261: It’s Good To Get Old

Life Matters

In this episode of Life Matters, Commissioner Johnston discusses why it’s good to get old and how the language and words we use can dramatically impact our attitudes towards our own aging and towards the aging of others.

A recent article in the Wall Street Journal (9/24/21), examines how in Japan, demographically the oldest nation in the world, they have begun to re-define what the meaning of what ‘old’ is. For example, the city of Nagano is officially changing its legal definition of “elderly”. Beginning next year, in order to keep residents active and engaged in their lives, what is considered ‘old’ now, 65 or over, will only apply linguistically and legally at age 75.

Nagano was the site of the 1998 Winter Olympics. Now the new definition will reduce the proportion of its population classified as ‘elderly’ to just 16% from 30% of the population under the old definition, transitioning it from one of the oldest to one of the youngest cities in Japan.

Ironically, the values, language, and legal definitions in the United States are moving in the opposite direction. Not only is the idea of age and senior ’senility,’ looked down upon in the United States, but many leaders and progressive government link thinkers, are advocating that 75 is actually the time to die. Seriously.

With the increase in the routine denial of medical treatment, and the stunning government actions of intentional exposure to Covid-19, an intentional non-treatment of the elderly in both the states of New York and California, the cultural shift and values and language are becoming more apparent.

With the introduction of Obamacare, the idea of a single-payer, government-sponsored and controlled health system, brought a new view of “appropriate” care for the elderly.

The intentional installation of seniors and giving them exposure to Covid, with the concomitant non-treatment and isolation was a stunning government response by the governors of New York in California in 2020. Tens of thousands of seniors were intentionally sent to die, for the supposed “greater good.”

At the height of the Obamacare debate the Atlantic magazine published an extensive article by Ezekiel Emmanuel. He was one of the policy figures essential to the healthcare debate within the Obama administration, and the brother of Obama Chief-of-Staff, Rahm Emanuel.

“Why I hope to die at 75: an argument that society and families - and you - will be better off if nature takes it’s course swiftly and promptly,” raised some concerns in the pro-life community, but was largely greeted by knowing nods of agreement by the academic and media elite. ‘Who wants to be senile?’

But the open public comment if not ‘instruction’ (remember the subtitle… “you will be better off if nature takes its course swiftly and promptly.’) and the not-so-camouflaged derision of senility brings a great risk. The Covid reaction is but the tip of a not so hidden iceberg. As far as the demographics of aging and population, the United States is not far behind Japan.

Brian is free to admit his personal inclination toward a Christian worldview, and points out that that perspective is, in fact, much more accommodating and closer to the Japanese embrace of the elderly than the new progressive ideology of American healthcare.

He gives several examples from both Old and New Testament, and the values that once were a foundation for our American culture, and Western Civilization itself. Honoring the elderly and embracing long lines for ourselves is nicely summed up in Deuteronomy 5:16: “Honor your father and mother as the Lord your God has commanded you. That your days may be prolonged and then it may go well with you and the land which the Lord your God gives you..” This was literally a commandment to us as individuals and to our culture as a whole.

The Christian influenced worldview of Western Civilization, as well as many old and established cultures revere the elderly and see it as a duty to honor, rather than disparage old age. Psalm 71:9; Proverbs 23:22; Proverbs 17:6, Psalm 91:16 and the list goes on and on.

Our culture is being invited to change its view of the elderly, to no longer view aging as a good thing, to avoid maturity with its challenges and wisdom, to embrace what is new, what is young, what is fashionably elite. But the cost is great. It is very great. It is not only the loss of lives and wisdom, but may include the loss of our civilization itself.