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'OK, Boomer' mentality: Academics want to label old age a disease, in case you had any respect left for the elderly

Furedi, Frank
http://www.rt.com/op-ed/481011-old-age-who-disease/

Publisher:  RT
Date Written:  17/02/2020
Year Published:  2020  
Resource Type:  Article

Prominent academics are pushing for the World Health Organization (WHO) to include old age on its list of diseases. They say it will improve old people’s lives – but in reality, it will give everyone the excuse to write them off.

Abstract: 
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Once upon a time growing old possessed the positive connotation of gaining maturity and wisdom. Indeed, old age was associated with moral authority. In most societies people turned to the elderly for advice and guidance. Ageing was rightly perceived as a natural process that need not lead to physical demise or social death. On the contrary, ageing provided a unique avenue for gaining respect from the younger members of the community.

In contrast, contemporary Western society rarely associates old age with any positive attributes. At best, the elderly are dismissed as out of date and irrelevant people, whose archaic views ought to be ignored. At worst, the elderly are demonised and scapegoated for robbing the young of their future and condemned for being responsible for the environmental crisis facing the world.

In some instances the elderly are not simply condemned as the cause of young people’s problems, but as unworthy of the kind of esteem given to other groups in society. In a world where acts of prejudice directed at groups are universally condemned it’s still OK to demonise the elderly.

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