Age

Abstract

Tempus fugit. We all grow older. While our students envy us for the independence and authority which age seems to bring, some of us idly dream of our lost youth. Between us stands the insurmountable barrier of age, the generation gap which refuses to be bridged. But why is it there in the first place? How is it created and maintained? And who gains from its existence, since old age comes to us all in time?

‘Society cares about the individual only in so far as he is profitable. The young know this. Their anxiety as they enter in upon social life matches the anguish of the old as they are excluded from it. Between these two ages, the problem is hidden by routine. The young man dreads this machine that is about to seize hold of him, and sometimes he tries to defend himself by throwing half-bricks; the old man, rejected by it, exhausted and naked, has nothing left but his eyes to weep with. Between youth and age there turns the machine, the crusher of men — of men who let themselves be crushed because it never even occurs to them that they can escape it. Once we have understood what the state of the aged really is, we cannot satisfy ourselves with calling for a more generous ‘old-age policy’, higher pensions, decent housing and organized leisure. It is the whole system that is at issue and our claim cannot be otherwise than radical — change life itself — Simone De Beauvoir (1977) p.604