We find it a bit weird and creepy to think of an 80-year-old dating a 20-year-old.
Is that ageist?
Equality is about treating people the same regardless of their physical appearance or personal interests.
Is saying that an 80-year-old shouldn’t date a 20-year-old as flawed as thinking that a black man shouldn’t date a white woman?
What if an 80-year-old had their brain put into a 20-year-olds body?
I guess that wouldn’t be weird (well the medical miracle would be weird - but the relationship between two 20-year-old bodies would be pretty fine.)
Is this something in store for the future?
We’ve had the first face transplant succeed. As stem cell research continues to improve it isn’t unthinkable that in 50 years you could get a replacement skin.
The rest of your internal body would be old. Extrapolating, at some point, you could also replace most of the internal parts.
Ultimately, one day you could just have a brain transplant into a new body.
I feel my adult life started a 16.
I started making decisions for myself, had a job, and did 'adult' things like drinking and driving. I studied things that I chose to study and worked on things I wanted to work on.
I felt responsible for my success. (I also stopped playing computer games and started playing the game of adulting)
In many ways, I don’t feel like I’m much older since then, besides just getting more experienced.
There have been many incremental level-ups; going to uni, running businesses, travelling the world, getting a mortgage, doing a Vipassana, nearly dying, and shifting my focus to being a creator.
There are certainly future fundamental shifts in store in how I perceive myself, mainly in relationships and if I have kids.
Yet with all these things, I’m basically just a more experienced child.
16-year olds are 0-year old adults
I was recently hanging out with a 16-year-old. Talking about life with them is a funny experience. I feel like a very different being to them.
I’ve done further education and spent 10 years fighting for the things you prioritise as a young person and conclude might well be pointless as you age.
Yet at the same time, I feel like I’m still on the same starting line. I’m still here in the present day wondering what I’ll do with the ten years ahead of me and how that might shape the ten years after that.
I’m still making up my life as I go along... Maybe more chilled about the mistakes along the way and less urgent about everything.
From the start point of today, I’ve run the next ten-year course of adulting before but I've still no idea what will happen or how to do the best job of it.
Whereas for a 16-year-old it’s the first time.
Humans don’t notice they are crazy
As humans, we have a history of accepting mind-blowingly terrible forms of social and legal policy.
Slavery, sexism, racism, genocide…
We like to think that in the modern day in first-world countries, we are mostly civilised. There are some known issues like better LGBTQ+ or women’s rights, and better social mobility. We certainly do not feel like anyone would look at us and compare us to the Nazis or slave owners.
A fish doesn’t know it’s in water.
So whatever we are doing is normal and we grew up with it. Just like slave owners 2000 years ago or 200 years ago. We don’t feel every day that there are things we currently accept which might be perceived as awful.
In a few hundred years' time, humans will look back at the year 2022 as the dark ages. A time when humans accepted the awful conditions we currently live in and one part of that is lack of rights and terrible medical care.
I don’t know if ageism will be one of these things that won’t age well. I’m currently in the same water as you.
The idea that someone over 70 should become a calm pensioner who stays in their lane, is something we are used to and kind of shitty.
As soon as we have the tech to help us question that, I think it will feel flawed.
Is ageing fair?
I mean no one really likes the idea of becoming unattractive, peeing in a bag, forgetting things or being at risk of having their heart stop at any moment whilst walking up the stairs (if they can even walk up the stairs).
This is just something you’re subjected to.
The gift of a long life and growing old has a price.
Yet adults and elderly adults are just children hurtling through time trying to enjoy their life before it flashes by.
Ultimately, they still have no idea what’s going on and are just making everything up as they go along.
Rights are the freedom to do things which we think should be taken for granted.
Freedom of speech, voting, ownership of your body and equality.
These aren’t luxuries or things you should be lucky to have, but considered necessities.
Yet with age, all the things we take for granted are taken away from us, our health, beauty, abilities and how we are perceived.
That is why prison is a form of punishment, you shave years off someone's life.
I don’t have or need a specific point per see, except to spark some contemplation on the topic of growing old and how we think about human rights.
Also, I think there is something wrong with how we treat others in general...
We think of any given human as the physical form they are in and not so much as a mind.
When we think of them as a mind that happens to be trapped in the specific body they have, things like age and abilities are less correlated with their wants and needs in life.
We all want to feel loved and useful and free.
All I do know is that you should be nice to older people, even if you don’t want to date them. For now…
The future will be interesting 🦾