Being Old is a Privilege

[Remy]

Not everyone gets to be old. You are right. I still remember a young woman I went to high school with. Killed in a car accident in the San Francisco bay area. Her boyfriend was not killed. This was in the 70's. I can only guess she may not have been wearing a seat belt. I was very bullied in school and she was one of these people who was just nice to everyone. Her name was Gina or Regina, I can't remember. Wonder why she had to go.

I have a co-worker who's only daughter has metastatic breast cancer they will not operate on. She is in her earlier 30's, has 2 kids and left her abusive husband a few years ago and moved in with her parents. Not only will those children lose their mother and their dad can't be much, my co-worker will lose her only child.

When I was a young child I had to stand there and watch my mother shoulder heave sob that "I was young once, I had hopes I had dreams" repeated over and over. Lived to 90 that manipulator. After she told me once she'd be dead by morning also as a young child.

We get what we get I guess.

 

[George1959]

I think that every human being is mature when the end comes. Don't get me wrong. Of course all of us, including myself, ask why a child or a young mother or father have to die, but I am sure that these people are souls ready for reincarnation. You may disagree and I value this but I have come to my conclusion due to my own famlilly history.

 

[stephenPE]

I never felt really old until my surgery last October. I turned 69 in January. Still trying to get past my incontinence. And being alone for the first time in my life. I always thought I would gradually age and end up walking a lot instead of all the aerobic exercise I did for 30 years. I have to say it has been the most difficult thing I have ever faced or dealt with. But it is a privilege to live so long and with good health, friends, family, a great job and able to enjoy life. Personally, I have been blessed but I have friends and family that died much younger.

Aging certainly makes you face what is coming. For the last 10 yrs I would look at people like my dad or others and think: "this is what I have to look forward to". It is sobering. I do not fear my demise but don't want to be miserable or in pain for a long time before the end. I guess the movie quote is appropriate. You either get busy living or get busy dying. I have to say watching my brother and close friend going through very bad health is hard, also.

 

[MarkD]

I"d also mention that there seems to be a general assumption that we all get older, wiser, more mature, and understanding. I wish! None of those things are an automatic. Well, other than "older". Some people just stumble through life, and given the state of some of our youth today, and the parenting skills that led to their behaviors, you have to wonder what kind of wisdom the parents have accrued.

Yep, only machines are automatic and we’re nothing like that.

 

[VaughanJB]

Yep, only machines are automatic and we’re nothing like that.

Interestingly, progress is being made the other way. Machines are becoming more human like, while humans worry about gender. AI will lead to machines that aren't simple decision tree's, but can key off human traits to make decisions that imitate human behavior. There are already chatbots where you can't tell if the person you're conversing with is a human or a machine. We are creating machines in our own image.

 

[MarkD]

The Force of Character: And the Lasting Life, came as a welcome read. His chapter, “Old,” is especially interesting

I thought I was familiar with all his books. At least be time I’d bought most of them and read several. I never heard of that one but it is especially interesting given your former profession. I wonder what you’ve gleaned that you’ve found useful going into your own old age. All in all do feel lucky to be the age you are and are there signs that will tell you when you’re nearing the end of your spool? Good to have your perspective on our senior condition.

 

[MarkD]

Interestingly, progress is being made the other way. Machines are becoming more human like, while humans worry about gender. AI will lead to machines that aren't simple decision tree's, but can key off human traits to make decisions that imitate human behavior. There are already chatbots where you can't tell if the person you're conversing with is a human or a machine. We are creating machines in our own image.

Yes they caused quite a stir online for a while. I’m glad we’re mostly past the point where people feel the need to share what they asked and how the AI responded.

Lacking a backstory I never really cared about their chat capacity. Their real utility will always lie in their ability to execute decision trees to make more available needed human expertise. Nothing wrong with that. It’s a real accomplishment.

The Turing test means little more than the ability of programmers to imitate human patterns. As an indicator of subjective states, I didn’t think so.

 

[VaughanJB]

Yes they caused quite a stir online for a while. I’m glad we’re mostly past the point where people feel the need to share what they asked and how the AI responded.

Lacking a backstory I never really cared about their chat capacity. Their real utility will always lie in their ability to execute decision trees to make more available needed human expertise. Nothing wrong with that. It’s a real accomplishment.

The Turing test means little more than the ability of programmers to imitate human patterns. As an indicator of subjective states, I didn’t think so.

We'll agree to disagree. AI takes away the idea of a decision tree, and introduces myriad free form ideas. There is no decision tree, as such. Programming used to be determinate, but that's gone for the most advanced systems. It's about assimilating not only answers and responses, but emotional influences, cultural responses, etc. It's coming. There will come a time when a programmer, or group of programmers, won't know how the model arrived at a response - it'll be too far reaching, too complex. The internet, as a data source, opens up a whole range of human experience.

 

[MarkD]

We'll agree to disagree. AI takes away the idea of a decision tree, and introduces myriad free form ideas. There is no decision tree, as such. Programming used to be determinate, but that's gone for the most advanced systems. It's about assimilating not only answers and responses, but emotional influences, cultural responses, etc. It's coming. There will come a time when a programmer, or group of programmers, won't know how the model arrived at a response - it'll be too far reaching, too complex. The internet, as a data source, opens up a whole range of human experience.

Agreed, leastwise we obviously disagree about the real value of AI. I always think about medical diagnosis as the best application. But for that not knowing how it came up with a diagnosis is the last thing we’d want. I’d only trust it if I knew it was applying the best medical procedure for determining a diagnosis. No one expects it to think up a new determining factor.

I have to say I often disagree with people about AI but never more agreeably than with you. Thanks for being so reasonable.

 

[DaveA]

Who gives value to human life? Who decides what has depreciated?

I don't need anyone to decide what has deteriorated regarding my mind and body. I still have a small figment of my brain still operating well enough to keep me posted on this. Anyone who doesn't recognize their own failings (due to age) is further over the hill than they can imagine.

I'm 90 at the moment.

 

[Mizmo]

Better old and healthy as young and sick. But seriously it is a privilege. I don't want to be young again, especially at these insane times.

At what age do you define old... 80, 90
I have yet in my 91 years to meet an old person who is healthy.
Yes , we have health problems and cope but it is not a privilege.
I am here at this age , with all sorts of problems which have been going on for many years and more as each year passes.

At this point I am truly bored with this old age and ready to ' pop my clogs' any time but while I am here I try to make the best of it.
So I come in to SF and post funnies and strange things and get a laugh from other posts and of course sometimes I get serious like this and just have to get my tuppence worth in.

 

[Paco Dennis]

The more I see this OP thread title each day, the more it just seems off. Isn't a privilige something that your granted by others that has some kind of advantage, or immunity from something, it being a status thing and special? There is nothing special about old age. It is completely average and normal. I think this is one of those be grateful about "blank" things. Fill in the blank and then proceed to make it standout. Cherry picking. Sermonesk. IMHO.

 

[Gary O']

So I do feel privileged at reaching this stage of life and being able to enjoy it, even if it's only for a few short years

I'm there @C50

When we built and lived in our cabins up in the mountains, we were in our late sixties, and on into my 70s

It was exhilarating

The younger folks down the path were amazed when they found out I was 70
Their knowledge in living off grid greatly lacked
They had the energy
We had the ability and savvy

There's really nothing quite like 'old age'

Being Old is a Privilege​

Heh
Being.....is a privilege

Sticking around to 'old 'age' is a freaking miracle

 

[MarkD]

Being Old is a Privilege​

Heh
Bieng.....is a privilege

Sticking around to 'old 'age' is a freaking miracle

I'm with you on that. That wealth of knowledge you had about off grid living is one example of the rich perspective we can gain with age. Of course our physical bits tend to wear out and there is discomfort in that. At some point it may make sense to cash in my chips and tap out but it isn't even close so far.

 

[MarkD]

Mr Stoppelmann, I know you worked in end of life nursing. I wonder if you've heard of or read this book review in Maria Popova's Marginalian weekly newsletter titled Favorite Books of 2023?​

​

HOW TO SAY GOODBYE​

“Death is our friend precisely because it brings us into absolute and passionate presence with all that is here, that is natural, that is love,” Rilke wrote while ailing with leukemia. To comprehend the luckiness of deathis to comprehend life itself. When a loved one is dying and we get to be by their side, it is a double luckiness — lucky that we got to have the love at all, and lucky, which is not everyone’s luck, that we get to say goodbye. Even so, accompanying a loved one as they exit life is one of the most difficult and demanding experiences you could have.

How to move through it is what my talented friend and sometime-collaborator Wendy MacNaughton explores in How to Say Goodbye (public library) — a tender illustrated field guide to being present with and for what Alice James called “the most supremely interesting moment in life,” drawing on Wendy’s time as artist-in-residence at the Zen Hospice Project in San Francisco and her own profound experience at her beloved aunt’s deathbed.





Punctuating Wendy’s signature ink-and-watercolor illustrations of Zen Hospice residents and her soulful pencil sketches of her aunt are spare words relaying the wisdom of hospice caregivers: what to say, how to listen, how to show up, how to stay present with both the experience of the dying and your own.

The book’s beating heart is an invitation to grow comfortable with change, with uncertainty, with vulnerability, radiating a living affirmation of the great Zen teacher Thich Nhat Hanh’s insistence that “when you love someone, the best thing you can offer that person is your presence.”

If you don’t know what to say, start by saying that.
That’s very vulnerable.
So much falling away. The body falling apart.
There’s a lot going on in that conversation.
It’s current.
Right here.
Right now.
Neither of you knows what to do in this situation.
That opens things up.

In lovely symmetry to Zen Hospice Project founder Frank Ostaseski’s five invitations for the end of life, Wendy draws on what she learned from caregivers and distills the five most powerful things we can say to the loved one dying — “a framework for a conversation of love, respect, and closure,” rendered in words of great depth and great simplicity, like the language of children, for it is this realm of unselfconscious candor we return to at the end:

I forgive you.
Please forgive me.
Thank you.
I love you.
Goodbye.

Emanating from these tender pages is a reminder that death merely magnifies the fundamental fact of living: We are fragile motes of matter in the impartial hand of chance, beholden to entropy, haunted by loss, saved only by love.

 

[Manatee]

At age 90, I am on bonus time.

 

[Stoppelmann]

I thought I was familiar with all his books. At least be time I’d bought most of them and read several. I never heard of that one but it is especially interesting given your former profession. I wonder what you’ve gleaned that you’ve found useful going into your own old age. All in all do feel lucky to be the age you are and are there signs that will tell you when you’re nearing the end of your spool? Good to have your perspective on our senior condition.

Hi Mark, we're not yet back from Madeira because our flight was cancelled, so at least I can write this. I am especially confirmed in my training through his book, which was to give the ageing a new perspective that has often been ridiculed by a society that puts youth on a pedestal. But if I believe that my physiology is all I am and a youthful physiology is all that is worth living, there are obvious problems.

When I think of my physiology as my inmost “nature,” I will be on the watch for decline from day to day. What keeps me lasting will be those baneful familiars: Hypochondria, Obsession, Anxiety, and Depression. The scale, the diet, the mirror, and the toilet bowl become my fetish companions. If I can instead think of my inmost “nature” as my character, I may turn to the changes in my nature with a curious mind, digging for discoveries. I can study these changes for insights into character, rather than measuring them against models from the past.

Hillman, James. The Force of Character: And the Lasting Life (p. 83). Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Judging from some of the answers here, it will be difficult for some to accept this perspective. This also has to do with a worldview, and if that is, as with me, in the sense of namasté: “My soul honours your soul. I honour the place in you where the entire universe resides. I honour the light, love, truth, beauty, and peace within you because it also resides within me. In sharing these things, we are united, we are the same, we are one.” This also resonates with the "Buddha-nature."

For many who have been brought up Christian, it is the Christ within, the realm of God within, which I interpret Hillman as saying is the character that needs attention. Eastern traditions regard the physical "sheath" as an illusion we will shed; what is beneath is important. Precisely because of the struggles it presents us, old age is a source of mellow wisdom if we stop regarding our physiology as primary.

I have known wonderful old people, bedridden, stricken, and approaching death, who have taught me and my staff so much about being human. Each had their special character - even in dementia. One lady was completely demented, but she fed the lady in a wheelchair next to her at mealtimes. A man with dementia objected non-verbally to my washing and drying his feet and insisted on doing it himself. They are examples of knowing what was "fitting" without cognition.

We found that supposedly non-religious residents cherished the symbolism that our lady Pastor put into the devotions she held, and even people with dementia were rapt in such settings.

As you know, my wife and I have our own health "trials." We groan when we get out of bed or when our body tells us that our walk was a touch too far. We have regular visits to various doctors, but we hold together and offer community support to neighbours without partners. It is a struggle that young people will hardly understand unless they are confronted with it. Surprisingly, such confrontation often has a positive effect.

 

[Stoppelmann]

Mr Stoppelmann, I know you worked in end of life nursing. I wonder if you've heard of or read this book review in Maria Popova's Marginalian weekly newsletter titled Favorite Books of 2023?​

​

HOW TO SAY GOODBYE​

“Death is our friend precisely because it brings us into absolute and passionate presence with all that is here, that is natural, that is love,” Rilke wrote while ailing with leukemia. To comprehend the luckiness of deathis to comprehend life itself. When a loved one is dying and we get to be by their side, it is a double luckiness — lucky that we got to have the love at all, and lucky, which is not everyone’s luck, that we get to say goodbye. Even so, accompanying a loved one as they exit life is one of the most difficult and demanding experiences you could have.

How to move through it is what my talented friend and sometime-collaborator Wendy MacNaughton explores in How to Say Goodbye (public library) — a tender illustrated field guide to being present with and for what Alice James called “the most supremely interesting moment in life,” drawing on Wendy’s time as artist-in-residence at the Zen Hospice Project in San Francisco and her own profound experience at her beloved aunt’s deathbed.





Punctuating Wendy’s signature ink-and-watercolor illustrations of Zen Hospice residents and her soulful pencil sketches of her aunt are spare words relaying the wisdom of hospice caregivers: what to say, how to listen, how to show up, how to stay present with both the experience of the dying and your own.

The book’s beating heart is an invitation to grow comfortable with change, with uncertainty, with vulnerability, radiating a living affirmation of the great Zen teacher Thich Nhat Hanh’s insistence that “when you love someone, the best thing you can offer that person is your presence.”












In lovely symmetry to Zen Hospice Project founder Frank Ostaseski’s five invitations for the end of life, Wendy draws on what she learned from caregivers and distills the five most powerful things we can say to the loved one dying — “a framework for a conversation of love, respect, and closure,” rendered in words of great depth and great simplicity, like the language of children, for it is this realm of unselfconscious candor we return to at the end:


Emanating from these tender pages is a reminder that death merely magnifies the fundamental fact of living: We are fragile motes of matter in the impartial hand of chance, beholden to entropy, haunted by loss, saved only by love.

I love everything Wendy wrote here, it resonates deeply with me.

 

[Meanderer]

"Never give up! Never surrender!"

 

[VaughanJB]

But for that not knowing how it came up with a diagnosis is the last thing we’d want.

And this is going to be the biggest problem. Because as it currently stands, with AI accumulating knowledge freely, from many different sources, there will come a time where it provides a response we can't trace back to its source. As soon as it can "think", how are we going to know how it made its conclusion?

AI isn't a prescriptive set of programs running - it is freely creating connections, and reaching out, without ever being to specifically target something. That's how it grows. I've no idea when we will reach the point where we can no longer fully know how it's doing its thing and providing answers, but I'm sure it's coming. Part of it, of course, is speed. It can do research far faster than any human or system today. It'll be a wild ride.

I think AI is going to be the next revolution in industry. ALL industries. I'm not saying I like it, but I do think it's inevitable.

And yes, I don't mind disagreeing with reasonable people. It's just that it's not always easy to meet them.

 

[Paco Dennis]

We are talking about being old as a privilege. As we speak AI is finding out how we will be able to live forever. What if it just gets better with time. In 10 years our life spans go up by 20 years. In 20 years our life span increases by 100 years..., etc. No more privilege. Poof!

 

[Teacher Terry]

Chic, I think most people would prefer to be young again. Obviously that’s not possible so I am grateful to still be alive as so many people don’t make it to 70.

 

[Mr. Ed]

Who gives value to human life? Who decides what has depreciated?

i appreciate your sentiments, however did you happen to realize the use metaphors in my description of old age? The next time you go on a trip what would you like to see? What colors?
needless to say not an ordinary trip.
a question of thankfulness: I am thankful for family but not parents, to clarify, church and religion, could’ve done without.
Got an easy life, good family, good relationships, fiends, mobility is limited, relatively good heath, depression manageable what else could I ask for. Except, I would be happier not being born. I would gladly trade my life experience, moments of happiness, and loss of senses to the prospect of not being born in the first place.

 

[Mr. Ed]

I don't see a connection between considering old age a privilege and sexual attraction.

Why not? As an old man, being attracted to older women is most certainly a privilege

 

[MarkD]

And this is going to be the biggest problem. Because as it currently stands, with AI accumulating knowledge freely, from many different sources, there will come a time where it provides a response we can't trace back to its source. As soon as it can "think", how are we going to know how it made its conclusion?

AI isn't a prescriptive set of programs running - it is freely creating connections, and reaching out, without ever being to specifically target something. That's how it grows. I've no idea when we will reach the point where we can no longer fully know how it's doing its thing and providing answers, but I'm sure it's coming. Part of it, of course, is speed. It can do research far faster than any human or system today. It'll be a wild ride.

I think AI is going to be the next revolution in industry. ALL industries. I'm not saying I like it, but I do think it's inevitable.

And yes, I don't mind disagreeing with reasonable people. It's just that it's not always easy to meet them.

Maybe you wouldn’t see a program designed to diagnose illness as AI at all? But I don’t see why AI as such requires it being freewheeling.