Cultural values toward aging in Asian versus Western societies

Aging

Go Gracefully Into That Good Night

The lucky among the human race share one fate: They get to enter the kingdom of the aged.

This is not -- at least in the United States -- generally the consensus view of aging. Good luck? To get old? Surely not. Wrinkles and hearing aids and trifocals? Who would want those?

Well, as the adage goes, consider the alternative.

That "alternative" is -- of course -- death. But this paper underscores the point that there are other alternatives. Not to death, of course, because death awaits us all, whether in infancy, childhood, adulthood, or senescence. But what awaits the lucky who get to the point of old age does not have to be a litany of ailments and weaknesses, of declines and depression. Old age brings its challenges in terms of both physical and mental health. But it brings its richnesses too. The question for each one of us is to find those veins of ore.

Unfortunately, this search for a rewarding and insightful old age depends on a number of factors that are not under the control of the individual. Just as the most useful quality that a person can have in becoming rich is to have rich parents, one of the most significant advantages in achieving an old age that is at least touched by grace as well as veined with sorrow is to be born into a culture that values the elderly.

Each According to Her Talents

Each person -- with the possible exception of true sociopaths, and scholars differ in regards to whether the true sociopath exists or whether she or he is simply the brain-child of the grocery-store-aisle thriller -- has something to contribute to society. In some measure, the contributions that each one of us can make arise from individual, idiosyncratic attributes. Some of us are good at designing bridges, others at buildings bridges, still others at painting those bridges. Such skills arise from the interaction of experience, training, education, and our genetic potential.

Other skills are assigned to us by our cultures. These in some measure (some of the time) reflect real physical abilities and limitations of the individual. But more often they reflect ideas in the society at hand about what is appropriate and proper for men and women, for the young and old, for the single, the married, the widowed. And it is in this nexus of individual potential and abilities and socially determined (and sometimes over-determined) role that there are alternatives for the elderly that often allow for a greater degree of grace than is usually afforded to the elderly in the United States and many Western European nations.

Before describing some of the advantages granted to the elderly in some societies -- like most Asian cultures -- it is important to note that these societies have their drawbacks as well. To a certain extent, societal, cultural, and familial resources are limited, and the ease of the elderly may come at the expense of members of younger generations.

Religious Underpinnings of Honoring the Aged

Societies in which the elderly generally have a higher position often has a religious system that helps support this position. This is hardly surprising, for cultures are in general highly integrated. A society in which the elderly are given a significant amount of power in the family and the government is also likely to have a religion in which the elderly have important roles. Thus the religious of traditional Asian societies such as Shintoism and Confucianism tend to honor those who possess traits that the elderly are likely to have: A long memory, well-developed analytical skills, a sense of the important stories of the culture and of the gods.

It is also true, of course, that the elderly are not simply the gracious but essentially passive recipients of societies that honor them. For it is true that whichever group -- or groups -- are most honored by a society comprises individuals that receive favorable treatment. And it is equally true that humans are inclined to promote those social and cultural conditions that promote their own welfare. Thus the elderly are likely to support social conditions, laws, and norms that are to their advantage.

The above statement might seem as if it were meant as a criticism of older people. But this is anything but the case. There is a traditional Jewish proverb: "If I am not for myself, then who will be for me? But if I am for myself alone, then who am I?" This is an extremely useful framework with which to view the issue of how the elderly can flourish in a society that also has room and grace for people of other generations also to flourish.

However -- to turn the above statement around one more time -- it is also true that sometimes the elderly do impose on younger generations. Simply because someone is older does not in any way guarantee that she or he is good or generous or kind -- anymore than there is any guarantee that someone who is physically disabled or a racial minority is going to be compassionate or kind because his or her own experiences are likely to have taught the importance of compassion and tolerance.

Whose Voice Is Privileged?

In the same vein, it is important to understand that societies that are praised for their treatment of the elderly are generally privileging the voices of the elderly themselves. For example, a woman in many traditional Asian societies will participate in an exogamous marriage, one in which she marries out of and away from her own family and moves into the household and village of her new husband and his family. This places her under the power not only of her new husband but of her new mother-in-law. This older woman is likely to have waited most of her life to have any measure of power. Such a life journey is not generally one that will encourage a great deal of compassion for younger women.

While there is a great deal of popular psychology and culture that argues that suffering makes us compassionate, this is very often not the case. A woman who has been subject to emotional, psychological, and often physical abuse throughout her earlier decades would have to be saintly indeed not to feel the urge to retaliate on the next generation. And so young brides in many cultures that value the importance of the elderly are often abused in many different ways by the older female members of their husband's families. A new bride may find herself beaten by a mother-in-law despite many hours a day of hard domestic work even as the bride struggles with the challenges of pregnancy and early motherhood.

The combination of tending to both older and younger generations can make each day unbearably long and difficult for younger women. And thus one must ask whether the society as a whole is more just or better if the young are sacrificed to the old.

A first response to the above would be that, while such a system is certainly difficult for younger members of a family but that everything evens out in the end as each generation takes its position at the top of the family hierarchy. There are two problems with this response. The first is that not everyone gets to the top of the familial hierarchy since not everyone achieves sufficient age to outlive those older than him or her.

A second response is even more important: A system in which some are exploited harms everyone. This does not mean that everyone is harmed equally, of course. Men are harmed by a sexist society, for example, but not as much as women are. But a society that celebrates each phase of an individual's life is one that is ideal. This is something that may not exist in its purest form, but certainly individuals and their families in at least some societies can work to achieve a system in which each stage of life is acknowledged as valuable.

Everyone Does Better When Everyone Does Better

Descriptions of society like the United States often emphasize the fact that youth is celebrated in this culture to an extreme. The phrase "youth obsessed" is in fact often applied to the United States and similar cultures, and it is certainly true that many aspects of American society are geared toward younger people. Advertisements generally feature younger actors hawking products that younger individuals will want. Movies and television shows feature story lines and actors that focus on issues of concern to younger people. In popular culture -- and in the minds of marketers -- older people are often nearly invisible.

Older Americans are also nearly invisible -- that is to say, nearly absent from -- the workplace. Just when many workers are achieving their most valuable levels of skills and education, they are forced -- with more or less gentleness or force -- to retire, to move on so that younger workers can have their chance.

Older Americans often live in poverty. This is a terrible aspect of American culture. The high levels of poverty are especially prevalent among older women, many of whom spend their last days in terrible penury. This is a terrible shame for the country -- that older people should spend their last days worrying about how they are going to afford to pay for food and medication. Many older Americans receive only minimal government support and many are either estranged from their families or, even if not formally estranged they receive little economic or emotional support from their families.

This lack of sufficient support from their families arises from a number of different causes -- not the least being that older Americans are simply not seen as valuable members of either the families themselves or of society as a whole. It is far too easy for the younger members of many families to see their older relatives as simply burdensome, as having outlined their "usefulness." There is little appreciation for what older members of a family can and do contribute in innumerable ways. These ways may not be economic or even visible in any pragmatic way. But having older members of a family involved on a regular basis with younger family members allows those younger members to learn about the values of the family from older relatives.

Younger family members can also learn about the importance of patience and the virtues of being able to listen to others. This is not to say that younger people have to agree with -- or even believe! -- everything that older family members have to say. But simply acquiring the skills needed to listen carefully to another person is a valuable skill that will help a person throughout her or his life, and is something that can be gained through listening to an older person.

Perhaps even more importantly, a younger person can learn from an older person that many of the values of youth -- such as an emphasis on physical beauty and sexual attraction as a primary force -- are in fact transitory and ephemeral. This is not to say that there is anything wrong with such values; however, it is vital that younger people understand that values, needs, and goals change over the course of the lifespan. And the best way to learn about the changing textures of a life may well be from an older relative.

Not only does such a strategy help younger people, it would help older members of a family as well because it would remind (and reassure) older people that what they have learned and survive have real value.

Death is a certainty, but grace is not. When generations meet each other again and again in a spiral as each moves through their own life, each person can feel values, validated, and elevated.