Aging

The challenges of aging, from midlife to end of life, involve far more than just shifting demographics. In a socio-religious context, they involve the redefinition of individual and collective identity and self-worth. As many societies worldwide become increasingly older, the aging life cycle is emerging as a social imperative addressed, at least in part, by religious praxis. As people experience their inevitable progression from youthful exuberance to middle age, to aged frailty, their socially defined sense of belonging and perception of life's meaning change. Humans are confronted by mortality, and within their social systems, they are forced to process their conceptions of weakness, physical/mental deterioration, and death.

The issue of aging is different depending on the cultural and religious context. In areas of the world dominated by traditional Hindu, Buddhist, Islamic, and indigenous cultural traditions, old age is often accepted as a respected and honorable stage of life. In many of these parts of the world, the average population age is quite young, and elderly people are accorded a respected role in life. In more urban areas of these parts of the world and in the modern urbanized West, aging can be a more painful social process. In both cases, however, religious belief and association can play a positive role. This entry will focus on the problems of the modern West, for which Christianity and Judaism are the primary religious cultural traditions.

There are several cultural, social, and systemic problems generated by the aging process. In many cultures—especially Western cultures—older people are segregated and rejected by societies that value youth, strength, outer beauty, and physical/mental prowess. Social rejection can lead to self-loathing and a sense that one is unwanted and clinging to a life without meaning. This feeling is exacerbated by the direct experience of physical human deterioration combined with the knowledge that all human life is moving toward a certain end. As one's limitations grow, life is progressively seen as more and more finite, and one's focus is on the triumphs—or in many cases shortcomings—of the past instead of hope for the future. Focusing on the past, acknowledging the loss of youth, and developing an increasingly real awareness of death can induce fear, guilt, shame, anxiety, and an overall loss of agency. A negative view of the self, one's vocation, and interpersonal relationships can cause older people to seek meaning in a transcendent reality.

Apart from the general effect aging has on Western society's conception of self-worth, other key familial and cultural factors contribute to the greater perception of the older self. Some cultures revere the elderly as wise and having worth, not as reminders of inevitable physical and mental decay deserving isolation and abandonment. Within the economically focused, capitalist Western cultures, however, the elderly are sometimes seen as liabilities due to their lack of productivity. Also, in these cultures, the family unit is changing. It is generally not as nuclear, predictable, stable, or geographically confined as it was in years past. Because of these conditions, care for the aged tends to veer toward what is convenient and local—managed senior care—as opposed to supporting the proliferation of multigenerational households. Increasing numbers of older people form new “families” within retirement communities to combat loneliness, isolation, [Page 20]and negative self-worth. In a dynamic, rapidly changing culture teeming with social upheaval and problematic social developments (crime, violence, general tumult, and war, to name a few), the pseudo-family can offer safety, refuge, acceptance, and peace.

...