(Put this blogsite in your bookmarks - Bruce Charlton's Notions – CL)
I have written before about the fact that mainstream modern
culture has no distinctive role for the elderly; and that
all the old people held-up for admiration by the mass media are simply
continuing to do what young people do as a matter of course - such as looking
young, doing strenous physical activities, being very active (lots of sex,
holidays and socialising - pre 2020).
In the end, however, for modern culture; old people are
merely second-rate/ fake young people.
The idea - and indeed the actuality - of old people as wiser
then young, has disappeared. Modern 'exemplary' old people are Not wiser -
unless 'wisdom' consists in pretending to be young; by
ever-increasing usage of plastic surgery, cosmetics and drugs (lots of
drugs!).
Modern old people are a
failure! At present, especially in 2020, they are often much worse than the
young in their cowardly and credulous embrace of the totalitarian Healthist
agenda that (in reality) aims to imprison and (eventually) kill them.
Why are old people such a failure? The brief and truthful answer is
Solzhenitsyn's phrase that They Have Forgotten God. Modern Old
People are mostly Godless children of the fifties and sixties - even/
especially when they self-identify as Christian.
This is significant, because one of the main roles of old gage -
and the potential source of that wisdom associated with old age, is retrospective
re-evaluation.
When one is a Christian, retrospective re-evaluation happens
almost spontaneously - which is why wisdom became stereotypical.
What happens is that the past becomes as important as the
present; and indeed looms larger in the attention of the elderly. Old people
remember the events of their early life more often and more vividly than they
remember the events of yesterday or last week.
I don't mean due to the memory loss of dementia - although that
is a pathological exaggeration of the natural phenomenon. I mean in terms of
spontaneous attention and concern.
The elderly find themselves going-over the events of earlier
life in a way that is far more focused and concerned than they have ever
previously experienced. What is then supposed to happen, is
that these events are considered with Christian discernment.
Here, as in many places, we see that the purpose of this
mortal life is Christian - and when one is Not a Christian it
follows that mortal life is drained of purpose - as so many billions
of people are experiencing at present.
What happens when we re-evaluate our earlier life from a
Christian perspective; is that events and periods we regarded as being
'good times' often turn-out to be bad.
For example, successful hedonism was enjoyable at the time; but
we can now see that 'happiness' was merely pleasure - and often represented
successful selfish short-termism.
Periods of social success, high status, triumph - we now
recognise were often bad for us; and ended by reinforcing the worst aspects
of ourselves; generating pride, entitlement, passivity and other vices.
We may see that these supposedly 'happy' periods led to habits
and attitudes, choices and decisions, that led to misery and alienation in the
longer-term. Or led to harm done to other people - of which we were (selfishly)
unaware at the time.
On the plus side; we find that some of periods of 'ordinary'
everyday experience, for example family life, which seemed at the time dull,
mundane, constricting; were in truth the best and most important things we ever
did!
That (then un-noticed) time, sitting or walking alone - looking
at a view, or 'just thinking' - was actually of great and lasting importance!
Part of our Golden Thread.
Superficially, 'nothing was happening' - yet now we find such
events rising to the surface of awareness - and their magical transcendence is
revealed for the first time.
But none of this work of
discernment and re-evaluation is possible unless we are Christian, and
understand our mortal lives in terms of our choice to follow Jesus to
resurrected life in Heaven.
So it turns-out that one
of the real functions of old age has been lost along with
theism in general, and Christian faith in particular.
Restore Christianity, and
we recover the value of old age.
https://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2020/12/old-age-is-partly-about-re-evaluating.html