I finished reading Robert J. Sawyer’s Rollback a few days ago. I’d probably give it a 6 out of 10. (Anything above a 4 in my rating system is considered “positive”, 4 itself being “neutral”.) The premise involved an old couple who undergo a medical procedure to make them young again, but it only works on one of them.
I think I’ll blather about ageism for a while, when some age group judges another by their age. In one sense, it’s so natural that everyone will do it automatically, whether or not they think they’re prejudiced. For the most part, being around someone closer to your own age will instantly make you more comfortable.
When you’re really young, being around someone older than you instantly makes them more of an authority figure. When you get to a certain age, you realize older people can be just as stupid as young people, but you’ll still probably act differently when conversing with someone decades older than you, whether you’re talking louder because you think they’re deaf, or you’re more conscious of your manners in an effort to be respectful. The key is, you’re much less likely to be able to “relate to them” because they grew up in a different time.
Conversing through the Internet can help break this barrier, obviously, since you’re not subject to responding to a physical face (not to mention age can be completely lied about anyway). Just look at how many people converse freely through email and online forums, but still aren’t quite comfortable with posting videos of themselves on YouTube.
One aspect of ageism that I find quite angering is when an older people assume that age has automatically increased their intelligence or when older people think they can easily relate to younger people simply because they themselves were that age once. There’s a particular part in Rollback in which Don, the main character who is in his 80’s, tells a young woman that she’s never really experience loss, she’s never really suffered, because he assumes she’s too young to have had such life experiences. It immediately bites him back, but when such things are said in the real world, it probably hardly ever bites back… what is a young person going to do? How would blathering about past misfortunes in an effort to make someone else think that you really have suffered be much different than whining?
And of course younger people can make the same judgments, assuming old people have forgotten or never had to experience turmoil in youth, or that age automatically reduces worries and hardships.
Along with ageism I could probably add moneyism, assuming people who have more money don’t suffer as much, or happyism, assuming people who are happy have not experienced as much pain in their lives, which is what allows them to be so happy.
Don’t be judgmental; don’t assume you have any clue what its like to be anybody else. A character in Rollback quotes Plato: “Be kind, for everyone is fighting a hard battle.” Even if it’s not necessarily true, don’t assume any sort of life experiences can help you tell the difference.
Anyway, I’m now reading Tad Williams’ The City of Golden Shadows. It’s quite a big book, will probably take me a while to get through, but so far I love it.