Let us break open the boxes in which our culture has placed the elderly. Doing so will serve not only the elderly of today, but also the elderly of tomorrow. Breaking open the boxes, beating down the stereotypes of what we see when we look at the elderly, is a personal endeavor as much as it is social activism. I shudder at the thought that as I grow older society will value me less; or even worse, that I will value myself less; or that when, at 70, I might indulge in a little harmless social monkey business only to earn myself a chorus of disapproving glances. I do not want people to stare at me when, at 80 and while riding the bus, I choose to give my girlfriend a peck on the cheek. I do not want students at, for instance, some university rally, to dismiss what I say because I am deemed to be too old to know the score. If I whistle a song in the supermarket, I would prefer it if the spry 40-year old at the cash register did not take it as ill-mannered behavior. When I walk down the street, I do not want to notice that no one looks at me anymore, and when I drive my car, I can do without loud honking and a livid motorist behind me shouting that I'm an old fart who should stay off the roads. And I don't want to have to be extra-careful at the cash machine, or go to a party only to be seen as a person who is of no interest to anyone present.

If, as a white male in his so-called prime, I feel myself into being an older person in today's society, then I begin to realize that the experiences I fear mirror those of many of this society's minorities and other marginalized groups. These groups have been talking for decades about being ignored, shunned, disapproved of, intimidated, ridiculed and mistreated. The experience of growing old has become for many the experience of becoming just that kind of outcast.

This experience has been in the making for some time now. In the nineteenth century, medicine began to classify old age as a disease, a period of moral and mental decrepitude. Modern industry had (and has) little use for those who it judges to be less willing or able to be exploited by long and intense hours of labor. Capitalism and the free market have little use for those who do not purchase and consume to the degree that they once did. Research links increased modernization to a decrease in the elderly's social status and a fraying of the traditional attitudes toward responsibility and care for them. The demise of the extended family in modern, industrialized countries, with a trend toward moving the grandparents out of the house and (often) into isolation is an example of this shift in attitude.

Not that there was ever a golden age of the elderly. Life expectancy has indeed improved significantly, from for instance 47 years in mid-19th-century Germany, to the high seventies today. It was in fact Otto von Bismarck who invented 65 as the retirement age in his social program because statistically most people were dead by then. Until relatively recently, a rather small portion of society lived to retirement age. Today, thanks to medical science and a host of other factors, great steps have been taken in treating the elderly and in managing chronic pain, resulting in an increase in life expectancy.

Conflicted Past

Note that the respect that the older members of a family received within their family circle often went hand in hand with oppression of the families' younger members by these very elders. This makes the issue of respecting the elderly much more complex and emotionally charged. When a a young person feels mistreated or even abused by an older person, this experience can be difficult to undo. Can this abuse of power - at least partially - be connected to the loss of power the elderly have experienced in the last generations?

The Elderly: As Diverse as Other Groups

It is important to note that when we talk about the elderly we are not talking about a homogeneous group of people. Much has been researched on and written about the heterogeneity of the elderly based on their birthplace, ethnicity, race, gender, social class or financial status. Just as there is an unfathomable diversity in character and personality among the younger generations, the same diversity exists among the elderly.

Becoming Conscious of the Box

Freud's dictum of "where id is, let ego be" (or, in other words, let us become conscious of that which is still unconscious) begs the following question: How can we as individuals, as a culture and society and through our politics, remain aware of this amazing diversity among the elderly? Whether it is a part of basic human nature to quickly identify and label the unknown, or whether it is a fashion of modern societies (or even a combination of the two), we like to stick labels on one another and impose certain norms and expectations. The pain and suffering of many minority groups in the United States can attest to this. As Mike Hepworth states, the "belief that life can be differentiated into a number of phases, each with its own definitive characteristics interconnected by appropriate transitions or status passages," is itself a structure of thinking that is in need of revision.