Critical Turns of Time, Age, and Aging.
Jan Baars, Ph.D. FAcSS FGSA
University of Humanistic Studies, Utrecht, The Netherlands
www. janbaars.nl
info@janbaars.nl
Keynote presented at the 8th European IAGG Congress, April 23rd 2015, Dublin
I am very grateful for the honor to deliver the first keynote lecture of this European
congress, which is an eminent platform for contemporary international research on
aging. A congress that is also a tribute to the prominence and flourishing of aging
studies in Ireland. Congresses such as this are vital opportunities to get updated on
new research but also to think once more about the basic concepts or assumptions of
what we are doing. In this fashion I will present a brief conceptual analysis of time,
age and aging and conclude with a short discussion of the theme of this conference
Unlocking the Demographic Dividend.
I will begin and end with a short reference to Matisse’s amazing late work of paper
cutouts which was born from his sudden incapacity to use his hands and arms to paint.
Out of this formidable existential crisis a new form of creativity arose that was not
appreciated by all. Which is normal. What is remarkable from a gerontological point
is that some commentators did not express that they disliked the cutouts, or thought
they were bad art, but that they were an expression of Matisse’s senility, because after
all, he was already approaching 80 when he began to show this work. This is a stark
example of what we call ageism. I want to suggest however, somewhat provokingly,
that the tendency to use age in a seemingly self evident way represents a more
pervasive problem for aging studies.
Time, age and aging
Aging and time are interconnected because aging is basically living seen in a temporal
perspective; especially living after having already lived for a relatively long time.
This makes ‘time’ an important concept in trying to explain aging. ‘Time’ is usually
connected to ‘aging’ through the concept of ‘age’, that is meant as an indicator of
‘aging’. With calendars and clocks we can measure precisely what the ‘age’ of a
person is in the sense of time since birth, although the meaning of such a fact differs
depending on specific contexts and interpretations. Just imagine the differences
between people who have lived the same number of years, let’s say 55 years in
different historical circumstances, in different countries, wealthy or poor regions, in
risky low paid jobs or in a generously paid interesting academic position. However,
‘age’ continues to carry implicit generalizing assessments with it. As if somebody’s
age could be an answer instead of initiating new questions. I am not referring here to
people who interpret their own ages in the context of their biographies; I am speaking
here of age-related generalizations that are meant as explanations of aging processes.
Human aging involves processes that may have causal implications in interaction with
contexts. Such processes can be measured over time and this may expand our
knowledge but chronometric time does not cause anything: it is nothing more than a
measurement of dated durations; very important for many purposes but underreflected in its relevance for aging. This fortunate habit to assume that time
measurements are meaningfully laden appears to be inspired by traditions in which
time was seen as representing a universal order of phases, eras, stages of the universe
or mankind. Such a normative order or ontological ‘Logos‘ led to the term
chronological (Baars, forthcoming). To emphasize the need to explicate such implicit
meanings of time and age I use the term chronometric time.
Chronometric time is a specific form of time that is grounded, not in dynamics of
living nature, but in the movements of the solar system: gravitational movements of
enormous bodies of dead weight. Insofar as these movements are not regular enough
for precise measurements they are corrected by the rhythms of other dead materials:
extremely frequent and stable atomic oscillations. However, the life that evolves on at
least one of these gravitational bodies can be dated and measured but its
developments do not follow chronometric time.
Of course, these reservations neither deny the finitude of life – nor that aging takes
place within the limits of the species. It is however, unclear where these limits lie –
they are empirical limits that will be broken by anyone who lives longer than
Madame Calment. More important than the maximum life span are implicit
generalizing assessments of age that tend to become a tool of societal exclusion; for
instance when workers who have become older than 50 or even 40 years are called
‘older workers’. Or when somebody who has lived for 80 or more years is not taken
seriously. The predicates ‘old ‘ and ‘older’ contain more than just comparative
measurements.
The question that arises after this critique of inadequate chronometric representations
of aging is whether human aging might not follow regular changes of ‘its own’, that
could be seen as its basic natural clock. In that case, its formative rhythms over the
human life span might be expressed in a time scale that would adequately assess
aging processes.
Usually, the Second Law of Thermodynamics has been called upon to develop an
entropic measure for such an intrinsic age (Baars 2012). However, open systems such
as human organisms, that rely on interaction and exchange with pluriform contexts do
not fit well in the thermodynamic models of intrinsic dynamics that presuppose that
the system in question is sealed off from the environment (cf. Yates 2007; Uffink
2007). The specific dynamic properties of human aging include an openness to the
environments extending from personal lifestyles to ecological or social contexts.
Emerging research from ecological developmental biology (Gilbert and Epel 2009) on
the social organization of genetic expression (epigenesis) demonstrates how complex
these interactive processes are (Dannefer 2011). These processes defy a general
developmental Logos and must be discovered in their specificity, and in the course of
this discovery chronometric time can only function as an instrument of measurement
that should not be extended to represent human aging.
Aging: Increasing Differences
Because of such intrinsic openness developmental regularities may still be strong in
embryological phases, but in childhood and adult life such regularities begin to
decline rapidly. Comparative research on aging identical twins indicates that genes
account for approximately 30% of developmental outcomes in old age; the remaining
part is a playing field of contexts and personal agency (Gurland, Page, & Plassman
2004).
However, comparisons between age groups are still very popular although their value
for the analysis of aging has been questioned for some time. In research on aging
these questions have been articulated as cohort and age confounds: is a certain
characteristic an age effect or a cohort effect? Moreover, with the acceleration of
social and cultural change in late modern societies it also becomes increasingly
difficult to disentangle cohort and period effects. Several authors have tried to
separate these different effects statistically and made claims to have solved the
problem, but there are still good arguments for skepticism. According to experts such
as Glenn (2004) these attempts have been futile, leading to ‘much pseudo-rigorous
research and almost certainly to many incorrect conclusions’ (p. 475). A major
problem is that these effects are not additive but interrelated: age, period and cohort
effects interact with the dependent variables that researchers on aging are interested
in.
So, we have reason to doubt whether age is really the ‘independent’ or even
‘explanatory’ variable much research assumes it to be, which leads to the question
whether and how age-related concepts might make sense. Of course it is always
possible to calculate average scores of relations between age on then one hand and
norms, problems, or diseases on the other. The problem is that such averages and agedistributions – that can be helpful for specific purposes - tend to preclude research of
the specific factors and contexts that lead to diversities in aging.
I will give two examples: one at a psychological level and another at a societal level.
The first example refers to the extensive psychological research on ‘the age that you
are’ versus ‘the age that you feel’. It is not easy to understand how one can ‘feel’
being, for instance, 45 years old, ‘younger’ or ‘older’ than one’s actual age, but the
outcomes of this research appear to have strong predictive power. To have
demonstrated such longitudinal effects is in itself of course valuable. Feeling younger
than one’s age, having positive perceptions and attitudes towards one’s own aging
have, again and again, proven to be reliable predictors of many important indicators.
Such feelings are strongly connected with better cognitive and emotional well-being
or health (Wurm et al. 2007), with future disability, longevity (Levy et al. 2002),
morbidity and mortality (Kotter-Grühn et al. 2009, Uotinen et al. 2005).
But it is a peculiar form of reasoning that deserves more questioning:
1. I am 65 (years old)
2. Being 65 implies (for others): feeling not so good (stiff, tired,
depressed…whatever.)
3. I feel, however, much better
4. People who are 45 feel like me
5. But I did not feel like that when I was 45
6. However, I “am 65” but feel like “being 45”
Here, chronometric age is not being interpreted but has become a proto-scientific
instrument to interpret one’s own aging. This raises many questions: What kinds of
implicit life time clocks work here? Where do they come from? However, these
research results are mostly gathered without paying attention to contexts or to the
expectations or experiences of the respondents (Diehl et al 2014). This metric
discourse of aging demonstrates not only a cultural dominance of age but also a
poverty of ways to interpret aging. Researchers show surprisingly little interest in
what lies behind these facts and feelings of age; probably because of the impressive
predictive results.
These are puzzling ways in which age is made important; especially for others who
are supposed to be determined by their age, whereas the exceptional I can feel
younger or older. Which raises the question: How and why did this generalizing
overemphasis on age come about in, for instance, European societies? Definitions of
who is “old” and when “old age” would have arrived have, according to historical
studies long been more dependent on the appearance and physical capacities of
individuals than on chronometric age (Thane 2005).
Age was made important as a result of the political will of the late 19th and early 20th
century European nation states to re-organize the life course; especially to improve
the productivity of their populations. The ensuing tripartite division of the life course
in education, work and retirement took place by establishing legal age categories.
Also, moral discourse surrounding the institutionalized life course also had a strong
preference for age as this was supposed to guarantee that everybody would be treated
equally.
Nowadays, the life course is producing very unequal trajectories, demonstrating the
ineffectiveness and, in a sense, injustice, of treating different groups of older workers
equally based on their ages. Without paying much attention to the differences between
them; and here we find our second example on a societal level. Mandatory retirement
is hardly a problem when most workers are exhausted if they reach retirement age at
all (which was the case when retirement schemes were first developed). But it will be
experienced as ageism by those who reach retirement in good shape, although others
are hardly able to continue working if they can find work at all. During the last
decades we have seen a constant reorganization of the life course driven by
intensifying global competition, a retrenching welfare state, recurrent systemic crises
and neo-liberal politics of population aging. Together these developments form a
difficult context for re-igniting solidarity over the life course (Phillipson 2015).
However, with an eye on the growth of the world population there is hardly an
alternative for population aging. So we have to ‘Unlock the Demographic Dividend’.
Diversity and individual challenges of aging
There is some reason for concern as the desired flexibility of choice to accommodate
the growing diversity of aging remain structurally dominated by a focus on
productivity, accompanied by a late modern individualization of life course risks. It is
one thing to get rid of mandatory retirement or raising pension age to encourage
people to work longer, but this will not be helpful if one remains unemployed while a
pension is still years away and losing value. Both the productivist interpretations of
Active Aging that are dominant at the level of EU-policy (European Commission
2009; Walker 2009; Foster & Walker 2015) and the Successful Aging program tend to
redefine the life course and aging processes in terms of individual challenges. Rowe
& Kahn even emphasize that aging would be ‘largely under the control of the
individual’ (Rowe & Kahn 1998, p. 37).
However, as we can learn from many studies of the life course, diversity in aging also
consists of persistent inequalities of ethnicity, class, gender, and age categorization
(cf. research by Crystal, Dannefer, O’Rand and others). The cumulative consequences
of such structural and cultural dynamics of inequality cannot adequately be
understood as resulting from individual choice or preference. Proverbs such as ‘Time
Destroys all’ suggest that all humans are equalized in and through time, but some are
destroyed earlier than others. Including aging in society implies attention for diversity
in the positive sense of acknowledging the many contributions that can be expected
from older citizens, but also attention for diversity in the negative sense of cumulative
inequalities.
Besides these two impressive challenges, we should not neglect that, as long as life is
finite, aging eventually implies decline. We need more attention for the ways in which
decline is being defined, acknowledged or denied by aging people themselves. It is
time to eliminate age related exclusion and to acknowledge non-productivist agency,
but also the dignity of human vulnerability: the dignity of unsuccessful, unproductive
and in-active aging.
Confronted with the bureaucratic rigidities of chronometric age and the recurring
dichotomies of successful versus failure, productive versus unproductive and active
versus passive we can find some inspiration in biological interpretations of time as a
rhythm of opening and closing, activity and passivity, degeneration and regeneration.
One way to envision aging as a continuation of life and not discarding it as something
outside active life or as its opposite, is to see it as a dialectic of both vulnerability and
complexity of biographical identity. On the one hand, as people live longer their life
histories become more complex which has its reflection on identity in a broad sense.
On the other hand, the vulnerability of human life also increases. A vulnerability, we
may add, that which is not bound to age but shared by all human beings.
The inspiring example of Matisse shows that vulnerability and complexity interact to
re-ignite creativity; that his vulnerability has even been of constitutive importance for
the path breaking creativity of his late work. Many examples of what has been handed
over to us as wisdom show this constitutive role of vulnerability in highlighting
aspects of life and aging that remain hidden as long as we privilege ‘normal’
adulthood and categorize people according to their ages.
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