From: Damien Broderick (d.broderick@english.unimelb.edu.au)
Date: Thu Mar 09 2000 - 18:56:09 MST
>
>Since it only recently is qulity lpngevity and a cure for death "up for
>discussion" in any rational circle, and people have for CENTURIES sought
>comfort in finding justification and "need" for it, both religious and
>evolutionary -- probably to soften the pain of it's inevitability, how can we
>expect a sudden mass change of heart?
Since evolutionary psychology is highly regarded on this list, it might be
useful to apply its principles to this topic.
Start with the historical/evolutionary fact that we *do* degrade with the
passage of time, but have evolved anyway to live for decades past our
strict use-by date (a few years after menopause, say). This might just be
due to a series of accidents; we are over-engineered for the wild, and in
the supportive environment of technological culture we can stave off many
of the normal hazards of living with decaying organ systems, increasing
numbers of cellular mutations, sub-optimal mitochondria, etc. None the
less, given that this persistence into senescence *has happened*, it
provided a window for evolution (either genetic or mimetic or both
reinforcing each other) to craft people into typical age-framed roles.
So perhaps your genetic and mimetic inclusive fitness is increased (say) if
you move contentedly through a sequence of behaviours consonant with your
increasing frailty, decreased excitability, condensed memory (wisdom?),
etc. Just as we are programmed with time-activated templates for latency,
puberty, parenthood and grandparenthood (although these can be modified by
choice, with greater flexibility the later the phases occur, maybe),
perhaps we are also pre-fitted with propensities that make us suitable
oldsters in a community.
If so, people rightly get nervous or sarcastic when they see `old' men or
women `making fools of themselves' by `not acting their age'. Arguably this
is not just rigid prejudice and lack of imagination; perhaps it reflects a
folk psychological understanding that we, as mimetic critters par
excellence, are prey to misguided longings that do us and the community no
good at all to give in to.
Now all this changes, naturally, once we really *do* find ways to extend
health and vigour into the decades of `old age'. If we learn to correct
senescence failures and maintain ourselves in good youthful health, there
might be no painful or foolish inconsistency between our physical phase and
our wish to `act young'. Or maybe that's not right, either, since some of
these changes actually are emergent, and we'll find all sorts of new
troubling pecularities arising when we have old wine in endlessly new
wineskins.
In any event, I wonder if we mightn't find a variety of pathologies
emerging, both individual and social, as complex adaptations to the ancient
fact of ageing suddenly jumps their tracks. And in the meantime, it might
be worth asking if the apparent mean-minded or deluded prejudices against
old people acting as if they were spring chickens is an evolved response to
disruptive behaviours, just as the strictures against incest and
paedophilia, say, seem to arise out of such conflicts. That doesn't mean we
should endorse such evolved responses. But if they exist, and have been
selected as adaptive, we might look more carefully and perhaps charitably
at those who embody them.
Damien
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