Ageism

Social rejection happens when one individual is purposely excluded from social situations. This rejection can be performed by either an individual or a group of people, and it can be either active or passive in nature. For proof that rejection, exclusion, and acceptance are central to our lives, look no farther than the living room. If you turn on the television set, and watch any reality TV program, most of them are about rejection and acceptance. Acceptance—in romantic relationships, from friends, even from strangers—is absolutely fundamental to humans. Belonging to a group was probably helpful to our ancestors. We have weak claws, little fur, and long childhoods; living in a group helped early humans survive harsh environments. Because of that, being part of a group still helps people feel safe and protected, even when walls and clothing have made it easier for one man to be an island entire of himself.
But acceptance has an evil twin: rejection. Being rejected is bad for your health. “People who feel isolated and lonely and excluded tend to have poor physical health.They don’t sleep well, their immune systems sputter, and they even tend to die sooner than people who are surrounded by others who care about them.
Humans are social creatures, by nature, and rejection is almost always emotionally painful. Some rejection is normal in life, and just about everyone has experienced, or will experience, some sort of social exclusion during his lifetime. Repeated rejection, malicious or otherwise, can have a negative impact on a person. These rejections can be much more devastating for a highly sensitive individual, or if fitting in with a certain person or group is extremely important to the shunned person.
Ageism is prejudice or discrimination on the grounds of a person’s age. Ageism creates and fosters prejudice about the nature and experience of old age. These project unpleasant images of older people which subtly undermine their personal value and worth. Commonly held ideas restrict the social role and status of older people, structure their expectations of themselves, prevent them from achieving their potential, and deny them equal opportunities. Ageism is a powerful force. It has developed a stereotype of 'older people' that has diminished and undermined their social status. It consists of several different myths:
Myth of chronology - the idea that older people are a homogeneous group by virtue of their age alone, i.e. once one's age reaches a 'magic number' one automatically becomes old and part of the group known as 'the elderly'.
Myth of ill health - that old age automatically involves physical deterioration and that illness in old age is part of normal ageing, not disease processes, and is therefore irreversible and untreatable.
Myth of mental deterioration - that older people automatically lose their mental faculties, slow down and become 'senile'.
Myth of inflexible personality - that personality changes with age to become more intolerant, inflexible and conservative.
Myth of misery - that older people are unhappy because they are old.
Myth of unproductivity/dependence - that older people are unproductive members of our society, because they are not engaged in paid employment and are therefore inevitably dependent upon others.
Generation by generation, ageism is intensified and perpetuated until it pervades the thinking, attitudes and expectations of young and old alike. The result is that both older people and those around them accept the socially constructed view of old age, not because it is true, or needs to be, but because the dominant ideology becomes self-fulfilling.
Perhaps the paradigm of old age today is an individual, living alone, socially isolated, managing on inadequate income, suffering from poor health, poorly housed, dependent upon younger carers for support, and seen as a burden. Unhappy, withdrawn, but at the same time not interested in making new friends, they have lost their energy, enthusiasm and drive. They are no longer concerned with education or personal growth. In deteriorating physical and mental health, their only prospect is of further decline and, eventually death. (Townsend, 1981.)
This depressing but widely held view of life in old age provides the foundation upon which judgements are made about the status and value of older people. Thought of in this way, older people become dehumanised and vulnerable to oppression and rejection.
Ageism closely associates old age with illness and pain. That older people become increasingly prone to sickness and ill-health is to some extent true, but ageism takes a 'tendency' and transforms in into and extreme and depressing inevitability.
Arthritis will progressively rack the bodies of older people with pain.
Their heart and other vital organs will decline in vigour and vitality.
Their bodies will be subject to an inevitable process of wasting, the result of ailments for which there is little defence.
They will lose control of their limbs, their muscles will weaken, and their sense of balance will diminish.
Their sight and hearing will fail.
The process of personal decline and ill health is pre-ordained and inevitable.
According to a report form the Research on Age Discrimination Project (RoAD) to Help the Aged, 68% of people agree that once you reach very old age, people tend to treat you as a child and 73% of people agree that older people face discrimination on grounds of age in their everyday lives. Age discrimination is found in every aspect of life, from family life to the workplace.
A society that does not take care for and respect the elderly does not have a future because it does not have memories. We would do well to spare a thought for the many old people living in homes for the aged and, it’s unpleasant to say, for those who have been abandoned by their families. They are the treasure of our society. As Pope Benedict XVI once said, “The quality of a society, I would say of a civilization, is judged by how well older people are treated and the place reserved for them in community life. Whoever makes room for the elderly makes room for life. Whoever welcomes the elderly welcomes life. "