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

21st Century Demographics: We Must Re-Empower Our Seniors!

Recently in the New York Times, David Brooks wrote a think piece called “The Fertility Implosion” talking about the demographic pyramid’s inversion in most parts of the world (including the Middle East and China but not yet including India).   It’s a rapidly aging world, he says, and the US may gain in worldwide competitiveness thanks to its relatively slower pace of demographic inversion.

He quotes Nicholas Eberstadt of the American Enterprise Institute who tempers that demography isn’t destiny and that you can have fast economic development with low fertility or high fertility (ex South Korea, Taiwan)… but Brooks note that, generally speaking, “rapidly aging population and the lack of young people entering the workforce could lead to long-term decline.” 

Living in Europe, the demographic inversion, in which the demographic pyramid reverses, leaving many more seniors compared to youths (or, in terms of workforce, mainly more retirees vs. number of young people eligible to work), is a reality of which we’ve been aware for some time and cause for great debate.   For a couple of years now, we have been debating a “decent” retirement age while keeping the social system sustainable (enough workers paying into the system to cover the retirement fund and health system among other civil structures (infrastructure, education, etc.).

Part of what is difficult for those of us following the debate is that each party shows often contradictory findings as to the realities of the economics of it all.  Canadian research institutes, for example, have published a number studies that disprove the side-effects of Philip Longman’s predicted “grey tsunami” showing that this is not what will cost the most in healthcare… but as a layperson, it’s always a bit complicated weeding out whose analysis is the closest to reality or the most trustworthy. 

That’s why I’d like to take on an entirely different angle. 

Let me quote it again: “rapidly aging population and the lack of young people entering the workforce could lead to long-term decline.” 

We are totally forgetting the valuable resource that our “seniors” represent.  In the workforce as well as in society.

Our old-fashioned ideas about seniors is exhausting and wasting a real asset for progress.

1.  First of all, we’re exhausting our seniors.  I have spoken often with aging professionals and retirees in a number of countries and different nationalities.  Many companies decide that once an employee has reached a certain age, he or she is no longer dynamic enough to help keep the company competitive.  They do what they can to dismiss them and hire on younger workers. 

Once someone in their 50s is looking for a job, they’re considered too old and often are unable to find a job (this is even more true for women who continue to be particularly strained by the social requirement to be young and beautiful).  In France, many negotiate an “anticipated retirement” which buys them out of the workforce but which, oftentimes, entails a lower pension.  Furthermore, there is a growing rate of retired women who are finding themselves in poverty, receiving, on average, 42% less than men at retirement. 

Once they’ve gone through this type of second-guessing and lack of consideration, it’s no wonder that they are exhausted and dream of retirement and the liberty and respect it evokes.

2.  Further, we’re wasting the valuable resources they represent and can contribute

In the past, a group’s “elders” were guides to wisdom and balance.  Our democratic societies have since overturned what was at times a rigid hierarchy and norms, empowering the voice of youth and the possibility and fresh perspective it can represent.  This has been a key step to progress, with young people often propelling movements (cf. social movements of the 1960s) to counterbalance the sometimes conservative reflexes attributed to the later life cycles (cf. Erik Erikson’s Psychosocial Theory of Human Development).

Nonetheless, we seem now to have arrived at a point in which we perpetually reinvent the wheel due to lack of transmission.   Lack of sharing and handing down / passing on knowledge gained by experience and reflection.  Seniors’ knowledge and expertise are invaluable to companies’ performance, as are their perspective and relativism acquired by years of experience.  Yet seniors seem to lose their place to younger, less experienced talents who don’t cost as much (lower pay for longer hours all in the name of future success) and who are stereotyped as more dynamic.    It’s amazing that companies and society don’t calculate how much time experience can save a project and how much money perspective can bring to ventures. 

Beyond transmission, there’s also the established fact that seniors represent a growing consumer group, pushing companies to create and develop new offers for this target… they are therefore a concrete motor in terms of economic growth and stimulation (cf. recently published study by Ernst & Young, “La Révolution des Services”)… plus, their insight would be a decisive advantage in developing these types of offers.

On a societal level, shutting out elders can have further unintended consequences.  It can make them more conservative as they try to hold onto their former acquisitions against fears of the unknown… an unknown that is exacerbated by this same lack of transmission and exchange.   They then feel disenfranchised and are likely to resist change because of it. 

Instead, we should bring seniors into the debate, not as defenders of the past but as co-makers of the future.  Collective progress (and/or company performance) gains when there’s debate and when ideas are challenged and confronted… and when all actors / stakeholders are implicated so as to help them endorse the new direction.  Making our future a cross-generational goal can bring our elders into the debate, benefit from their know-how and perspective, and thus solidify and optimize our common responses & solutions for the issues facing our world.  

How can we make it happen?

We must change what work means at their age, redefining their specific role and legitimacy.

I have spoken with many individuals of 60+ years.  According to their stories, they are tired:  they don’t want to deal with so much stress anymore or work so many long hours day in and day out.  They tell me they can feel themselves not working as well as they used to, that they are no longer quite so efficient.  As conscientious professionals, they’re uncomfortable about not performing as well as in their “peek years”.  Above all, they want to avoid feeling devalued.

Meanwhile, many who have retired showcase the luxury of having free time, noting its positive impact on creativity and quality of life.  Oftentimes they are also desirous of playing a more active role beyond their intimate circle, making them a dynamic part of society.  They’d like to be taken for being as young as they still feel.

Others, who are retired… but continue some professional activity on a part-time basis, let me know that they feel better than ever; that they have worthy goals to meet without the exhaustion they could no longer bear due to the physical realities of their age.

For me, these insights point to some initial policy making:  we must allow our seniors to contribute to society while also improving their income by giving them paid, part-time roles across all professions and levels.  Too tired as a policeman to continue on the beat?  Pay him or her to help train new police recruits on a part-time basis.  Too tired as a teacher to deal with disciplinarian problems or too many students per class?  Pay him or her to give after-school help, freeing up time for the fulltime, overwrought teacher while also bringing an additional support system to help to the students (“it takes a village”).  Too tired as an executive to travel so much?  Pay him or her to coach, council, or transmit learning and best-practices to rising talents.  Etc. 

This would not be mandatory; no one would be required to do it, it would simply be an option allowing the volunteers to make more money (in addition to their pensions), share their talent, enrich the project, etc.… in short, work in a way that is pertinent for them and their situation.   In this way, our seniors would be very much part of a society’s well-being, progress, and performance.  They would no longer be a sign of “decline” but, on the contrary, a recognized force contributing to growth and quality of life.

But the crux of the matter is:  we are getting held up by our cult of youth.

This is a subject I’ll soon tackle in subsequent blogs (this post is already long enough!) but suffice it to say here that our “Performance Society” and our “Marketing of Me” is pushing us to always pursue “youth” no matter our age:

Madonna soon to be 54 years old

It seems to me rather counterproductive to pursue youth via paralysis, nostalgia, and refusal to mature… but, above all, it seems damaging to our society to strip the benefits of age and maturity of their value.

One final point regarding this alleged “fertility implosion”: where there’s smoke there’s often a flame.  If it is true that we need to be watchful over extremely low fertility rates (which is not what I have heard otherwise but…), then, beyond re-empowering seniors / age to make our new demography an asset, our other task is to do what’s necessary to make it easier to conciliate having a family and a career for both men and women!

I’d love to hear your comments.  Otherwise, catch you all next week for another bite from the apple!

Talk to you then,

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?