Entering a 21st Century Cult of Living: Building Youth with Age

21^st Century Call:  Move Beyond our Cult of Youth to a Cult of Living

I posited in my last entry that many of our strategies for living the Cult of Youth may actually be counter-productive due to the fact that our efforts to appear younger somewhat prevent us from being and living more youthfully.  After all, our goals should be about improving our quality of life; not simply about creating optical illusions for others!   

Here I would like to prolong that reflection by considering our current fears and goals in order to reframe them into a Cult of Living.

It’s time to reconstruct our fears of aging and our goals of youth.

There is societal significance in the obsession of effacing age.  Ostensibly, it is an attempt to defy mortality, in response to our great fear of death. 

But could it, in reality, represent a fear of being?

Indeed, wrinkles are often indicators of our past and the experiences which have built our personal character and have led us to make certain choices, good and bad.  They represent our gained perspective, right or wrong.  They are a visible mark of our growth and evolution, easy or belabored.  They are part of who we are.

And here we are trying to efface them.  Erase them.  Disown them.  Avoid ever acquiring them.  As if refusing our very being would allow us to relive our nostalgic idea of the easiness of youth, or start again with a clean slate; keep our options open.  Perhaps we are flirting with perpetual adolescence in order to flee the alleged constraints of being an adult:  the end of possibilities, the end of spontaneity, and the compromise of our dreams (as depicted by “emerging adults” (18-29 year olds in the Western world) recorded by socio-psychologist Jeffrey Jensen Arnett’s extensive research).

But, could it be that out of fear of this type of stagnation, we are avoiding filling in our actual lives as completely as we could or should?  That we don’t want to accept who we are, opting instead to play act and perform, as would an adolescent, simply in the name of a figurative possibility of re-creating our lives?  Could this be the key to why we are rejecting any visible manifestations of “growing up”? And, by consequence, any overly defining characteristics?

These reflexes reveal erroneous representations of youth and of adulthood.   

Youth and adolescence are not so much about freedom but about conformity, as they try on different masks to figure out who they are and who they want to be.  Far from freestyle living and spontaneity, adolescents are beholden to others’ approval and an exacerbated need for belonging and approbation.   Even their dreams are normative, “everyone will find a lifelong partner, and a great job, and live happily ever after”. 

In today’s performance society, the need to make the “right” choice is acute; it’s not surprising we all shy away from closing doors.  But the representation of adulthood and age as only rigid, static, conservative, and anti-dynamic is inaccurate and limiting.  In reality, adulthood represents the life-stage during which we acquire at last the wisdom and maturity required for actually free and deliberate living, positive control, etc.  For, adulthood can (and should) be a very dynamic stage in which the individual has at last accepted responsibility for one’s self, making one’s own decisions, and with financial independence.   It is the stage during which the individual has shed the urgent need for approval and during which, thanks to having closed certain doors, we can open new ones more befitting to whom we have become and want to actually be. 

On the other hand, if we don’t (or society doesn’t) allow us the freedom to make choices and move on, we will continue to prevent ourselves from building a strong sense of who we are.  In this case, we quickly find ourselves up against the “void” of existence which is at the root of our Cult of Youth.   As has said Susan Ertz in her novel Anger in the Sky, “millions long for immortality who don’t know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon.”  As a society, we seem to have opted for projections and appearances instead of actually building ourselves up to Be. 

Again, much of the confusion stems from our performance society in which there can only be one winner and in which we are each pitted against each other.  Part of the trouble is that as a person ages, that person, man or woman, as a social animal, needs to feel assured that he/she will not be ostracized, cut off from the community (especially as the person reaches an age that is less self-sufficient, depending more on society and social network for survival).  For that, he/she needs to feel desired, loved, included.

The trouble is, we’re all competing for the same places.  Cougars and Lolitas are aiming to charm the same men (who, clearly, still need to be liberated and realize that their manliness is not exclusively proven by their ability to seduce young women – they should move on to mature women!!!).  Just as are Snow White and the Evil Queen.  But attempting to retrieve the person we were at 20 is a chronic of a failure foretold… and can only lead to despair.  The Evil Queen is proof!  And putting all our worth in our looks is a second error that I’ll develop in next week’s blog.

The fact of the matter is that we owe it to ourselves, as individuals and as a species, to explore the full potential of each age and life-stage and, in this way, embrace the many dimensions of Being.

This is why, to make for a more durable societal scheme in the 21^st century, we need to clarify (and make, if so needed) roles for each, enabling older men and women to have a respectable and respected place in society.  In addition to the beauty of youth, maturity can and should have an appeal.   We must reshape our societal myth of beauty, charm, attraction, etc., to make it fuller and more extensive than simply an anti-age appearance.  It’s the only way to avoid having “being” reduced to being “young” (i.e. in one’s early 20s – which is also a problem for young girls and young teens). 

What is now needed is to foster conduits so that mature and aging adults’ contributions are recognized and valued… in order to induce a synergetic cycle that benefits each age and its valuable role.

We can begin by recalibrating our aims.  Currently, the way we are pursuing the Cult of Youth seems to be pushing us into incorporating mainly the negative aspects of youth:   

- effacing signs of wisdom, living, experience

- marginalizing memory and experience

- holding hostage our attention with nostalgia, however inaccurate it may be

- wasting our resources and energy on how many wrinkles we have (or could have one day) rather than living and thriving

- rigidifying ourselves to better resemble a 2-dimensional, taxidermic, still-life identity rather than embracing life as movement and evolution with ever more to discover

- giving into clannishness and identity appearance politics typical of adolescents who are copying instead of creating new paths thanks to the lives we have built… and the fruits of our experiences and travails

Instead, we should be trying to integrate the positive aspects of youth.  

After all, what actually constitutes “youthful” living?  Curiosity, liveliness, liberty, autonomy, eagerness, taking on new challenges, defying norms and trying out new playgrounds, being groundbreaking, audacity, excitement, innovativeness…  All characteristics that are potentially enhanced with age!

In reality, we need to age to be able to live young!  Instead of trying so desperately to reduce age to youth, we should be building youthfulness with age:

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- liberating our thoughts and wisdom, no longer beholden to adolescent conformity
- regenerating our brain acuity by continually learning new things, analyzed with due perspective
- confronting our ideas with others, including not like-minded people
- pursuing innovativeness which, as Regis Debray aptly put it, requires memory and experience
- being dynamic and constructive by activating our relativity & experience
- pioneering further as to how we want to live once our bodies are no longer as performing
- Expressing ourselves and living with passion now that we have shed the adolescent pitfalls of rejection, judgment, or alienation. “Living life out loud” as puts it Mike Robbins
- Revalue-ing as positive wisdom and experience, contemplation, analysis, etc. as a counterweight to today’s acceleration & superficiality

These shifts would enable us to move beyond performance society and embrace spherical rather than linear “then and than logic” so that we can actually build, at once, on our personal histories, desired future, current characteristics instead of trying desperately to efface them…  In short, we could actually benefit fully from “Being.”

In turn, this would enable us to actually welcome our human reality as growing beings who continually and renewably add and invest in their being through new experiences and perspectives… regardless of linearly quantitative “age”!

Let me know what you think, and stay tuned for another bite from the apple,

Eve

The 21st Century Should Carry a Cult of Living

“Quel age?  Jeune!”

Our Society Lives a Cult of Youth.

Everyone is trying to conform to the societal love affair with youth, which we have made synonym for performance, dynamism, attractiveness, potency, fun.   In this societal myth we’re living, youthfulness is considered a sign of an accomplished individual whereas old age, which was once equated with wisdom and maturity, is now associated with conservatism, stagnation, or obsolescence.  Age and aging seem to be something to fear and dread. 

To slow this fate, we are giving into looking and pretending to be younger.  Sort of like “blonds have more fun”, we seem to believe the Young Have More Fun, are more attractive within our performance society, more successful within our media age.

 “Things are happening so much younger these days – 19 year olds start companies like Facebook - 26 doesn’t feel like a spring chicken anymore so there’s pressure not to show your age even when you’re still pretty young” – states a 26 year old woman who is a regular Botox user.

And so, many are developing a coping strategy to remain performing in this context, using our affluence and scientific /medical advances to help every age be a happy youth. 

-      The general backdrop is that we’re getting closer to beating out our mortality.  Scientists are predicting that we will be able to prolong our lifespan.  Michael Rose, professor of evolutionary biology at the University of California at Irvine predicts that the human longing for immortality may be partly satisfied by the 22^nd century, at least to the point of extending the average human life to 140 years.  Others say that absolute immortality may be possible by then thanks to full-body regeneration or organ replacement which may be within reach.  It’s an on-going debate that includes whether or not to qualify aging as a disease in order to gain more funding.  Most medical scientists believe that advances should be used first and foremost to improve the quality of life of people who suffer from particular diseases or degenerative conditions but some, such as Rose, believe that early use of some methods / substances in a person’s life would prevent wear and tear, as well as lengthen life and improve its quality. 

-      Many medical academies and institutions are proponing usage and exhibiting impressive results, notably Dr. Jeffry Life, now 72, who uses testosterone and human growth hormones on himself and on his patients, and who stands as a poster boy of how we can all fight age and aging.

-       In light of all this Possibility, individuals are wanting to age on their own terms… and are turning to anti-age products and procedures to beat out age as best they can.  A lifegoesstrong.com poll found that 1 out of 5 boomers either have had or would consider cosmetic surgery.   Anti-aging product market in the US already represented about $80 billion in 2008 and is forecasted to reach over $291.9 billion worldwide by 2015.  Growing numbers of middle-aged people pay over 15K$ per year for Human Growth Hormone injections.  The American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS) states that there were 13.1 million cosmetic plastic surgery procedures performed in the US in 2010, a 77% increase over a decade and which does not include cosmetic medicine, which is also on a sharp increase (procedures like Botox and wrinkle fillers are up 99% since 2000, according to the ASPS). 

-      Thanks to the increasing accessibility to these strategies, increasingly younger individuals are pulled into the anti-aging game. The average age of going in for a first face lift has gone from 50 (in the 1990s) to 42 in 2000 in France… and today in the US, the average age starts at 45.  Even young people are obsessed by it and turning to Botox in their 20s as a way to ward off future wrinkles- reportedly, many don’t have lines when they go in to get injections.  Botox has become the most popular cosmetic procedure for female patients ages 19 to 35, with nearly 400,000 wrinkle-reversing (or preventing) treatments in 2007.  In 2010, over 78,000 people in the US in their 20s received Botox in the US, up 11% vs. 2009 according to the ASPS. “I don’t want to look like my mother,” they say.  Note that these figures do not include procedures performed outside of the country. 

-      And this fervor is growing despite questionable efficiency.  National Institute on Aging states, “our culture places great value on staying young, but aging is normal… Despite claims about pills or treatments that lead to endless youth, no treatments have been proven to slow or reverse the aging process.”  Furthermore, many of the products aren’t required to be tested or reviewed by independent or governmental commissions.   Some hormone replacement drugs can have harmful side effects.  

So What?  Why not leave people their liberty to choose what they do with their money?  

The problem is that for these rather limited gains, there are some unintended consequences that are a far heavier price to pay for society at large. 

As more and more jump on the bandwagon, we are, as a society, creating a new norm that makes aging shameful… and which allows for little alternative than to give into anti-aging.  According to some studies, the goal is no longer to simply look good for her age but to not age at all. 

“J’aurais peut-être accepté de vieillir, sans cette pression” – Maybe I would have accepted aging... if it weren’t for all this pressure.

As with all norms, the mechanism is self-reinforcing, spreading via peer-pressure not only because it is creating a new standard by which everyone must live to “fit in” socially but by which once one has done it, I’ve been told, thus begins the constant attack within the social circle on others’ wrinkles in order to somehow confirm the first person’s decision (or make everyone look just as awful…)

Because of this, Seniors, and senior women in particular, are losing their place in society.  As has remarked Germaine Greer, men with grey hair gain in status whereas women with grey hair lose it.  To be desired, loved, accepted, many feel they practically have to change themselves into someone else!  Further, this Cult of Youth isn’t only about seniors, it’s also about adulthood in general and our societal focus on its aspects that aren’t… “fun”.

In this 21^st century, it is time for us to move beyond our Cult of Youth to a Cult of Living.

Our current age-boycotting strategies are unsustainable (except for the pharmaceutical companies and surgeons who are enjoying the profits). 

But beyond that, many of our strategies for living the Cult of Youth may be actually counterproductive, our goals somewhat askew, and our fears somewhat unwarranted. 

Today I will tackle the first aspect (that our strategies may be counterproductive) and leave the remaining 2 until next week in order to keep this entry a reasonable length.

1.  Many of our strategies to appear younger are contradictory to the realities of being younger.

For starters, let’s consider Botox.  Is it anti-age… or rather anti-youth? 
Botulinum toxin reduces wrinkles by temporarily paralyzing small muscles in the face.   So, to look younger, we’re freezing ourselves up.  That directly undermines our quest for appearing young.  After all, youthfulness is usually identified by the opposite: fluidity, spontaneity, facility, graceful/easy movements, etc.  As we are freeze up our faces, we’re pushing ourselves directly towards what we’re fleeing.

Second, paralyzing the small muscles prevents the individual from making various expressions that convey emotion.  And, to quote an article heard on NPR, our own facial expressions, researchers now show, may be essential to recognizing the feelings of others… in other words, it hampers our ability to interact relationally with others.  So, to feel more included, greater belonging, and desirability, we’re impeding our ability to build relationships and/or seduce.

Third, as I already mentioned, the fall-out of this normalization of anti-age is ostracism … all in the name of belonging so important to us, social animals that we are.

This isn’t to belittle the impetus for trying out anti-age products or procedures which often a desire to reclaim one’s own life and conquer the frustration due to a gap between “how I feel” with “how I look” and the individual’s desire to “look the way I feel” despite his or her age.  Unfortunately, from botox to facelifts, often anti-age procedures don’t really enable you to be recognized for who you are (often the effects do little to bring back how we used to be and, at times, may even worsen our appearance / make us look even more different from ourselves than we looked as our own aged self).  Worse, they may have you recognized for something else entirely (perhaps vain or superficial), according to some studies.

But it goes deeper than that.   The superposition of “appearing” and “being” can lead to further unintended consequences.   (Granted, in our performance society, in which our projected identity has taken on great importance, the difference between appearance and being has been blurred;  against very real discriminations aging people are facing, “appearance” can be an unavoidable asset.)

All the same, as long as we focus on appearing young to others, we’re wasting energy that could be better spent on being and living younger.  Not for others but for our own well-being (which is a much better recipe for inclusion and social acceptance).  It comes from our daily attitude and activities that we remain / reap the benefits of being young.  Unfortunately, it won’t come from trying to freeze time or denying ourselves all that we are becoming. 

Indeed, staying oneself should include one’s potential, who one becomes, and the experience acquired along the way rather than sacrificing the life-imperative of evolution to trying to convince others of a youthfulness others rarely believe.

In fact, it all comes back to self-hood and a conviction of one’s self-worth. 

With it, we can delve into our own unique resources and richness, into the aspects that are our own and source of meaningful relationships and exchange.  Without it, we catalyze its impoverishment, condemning us all (individually and collectively) to lose out on what age and aging can offer…  plus exacerbating the unnecessary competition for the same role from all ages (I’ll treat this further in next week’s publication).

Aged people possess precious assets to contribute: experience, perspective, wisdom that are gained and refined thanks to aging (see Laura Carstensen’s TED Talk).  As a society, we must revalue all the positive aspects that age has to contribute to both our individual and collective well-being and progress.  Already in my lastblog, I advocated allowing seniors to continue to work at a rhythm more in tune with both the physical realities of aging/burn-out and the intellectual/emotional value accrued with aging.   This idea can be prolonged to putting in place opportunities to break down the linearity of our generations.  Intergenerational activities would be enriching for everybody – not just children and seniors but young adults and adults who would also benefit from this type of interaction and exchange.  It could be conducted based on theme-affinity, using hobbies and/or school curricula as easy conduits to exchange (and which remain public so as to avoid any type of abuse).  This type of exchange can help aged people be and feel young as well as give sharper contours to their daily lives, a benefit that may have its value in pushing back certain diseases like Alzheimer’s.  Meanwhile, it provides children, youths, and adults a larger pool of mentors and/or role models as well as broader and more diversified perspective.  It would be a great means for liberating our society from its narrow cult of youth and help it open up to youthful living.

Let me know what you think and stay tuned for next week on the other passages to a Cult of Living.

Till then, for another bite from the apple,

Eve

Make Love to Make Youth?

As I'm preparing my piece about the quantum elements of love, I got to thinking about an article I read in Direct Matin last fall by Mélina Gazsi called “Faire souvent l’amour, c’est vivre plus longtemps” which I would translate as “Making love often lengthens life expectancy”. 

To give you the gist of the article, French cardiologist and nutritionist Frédéric Saldmann explains, “Having sex 12 times per month can lengthen life by 10 years,” in part because, “it slows many illnesses such as prostate cancer in men and breast cancer in women, as well as cardio-vascular illnesses.”  Sex also helps burn calories, exercise the heart, oxygenate the bloodstream, reduce stress, insomnia, and migraines, etc.   The information is corroborated by other specialists and partly based on the study led by English neuro-psychologist David Weeks in 2007. 

Well, it’s good news to know officially that having sex is physically and mentally beneficial, even if it isn’t much news since sexual liberation in the 70s. 

But the article got me thinking about other aspects coloring our idea of sexual activity and norms these days.

1.  Sex vs. Fulfilling Sex.  In recent years, many PhD’s in various fields and countries have been making a point about Western society’s current sexual mores:  they are increasingly modeled on pop culture representations in which girls grow up on boy-conditioned sexual pleasure.  Meaning:  most girls (and by extension young women) are seeking and learning to do what will please the boy or man they’re with rather than cultivating her own preference in terms of sexual pleasure and fulfillment  (Check out The Lolita Effect by G. Durham or G. Marier's work on hypersexuality) 
This boy-conditioned sexual pleasure is, in turn, not so much his own, but is increasingly sculpted by porn movies which, often part of their sexual initiation, put in play sexual acts effectuated by actors and actresses who are not undergoing pleasure but rather dramatizing and caricaturizing certain fantasies.  There’s a great Ted Talk from Cindy Gallop called “Make Love, Not Porn” and who points out the great confusion that has been created  (Cindy Gallop: Make love, not porn (Adult content) - YouTube, website, http://makelovenotporn.com/) but I’ve also heard the concern expressed in such books as Ariel Levy’s Raunch Culture or movies such as Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation with Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson in which there are some great scenes following porn actors on the set. 

Boy-conditioned sexual pleasure is also sculpted by music videos.  Of course men’s hip-hop and rap videos are particularly guilty, in which a vast majority depict scantily-clad beauties shaking their booty around fully-clad, oftentimes homely, men who deliberately mix sex and violence themes.   But there are plenty more examples to be found, including the same themes that have been voluntarily taken on by women.   Rihanna sings, “sticks and stones may break my bones but chains and whips excite me.  I like it, come on!” and has the final image of her video a kind of cartoonish picture of her beat up.  Another, more innocent example, would be Shakira, a beautiful talented woman and singer, can’t avoid pretending to be caged and naked because she’s in heat.  And there are many, many more. 

2.  sex, another performance trap?  This is our private life, people!  Must we really quantify such an intimate pastime?  Ha!  Maybe there isn’t a god who will judge you for your good and bad behavior but you may be rewarded… depending on how often you have sex!  So buy more Viagra if you’re too exhausted or stressed to deliver.  Start another diet and get your breasts enlarged if you want a better choice of man in your bed.  But just a “quicky” won’t cut it – it’s like exercising, you need to keep it going before you start burning calories…  what?  You’re too tired and busy?  Nonsense!  Dynamic go-getters don’t need sleep, they just need a recharge…

What a farce!

What I find troubling is certainly not sex or sensuality.  But I can’t help but wonder:  is pleasure pleasurable when it’s borrowed?  Forced?  Required?  used as medication and/or therapy to avoid growing old?  When we’re simply trying to reproduce someone else’s pleasure?  Can play-acting durably procure the advantages of real living? 

Or, is anyone paying attention to actually doing what they want to do rather than giving into the societal spiral like exhibitionism à la Girls Gone Wild?  Is that empowering?  Or is it normalizing women’s total availability for boy’s or men’s wet-dreams?

The point is that many don’t even know what constitutes their personal pleasure.  How can we help both boys and girls, men and women discover their own sense of sensuality and intimacy independent of societal diktats?  Is role playing and performance and domination the clearest path to self-discovery, knowledge, joy?  Without even mentioning love, does it seem probable that such games and performativity, which require a certain amount of control to carry through pretending allow for the space of vulnerability and exchange that make sex delicious?

And if it isn’t exquisite, does it still lengthen life any more than other sports?