{"id":5573,"date":"2019-06-10T06:45:23","date_gmt":"2019-06-10T10:45:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.silvercentury.org\/?p=5573"},"modified":"2019-06-24T09:24:50","modified_gmt":"2019-06-24T13:24:50","slug":"what-will-it-take-to-end-ageism-part-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/2019\/06\/what-will-it-take-to-end-ageism-part-1\/","title":{"rendered":"What Will It Take to End Ageism? Part 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

Most Americans aren\u2019t optimistic about getting older and think the source of the problem is aging itself. So do most policy wonks: they frame population aging as a set of choices about how to care for an avalanche of \u201cfrail and needy elderly.\u201d MIT\u2019s Joseph F. Coughlin and I don\u2019t share that myopia. His latest book, <\/span>The Longevity Economy <\/span><\/i>(2017), is packed with big ideas about the \u201cdramatic-yet-predictable\u201d effects of the new longevity, which he and I think presents a remarkable opportunity to build a better old age. <\/span><\/p>\n

We also know that what stands between olders and this brighter future is the culture itself. But he\u2019s putting his faith in corporations to \u201cdo the right thing\u201d while I envision a very different engine of change.<\/span><\/p>\n

Coughlin founded the MIT AgeLab, which \u201capplies consumer-centered systems \u2026 to catalyze innovation across business markets,\u201d so it\u2019s not surprising that his approach to the longevity boom is market driven. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s as though a whole new continent were rising out of the sea, filled with more than a billion air-breathing consumers just begging for products that fulfill their demands,\u201d he writes. Soon, he predicts, \u201cthe world\u2019s most advanced economies will evolve around the needs, wants, and whims of grandparents.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

The products and technologies that emerge to meet those needs won\u2019t just be highly profitable. By improving the quality of life of older Americans in countless yet-to-be-imagined ways, the book predicts, they will enlarge and enrich the way we experience old age itself. It\u2019s a bold proposition, and it\u2019s also misguided.<\/span><\/p>\n

What stands between us and this better old age?<\/span> Why are companies failing to \u201cwake up, smell the Ensure\u201d\u2014which, Coughlin points out, is pretty much Soylent marketed to olders? Why don\u2019t corporations start courting older consumers with all the fervor they currently lavish on millennials? Because of \u201c<\/span>our very idea of old age<\/span><\/i> [emphasis mine], which is socially constructed, historically contingent and deeply flawed,\u201d he writes. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cSocially constructed,\u201d as I often say, is sociology-speak for \u201cwe make it up,\u201d and we\u2019re in synch when Coughlin declares \u201c<\/span>Old age is made up<\/span><\/i>\u201d [emphasis his].<\/span><\/p>\n

Not made up like a fun game, made up like a shared delusion. Call it a \u201ccollective case of blindness\u201d as Coughlin does. Call it implicit bias, as he also describes it. That would be prejudice against older people so deeply ingrained that you might not even know you harbor it. Call it \u201cageism,\u201d as I do, and why Coughlin fails to is beyond me; the word barely appears in <\/span>The Longevity Economy<\/span><\/i>. <\/span><\/p>\n

But although our approaches differ, we agree on the heart of the problem: an ageist culture that confines olders to the margins of society and sanctions only the blandest of \u201cage appropriate\u201d behaviors: relaxing, volunteering, grandparenting and falling apart. <\/span><\/p>\n

Who\u2019s going to drive the necessary social change? Not olders themselves, Coughlin writes, \u201cbecause their ability to picture new, better ways to live is utterly constrained by ou<\/span>r <\/span><\/i>current, pernicious narrative.\u201d The drivers, he says, will be the corporate visionaries who understand that olders aspire to the same stuff as everyone else does\u2014work, romance, purpose, imagine that!\u2014and who create the products that enable those aspirations.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cBy building a vision of late life that is more than just a miserable version of middle age, companies won\u2019t just be minting money . . . they\u2019ll also be creating a cultural environment that values the contributions of older adults.\u201d The result will be a virtuous circle: by enriching and enlarging our vision of late life, better products will bring it about.<\/span><\/p>\n

I love Coughlin\u2019s vision of \u201ca new narrative of possibility in old age,\u201d but I don\u2019t think it\u2019s going to emerge from the business community. Corporations can speed social change, and they can definitely commodify it, turning sisterhood into grrl power into the Spice Girls, for example. But they exist to profit, not provoke, and it\u2019s easy to monetize fear and insecurity. Who says wrinkles are ugly? The multibillion-dollar, anti-aging, skin-care industry. Who says perimenopause and \u201clow T\u201d and mild cognitive impairment are medical conditions? The trillion-dollar pharmaceutical industry. Why would corporations be instrumental in overturning prejudices from which they profit on this scale?<\/span><\/p>\n

So I stumble over Coughlin\u2019s belief that \u201cMore than any other factor, this new story [of old age] will be built on the testimony of longevity-economy products.\u201d Really? A seismic cultural shift driven by consumer behavior? The longevity economy will bequeath us lists of service providers and garages full of tools and toys. But olders want to downsize, and products will have to be both indispensable and affordable in order to reach a mass market.<\/span><\/p>\n

More importantly, products alone cannot transform the world in which we use them. For-profit ventures aren\u2019t in the better-life-for-everyone business because the masses lack the disposable income to power wholesale culture change. If the goal is to go beyond meeting older people\u2019s basic needs\u2014to support growth and voice and visibility for all, lifelong\u2014how do we develop the rituals, roles, and institutions that will be essential to achieving that goal? Why would we trust the private sector to start operating in the interests of the entire cohort, not just those in the 9.9 percent, <\/span>the new American aristocracy<\/a><\/span> (for more about that, see this piece in the <\/span>Atlantic<\/span><\/i>). <\/span><\/p>\n

I have different ideas about what it will take to make aging a better experience. I\u2019ll explain them in part 2 of this blog<\/a>. <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Most Americans aren\u2019t optimistic about getting older and think the source of the problem is aging itself. So do most policy wonks: they frame population aging as a set of choices about how to care for an avalanche of \u201cfrail…<\/span><\/p>\n

Read more What Will It Take to End Ageism? Part 1<\/span> ›<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":5574,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_FSMCFIC_featured_image_caption":"","_FSMCFIC_featured_image_nocaption":null,"_FSMCFIC_featured_image_hide":null,"footnotes":""},"categories":[79,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5573","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","category-voices-views"],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":"","source_text":"","source_url":""},"wps_subtitle":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5573","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5573"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5573\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5605,"href":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5573\/revisions\/5605"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5574"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5573"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5573"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5573"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}