
What Old Age Is Really Like - werber
http://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/what-old-age-is-really-like
======
mirimir
It's a slog, but in the end, it delivers.

I rather like how John Scalzi handles it in _Old Man 's War_ and sequels. I
also like the old people in perpetually young bodies that Vernor Vinge, Greg
Egan, Charles Stross, etc go on about. It's too bad that I'll be dead before
any of that is possible. So it goes.

------
moron4hire
I think it was when I stopped making excuses for my grandfather and started
admitting he is a racist, lecherous, inconsiderate asshole (promoted by all
the stores the other old folk would reminisce over him being exactly that his
entire life, like it's all just a lark), that I stopped seeing old people as
"otherly".

Being "set in your ways" is not endearing, and certainly not acceptable. "It
was a different time" is bullshit. No, it wasn't. There is no demarcation line
between now and then. There weren't any different issues, everyone had the
same problems. We are all products of the same past. Time is continuous.
Playing this game of "you get a pass because you're gonna die soon anyway" is
infecting future generations with the idea that we can tolerate intolerance if
the intolerant person is particularly stubborn enough.

Barring straight up senility, the persons your elders are now we're the people
they've always been. If they don't get technology today, it's because they
have always been unable to easily learn new things. If they say racist shit
today, it's because they lived through the civil rights movement of the 60s--
_as well as_ all of the other movements we've gotten to live through ourselves
--and said "yep, that's not for me". If they act like your opinion can't
possibly be right or important, it is because they were always a sociopath.

Age doesn't make you an asshole. If anything, I've seen it mellow people out.
You will be you, just slower.

------
bambax
That's a lot of words to say not much besides the obvious fact that old people
are just like us, trying to get by, still doing, for the most part, what they
have been doing all along.

My parents are both 84 and behave like everyone else; they use technology just
like teenagers do, my father texting constantly with his grand children and my
mother using her phone to take pictures of everything and anything. They each
have their own computer and share files with Dropbox. They go on holidays. The
set up wifi in their country home by themselves when they get there.

As for the "reading list", may I suggest Saint-Simon? This contemporary of
Louis XIV, born in 1675, wrote all his life but started his masterpiece, his
Memoirs, when he was 65 (in 1740) and finished 10 years later at 75, having
produced the amazing total of around 3 million words (for reference, the 7
books of Harry Potter are under 1 million words; the King James bible around
750k words).

Creating in old age isn't something that happened miraculously in the 21st
century.

~~~
alpeb
_> That's a lot of words to say not much besides..._

That's why I read less and less magazines articles. Lots of efforts put into
the form rather than the content, that read like a school exercise (intro-
thesis-conclusion). Would rather spend my time reading informal but to-the-
point blog pieces.

------
mironathetin
I liked the sentence:

""" She says that the biggest problem for many older people is “ageism, rather
than the process of aging itself.” """

When I nowadays apply for jobs (I am 50), I start to experience this already.
Kids interview me and I ask myself: where are the companies, where others like
me work, so I don't have to answer silly questions about failing memory and
hurting backs anymore. Mine doesn't hurt and my memory is crystal clear - like
the one of my 86 year old mother.

Don't want to know what happens in 30 years from now. What I do experience:
When I need an appointment with my doctor, I am asked, when I want to come. My
mother who needs to see the doctor much more urgently, has to wait for 4-5
weeks.

~~~
Yhippa
I'm not 50 yet but seriously, where do developers work as we age. It seems
like I see fewer and fewer of us past 30.

~~~
hga
As far as I can tell after serious study of this†:

You work in a field that doesn't care about or can respect age, embedded and
especially jobs requiring security clearances (which are expensive to get for
the very first org that hires you), you become a consultant or otherwise self-
employ, you work directly for the government, you get very lucky, or you find
another line of work.

†I first became aware of this in a particular job search when in my mid-late
'30s, I got a clue, scrubbed my resume of all indications of how old I am, and
then got a massive increase in responses. Started following the issue closely
since then.

I hear its very bad in the Bay Area, but, oh, based on an acquaintance in the
Boise, Idaho region after HP laid off a bunch of older guys like himself and
replaced them with H-1Bs, it's bad in many places (after consulting for a
while he had to settle for a state government job, helping to rescue a bunch
of Java done by a literally criminal body shop).

------
pazimzadeh
My mentor used to say that no big change happens when you age, you have the
same thoughts and desires as you did when you were a child and you wouldn't
remember you were old if various body parts didn't hurt periodically.

~~~
tvmalsv
I was going to say much the same. As I have gotten older (46yo currently),
I've come to realize that my thoughts are generally the same as when I was a
teenager. It was a rather enlightening moment when I discovered it was true
for a great many people that I would consider old.

Sure, I know more things, but forgotten others. I like to think the former
outnumber the latter. Perhaps I'm wiser. Perhaps not.

But, for the most part, I still have the same thoughts as before, be they
wonder, delight, dirty, sad. Hopefully I will express the correct ones at the
proper times, but probably won't.

I found it fascinating when I realized that most others are in the same boat.
The guy standing next to me at the bank might be 73 but he is obviously
enthralled with the pretty teller behind the window, and I'm sure that if I
told him a dirty joke, or even one that disparages someone's race, gender, or
religion, we would both laugh because we are too old to care about political
correctness, and besides, we are thinking like the teenagers we feel we are,
anyway.

And we'll laugh without guilt because we understand that a joke can be funny
and still not lower our respect of those that resemble the characters in our
jokes, and I hope others are telling equally funny jokes with characters
bearing a striking resemblance to myself.

~~~
arrrg
That’s an awfully awful defense of bigotry. So unaware, so unempathic, so
awful through and through.

I really hope that I will never think that way, no matter how old I am.

~~~
coldtea
> _That’s an awfully awful defense of bigotry. So unaware, so unempathic, so
> awful through and through._

Did you use his simple remark as an excuse to have an outlet for your own
hatred?

There are far greater injusticies in the world to be so furius about than two
old people laughing (and betweem themselves too) with a "culturally
insensitive" or even racist joke.

The one's who can't stand such things, are the ancestors of the very countries
that perpetuated the worst racist crimes. So a lot of this PC fervor can be
ascribed to guilt, or as an outlet for the same puritan and prudish thinking
that made those cultures consider blacks as inferior (immoral, lustful, etc)
in the first place.

In the 7 billion-something world (and I've been to most of it), regular people
enjoy what you'd call a "racist" joke, INCLUDING for themselves and their own
cultures. It's a way to laughs at one's neighbors but at one's self too.

