Quote:
Originally Posted by CaliNative
Many young think they will live forever and think elderly people are essentially worthless. I wonder if 10023 thinks the lives of his parents and grandparents are without value? I wonder if 10023 will remember his apparent ageism in his elder years? Life becomes more precious as you approach the end. The life experiences of older people have great value to society--I believed this to be true when I was young, and still do now that I am older. Besides, we still don't know the long term impacts of covid disease. It may cause long term harm later to those who are now young and asymptomatic. The lives of all people have value, young or old, black, brown, white, men or women, all. Certain diseases attack young people, e.g. many forms of leukemia and that saddens me even though I am over 60.
10023, maybe I misunderstand you. Maybe you are not ageist at all. If anything I said is not true or misstates your opinions, I apologize in advance. I haven't seen all your posts.
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I don’t have living grandparents, and my own parents are in their early 70s and already have highly compromised quality of life.
“Ageism” is not a thing. The “-isms” like racism and sexism reflect the false view that people have differential abilities based on superficial or unrelated traits. Not wanting to be very old and limited physically (and perhaps mentally) is not an “-ism”. It’s a fact that people decline in old age, to varying degrees of course, but inevitably so.
I am involved in the healthcare industry (on the business side). What I see is a need for a more mature approach to death. Medicine has become very good at keeping people alive, but we haven’t found a fountain of youth and so this results in more and more of society’s wealth and economic output being directed toward very expensive treatments to keep grandma around for a little while longer. Because resources are finite, things like investment in infrastructure or schools (which would benefit the future prospects of younger people) suffer as healthcare consumes an ever-growing proportion of the national income.
The elderly and those with chronic diseases consume an overwhelming proportion of these resources. People who have various chronic health issues (mostly as a result of obesity or other “lifestyle diseases”) might start costing lots of money in their 60s, a healthier person not until their late 70s or 80s. To the extent more money is spent on health, it should be very aggressively targeted at reducing obesity in order to keep people healthy longer, rather than alive longer in poor health.
Nonetheless, by the age of 80 one’s life is essentially “fully depreciated”. Any years beyond that are gravy, but for most people health is so compromised that the bad outweighs the good. Perhaps it makes sense to have a few grey hairs around for perspective, but it’s a rare person that has the life experience, the intellect and the gift for relaying their experience in this role. And an aged senior team has negative consequences for office culture as well.
Personally, I’ve got a living will in place and will go night-night at such point that I ever need to be under nursing care or dementia care. None of us live forever...