It’s the old people’s fault, who live too long/too well! The new ageism
In a markedly noticeable way in recent years, public discourse has begun to look at old age (and at those who inhabit it) with a mix of condescension and reproach. Even with anger. I hesitate to use the word “resentment,” but there is certainly strong blame. So much so that people speak of “generational gaps” (if not conflict) as if they were trenches, with a narrative of blame that turns age differences into a symbolic battleground. Faced with the pressing problems of younger generations (housing, but also wages), it is suggested with no argument required that those at fault are the ones who bought long ago; that low wages or even climate change are the consequence of decisions made by a generation that “already lived too well.” Older people are singled out as the obstacle, the problem, the burden, or— in its most recent and virulent version (because of what it provokes)—the privilege. If Taro Aso’s words (“hurry up and die!”, to whom I referred here and here, but also here) were shocking in 2013, they seem to enjoy a certain acceptance today. For example, public pension amounts are confronted with private wages—something I cannot quite understand—in a demand that seems to say, “better that we all be worse off.”
In reality, conflict between generations is an illusion that hides the fragility of what is shared. Aging is not a decision or a privilege: it is a natural consequence of being alive. No one chooses the year in which they are born, nor the social conditions in which they happen to be born, nor their family of origin. Belonging to a generation should not mean bearing the moral responsibility of a system that precedes and exceeds us. When structural problems—inequality, precariousness, lack of opportunities—are interpreted as a confrontation between generations, the result is the usual one: responsibility is shifted to the private, to the individual, and guilt is individualized. The economic system, however, seems to be kept “safe” from criticism.
Until very recently, ageism did not usually take aggressive forms. In fact, most of the time it operated through the softness of well-intentioned prejudice, as something “affectionate,” paternalistic, and infantilizing. It was indeed present in discourses that continuously reduced older people to a homogeneous block, as if age erased the diversity of trajectories, classes, or life histories. In these discourses, people have avoided the word “old” (the one I reclaim—to be able to re-signify the word simply as the opposite of new) and opted for paternalistic euphemisms (“our elders”), as if naming old age directly were a kind of insult, a bad word, a matter of bad manners. From my point of view, the idea behind these uses and this avoidance of the word “old” is very negative, because it suggests that aging diminishes our value. That is the moment when we turn a simple word into an insult.
From my analysis, and drawing on my research, I defend the word “old” as the opposite of “new,” as a synonym for experience and a life lived. I do not accept the interpretation of “old” as the opposite of valuable (as if aging diminished our worth), but as the opposite of new—nothing more. From my perspective, other seemingly well-intentioned formulations actually blur the nuances of that negative idea, associating the word “old” with obsolete, with what must be replaced. And that same cultural pattern—the one that celebrates what is young, fast, brief—also contaminates our way of thinking about society. The new is assumed to be better, and what came before, something that gets in the way. In short: it turns age into a form of exclusion.
The new ageism has a peculiarity: it no longer limits itself to devaluing old age, but holds it responsible for social problems. In this new framing, older people cease to be invisible and become a target. They are singled out as possessors of privileges that hinder the progress of others, assuming that generations are rivals and linking age to social class. As I have said many times, this blaming only diverts attention from the system’s structural failures. It is not old people who create inequality.
Turning social unrest into a conflict between generations is a sophisticated form of fragmentation. Generational confrontation is, in the end, a social trap: it replaces solidarity with suspicion, conversation with distance. The notion that young people are victims of previous generations never proposes improvements or solutions; instead, it feeds on the idea of conflict (creating it) and weakens the community.
Sometimes ageism, as I said, takes the form of paternalism. It is said that older people must be protected, but without involving them. Programs, settings, and discourses are designed in which their role is passive, merely receptive. Even apparently affectionate expressions—“our elders”—contain a dose of symbolic appropriation: as if people, when aging, lost the right to belong to themselves. This protection ends up erasing their voice and denying their agency. What is presented as care may actually be another form of control, of denying autonomy. Of reducing, ultimately, the person to a number (their age).
The consequence is twofold: the participation of those who could contribute more experience is weakened, and the idea that old age is synonymous with irrelevance is reinforced. We forget that a society that deprives a part of itself of a voice becomes incomplete and ends up failing.
By excluding older people from social dialogue, the continuity of the shared narrative is broken. Each generation becomes confined to its own present, without the ability to understand where it comes from and forgetting where it is going. We are left without a shared story, in intra-generational monologues at best. In the cemetery of my grandfather’s village, there is a sign that says: “where you see yourself, I saw myself; and where you see me, you will see yourself.” With old age, with old men, with old women, the same thing happens to us. If things go well, we will be where they are.
Blaming those who age is to ignore that we all will. Time does not belong to anyone (perhaps it is we who belong to time), but it runs through all of us. Generations are not watertight compartments but overlapping layers that need one another.
Perhaps this is why ageism is, ultimately, a form of fear. Fear of the passage of time, of loss of control, of the fragility that conquers us and makes us equal. The challenge lies in replacing the logic of confrontation with that of exchange and collaboration, learning to live with the time (the ages) of others.
Societies that understand longevity as a shared achievement—not as a problem with blame to be “distributed”—are the only ones that can progress. As the saying goes, I can go faster alone, but together we can go further. By integrating all life-stage groups along that path, we will also enjoy the journey.
