“I wish I died before I get old,” he sang. WHORoger Daltrey in his 1965 hit single my generation, voiced the grievances of young people yearning for freedom from their noisy elders. Mr. Daltrey's wish did not come true. He is now 80 years old, but he probably wants to die much older. However, while many societal views have changed dramatically for the better since 1965, the negative views about aging that were accepted then are largely still accepted today.
Ageism is perhaps the last widespread form of prejudice in Western society. According to another organization called the World Health Organization (WHO), about half of people around the world have a negative view of older people, including many older people themselves. . That is irrational prejudice. That's not just because it's based on lazy stereotypes, but also because older people are one of the marginalized groups that, if we're lucky, we'll all eventually join.
It's also self-defeating. As we report in our special feature (How to Live Longer by Overcoming Negative Attitudes to Aging), ageism not only makes young people look down on their elders, it also makes older people It can also cause you to look down on yourself and narrow your perspective. And the disease can get worse as you get older. There's even evidence that young people who are ageist may have worse health outcomes when they themselves get older.
Significant efforts have been made to ensure that prejudice based on ethnicity, gender, sexuality, physical and mental ability, body type, nationality, etc., is not accepted. We still have a ways to go in all of this. However, progress since then has been my generation It has made our society richer, more tolerant, more diverse and more creative. Eliminating ageism could multiply these benefits and ultimately make us all healthier.
There are a number of pioneering organizations working to address the scourge of age discrimination, and they are doing everything they can to do so. Daltrey himself is now an anti-ageism campaigner and appears to have changed his stance when it comes to his comments about older people. This is a campaign we should all support, no matter our age.
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Source: www.newscientist.com
