The image of a person sitting alone in front of a useless television, asking for a fearless elderliness, was described by “Sui Generis” more than twenty years ago. Some countries considered it a State Policy: they created a Ministry of Solitude, enacted laws to force sons and daughters to visit their parents and arranged zero isolation policies or decent aging programs.
The loneliness of older adults is so relevant that it must be a reason for public policies.
The legislation of the twentieth century distinguished between those who worked actively and those who had retired, who became the “passive class”. These laws were based on the fact that this group was small, made up of people who would live just a little longer and that could sustain themselves with the savings they had made throughout their active lives. Now, everything changed.
In our times, there is an increasingly large sector of people who can live up to 80 or 90 years. The time spent in their first job is equal to or less than the time they spend after they retire. Their expenses increased considerably due to the cost of “old age” medicine and all this impacts the social security system, opening a well-known debate on this subject.
But there are other aspects.
A long-lasting life is difficult within a context of accelerated technological changes. For example, a person who is 90 years old today, had a childhood where there were no kitchens, refrigerators, air conditioning, heart transplants, cars, telephones, airplanes, trips to the moon or television. A person who is 30 years old today saw the birth of smartphones, Internet, Google, YouTube, Amazon, Facebook, incredible medical technologies, unguided cars, Netflix series and electronic currency.
The elderly struggle with technology, advances exceed them, they do not understand what is going on around them, and they have to ask younger people how to use a telephone or how to collect their retirement through home banking. The chances of earning your own income in a world of technology based jobs is low.
Regarding this aspect, the group of relatives or friends cannot fulfill “containment functions” as they used to in the past. In other times, people worked within their family economic unit. The offspring could support their parents when they were adults. In our times, each one of us works or lives or has relationships outside their families and adolescence extends for a longer period of time, all of which leads to an individualistic existence. In other times, solitude was perceived as strange, almost stigmatizing, as a social rule. But now living alone, eating alone, dating alone is a culturally massive behavior.
In short, the social problem is that there is a large group of adults in solitude who end up with their traditional working life, live in a technological environment that is increasingly menacing and have families or friends who don’t take care of them.
We are hurt by individual tragedies: the retiree who cannot afford his medications; the person who is left alone at home without being able to pay for care services; the one with diminished capacities; the one who lives alone; the person who has a job, like artists, that involves personal efforts that cannot be sustained for a lifetime. Family or friends, who want to help them but can’t, are also hurt by this situation. It is too much for everyone to fix this by themselves.
There are numerous measures that can be implemented through public policies:
- Continuous education, so as to enable people to have other jobs or activities by coordinating universities, schools and associations.
- Medical assistance, subsidies for medicine, psychological attention for pain and fear.
- The interaction between neuroscience and public polices (subject mentioned by Facundo Manes and I in a dialogue published in Infobae, which focuses on discernment and guardianship of the elderly as vulnerable subjects).
- Promoting sociability, places for the elderly to meet up. In this sense, technology helps. Websites, choirs, games, debate panels, which require a more planned organization than the current one.
- Incentives for companies that provide services to adults and also give them employment. There are many companies that focus on adults as consumers of tourism, food, special homes, clothing, etc.
Perhaps feelings, compassion, solidarity and values of respect for the elderly are the most important things.
In this sense, we must consider that it is the first time in the history of humanity that a generation transmits knowledge to the previous one. This is what happens with technology, which evolves so fast that children teach adults how to handle their cell phones, computers or games.
This statement refers to technique, but not to wisdom. The problems of jealousy, power disputes or spiritual disorientation are similar, whether we are situated in times of Socrates, in Shakespeare’s or in the present.
Adults have the experience that can evolve into wisdom, which must be appreciated in a society that advances in technology and that is going through a decline of its values.