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Age, Aging, Age Discrimination, Death

Owned by Nathan Wailes
Last updated: May 10, 2019
5 min read

Table of contents

Child pages


Examples of minors doing things typically reserved for adults

Women & Aging

2014.07.12 - HuffPost - My "Naked" Truth
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robin-kor ... 63576.html





People who have been successful at earlier or later ages than normal

Examples of people achieving something at an earlier age than is typically associated with that achievement

Examples of people achieving something at a later age than is typically associated with that achievement

  • Scatman John - He had a huge international hit at an age when most people probably think you can't be a pop star anymore.


Age discrimination

How should people prepare for their future years?

  • You should prepare for later in your life while you're younger. You can prepare in terms of each of the needs in Maslow's hierarchy: physical health, money, companionship, etc.
  • Don't try to tan; hang out in the sun if you want, but try not to get too tanned. You may really pay for it later in life. I remember seeing a photo somewhere of twin sisters at age 50, one was an avid tanner and the other was not; the tanner looked like 30+ years older than her sister (no joke). I wish I still had that picture because the difference was really dramatic.


How should people view/treat those who are older / younger than themselves?

  • I've changed the way i look at older people; now it seems to me that we don't really change on the inside as much as you'd think as we get older (not including cases of Alzheimer's or dementia); we just become less strong and less physically attractive, but possibly more knowledgeable, more wealthy, and more powerful
  • on that note, i haven't been able to think of a difference between laughing at Hugh Hefner for being old and laughing at a younger person for being physically unattractive/weak/frail.
  • It seems to me that possible reasons people see older people as different are 1) they look different, 2) cultural differences between the generations, 3) the different activities they do because of what's considered open to people who look different (e.g. I'd feel socially awkward going clubbing as an 80-year-old, and I probably wouldn't be physically capable of playing sports with younger people). also, older people tend to be placed in the role of the enforcer while younger people tend to be placed in the role of prisoner/follower, so both groups often look at each other through that lens (read about the stanford prison study to see what i'm talking about; people will adopt social costumes for themselves and others) [i'm basing this off my experience as a substitute teacher]. also, being physically unattractive can change the way a person perceives their own social worth and thus change the way they behave. i've gotten the impression that people are more likely to respond positively to attractive people, and that makes it more likely that those people will become more outgoing/confident. i'm not saying it's a 1-to-1 correlation; i'm just saying that it seems to me that a correlation probably exists.
  • Another reason older people act differently from younger people might be that older people have more responsibilities. They have to spend more of their time thinking about how to fix their problems.
  • It seems to me that this trend toward segregating people by age (for reasons of social efficiency) can have some serious negative consequences in much the same way that segregating people by race/gender has serious negative consequences
  • I've also gotten the impression that a lot of adults underestimate the intelligence of younger people (I distinctly remember thinking this again and again when I was young). I think this may be because a lot of people don't remember what it was like to be young. It seems to me at the moment that if you educated a person efficiently you could have him/her be as functional as any middle-aged person by the time they're in their teens (if not earlier). I haven't been able to think of any special kind of experience that comes with living for 20-50+ years that you couldn't convey to a young person. note that women and a lot of non-white races were once thought to be mentally/emotionally incapable of functioning as full members of society, even though the disparities people saw in behavior had environmental causes. a computer analogy: I think our "hardware" is pretty much all there by the time we're ~10-12 if not earlier.
  • Adults may have a psychological incentive to think that younger people are deficient in some way: since happiness seems at least partially dependent on one's position relative to other people, and since people who are older may feel "poorer" in a sense than those who are younger (having fewer years in front of them and perhaps being less attractive), thinking that younger people are deficient in some way could allow an older person to feel that he/she is in a better position (or at least an equal position).



Death

How to have as pleasant a death as possible

Leave on a high note

  • Scatman John
    • He got hugely successful for the first time at 53, and died four years later, while he was still at or close to the peak of his fame.
    • While engaged in his trademark show-closing scat duel against his drummer, Larkin appeared to faint on stage. The crowd initially believed the collapse to be part of the show, until an announcement was made that the show would be ending due to a medical situation. Larkin was transported to the Cleveland Clinic where he was stabilized. The following week he returned to his home in Los Angeles. Even while suffering, Larkin remained positive, saying "Whatever God wants is fine by me ... I've had the very best life. I have tasted beauty." [He died a few days later]



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