stoics had many practices to inoculate against insults. One is to agree but reaffirm what your values are. "Yeah, I'm an old man and smelly too. Now that that's cleared up, onward with feeding my curiosity about the world".

Marcus Aurelius: "Is your cucumber bitter? Throw it away. Are there briars in your path? Turn aside. That is enough. Do not go on to say, ‘Why were things of this sort ever brought into the world?’"

I'm going to have to agree with this as well.

And one needn't look and act old even if one is old. Adopt a little vanity I say.

 

[ruby sparks]

I reckon........that some day.....I'm going to become almost invisible...or at the very least deindividualised. I'm just going to be viewed as 'old person'. I'm not going to matter. In most ways, this is unappealing. Certainly a blow to my inherent vanity and sense of self worth, since much of that has depended on how others receive and treat me.

On the other hand, it will be a sort of liberation. So there's a consolation.

Also, one can't tell in advance. I would never have guessed that my 50's were going to be the most interesting and rewarding of my life so far, so maybe my 60's, and 70's, and even 80's will surpass my expectations too.

Did the stoics say anything about being pessimistic and expecting the worst, so that usually things never turn out to be so bad?

 

[humbleman]

I better come back to this topic some years from now.

As today, I wouldn't like to be near to a bunch of creepers...

Just joking.

I never saw that kind of behavior of young people evading to get close to elders.

Unless it is the typical script of the child who refuses kissing his grandfather by obvious reasons:... but mom... grandpa stinks!...

No matter the age, what an older man must conserve is integrity, dignity, understanding, all those qualities acquired thru the experiences in life.

No reason to feel offended or bad when youngsters defy the elder considering them as useless, age will catch up with them and they will understand at the proper moment.

Feeling "compassion" for the elder because their age is a kind of offense, better to feel respect and a kind of admiration for them.

Getting older is part of a cycle of life which get us anyway and we must accept it in us and with the rest. Being an elder is being close to finish the duties, with the hope of ending after accomplishing something in life.