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No one should negotiate their dreams. Dreams must be free to flee and fly high. No government, no legislature, has a right to limit your dreams. You should never agree to surrender your dreams.

JESSE JACKSON
Collective fear stimulates herd instinct, and tends to produce ferocity toward those who are not regarded as members of the herd.

BERTRAND RUSSELL

Ageism

Socio-culturally we are conditioned to value youth, longevity, productivity, strength and beauty. Despite some positive images of aging in the popular cultural, doom and gloom associations of aging are in the minds of most Americans.

A daily diet of marginalization has a tragic effect on an individual’s self worth.

When elderly people are treated as incompetent, slow, uninteresting, and ugly, their ability to function effectively is compromised. A daily diet of marginalization has a tragic effect on an individual’s self worth. Learned helplessness (a psychological condition often thought to be at the root of depression that describes the inability to act because of repeatedly being placed in a situation where no action can help) becomes a very real risk for the aging.

Ageism is not a traditional “ism” in that we all will become old, making aging the one stigmatized, discriminated against group that we will all join. What does this mean that complacent youth stereo-type the aging so that their attributes are discredited? What are the implications for future generations if we continue to treat the elderly as an Other? In 1975, in her book The Coming Of Age, Simone de Beauvoir wrote: “If we do not know what we are going to be, we cannot know what we are. Let us recognize ourselves in this old man or in that old woman. It must be done if we are to take upon ourselves the entirety of our human state”.