EDITORS DESK
I didn’t know I was old until I reached my late 40s when, among my staff of 20 somethings, a girl got my goat making fun of an old song I was trying to reference during a heated exchange of opinions. She tried to one-up me by dismissing the song as irrelevant, something she was born too late for. It wasn’t the first of her ageist jabs. It was the last straw, which drove me to tell her, “You know what? What you are, I was. What I am, you will be, but maybe worse.”
I was born around the time “ageism” was coined in the US as an offshoot of the Age Discrimination Act of 1967, which was signed into law to protect Americans 40-years-old and older from discrimination in the workplace on the basis of age in hiring, promotion, compensation, etc.
But what did I know about ageism when I was young and my dream was to get old? In my tweens, I found people my age boring while every chat with the grownups was an education and an experience. I was so obsessed with age that when I was eight or nine, yet unsullied by the years, my wish list involved having pimples, growing my hair gray, fixing myself a post-hangover Bloody Mary at an airport lounge, doing all-nighters at the office, and wearing ties.
I spent my teens in the 1980s, long after the legendary fashion editor Diana Vreeland invented the word “youthquake.” She came up with the portmanteau in 1965, inspired by youth activism in swinging London, a time of “significant cultural, political, or social change arising from the actions or influence of young people,” as youthquake is defined.
In 2017, this coined phrase, then 52 years old, was Word of the Year, according to the Oxford Dictionaries. Curiously, many of the other words on the shortlist were even older, like “Antifa” (1940s) and “kompromat” (1930s). Although two of the runners-up, “broflake” (2010) and “white fragility’ (2011), were of this millennium, majority of the chosen words had had their run. You could say that words, like wine — as people should, as life should — get better with age.
Not so in our time, as I am finding out. Ageism is no less damaging than other forms of prejudice, such as racism or sexism, but nobody, not even the woke-highnesses of this generation, seems to give it a lot of thought. Even public policy puts a cap on human productivity at age 60 or 65, which exacerbates the perception that older workers have lower levels of performance and less ability or willingness to learn, not to mention higher pay, but why shouldn’t they be entitled to higher pay? They have paid their dues. They have been working since these young people were only figments of their mothers’ imagination.
But there’s also the problem of our aging population. In 2020, according to the Philippine Statistics Authority, there were 9,508,800 senior citizens aged 60 and above. Of the total population, projected at 109,947,900, in the country, that was 8.65 percent, up from 7.5 percent in 2015, and rising exponentially. The United Nations Department of Social Affairs projects that by 2032, ours will join the many other countries with an aged population. With extended lifespans, we are in dire need of public policy that has more teeth than 2015’s Republic Act No. 10911 (An Act Prohibiting Discrimination against Any Individual in Employment on Account of Age and Providing Penalties Therefor). “OK, Boomer” should be banned like the N word or the F word — I’m not kidding!
But it’s not just us. World population is aging. Birth rates around the world aren’t keeping up. “There are now more people over the age of 65 than there are under the age of five,” according to the World Economic Forum.
You’ve got to do something, especially if you’re 40 or under. Why don’t you start with what your mother should have taught you about respecting your elders? And I mean “Respect,” as you use it on social media when you mean it. If we’re going to have a future of old people, we better make sure we find every way to keep them inspired, productive, and less prone to depression and isolation and diseases by empowering them now.
Ageism, when you think about it, is self-sabotage. Anything you do, think, or feel about the old, you do, think, or feel about your own future. The future, in which, without a doubt, you too will be an old person.
Karma is a b—, you know.
(AA Patawaran is the editor of Manila Bulletin Lifestyle section.)
I didn’t know I was old until I reached my late 40s when, among my staff of 20 somethings, a girl got my goat making fun of an old song I was trying to reference during a heated exchange of opinions. She tried to one-up me by dismissing the song as irrelevant, something she was born too late for. It wasn’t the first of her ageist jabs. It was the last straw, which drove me to tell her, “You know what? What you are, I was. What I am, you will be, but maybe worse.”
I was born around the time “ageism” was coined in the US as an offshoot of the Age Discrimination Act of 1967, which was signed into law to protect Americans 40-years-old and older from discrimination in the workplace on the basis of age in hiring, promotion, compensation, etc.
But what did I know about ageism when I was young and my dream was to get old? In my tweens, I found people my age boring while every chat with the grownups was an education and an experience. I was so obsessed with age that when I was eight or nine, yet unsullied by the years, my wish list involved having pimples, growing my hair gray, fixing myself a post-hangover Bloody Mary at an airport lounge, doing all-nighters at the office, and wearing ties.
I spent my teens in the 1980s, long after the legendary fashion editor Diana Vreeland invented the word “youthquake.” She came up with the portmanteau in 1965, inspired by youth activism in swinging London, a time of “significant cultural, political, or social change arising from the actions or influence of young people,” as youthquake is defined.
In 2017, this coined phrase, then 52 years old, was Word of the Year, according to the Oxford Dictionaries. Curiously, many of the other words on the shortlist were even older, like “Antifa” (1940s) and “kompromat” (1930s). Although two of the runners-up, “broflake” (2010) and “white fragility’ (2011), were of this millennium, majority of the chosen words had had their run. You could say that words, like wine — as people should, as life should — get better with age.
Not so in our time, as I am finding out. Ageism is no less damaging than other forms of prejudice, such as racism or sexism, but nobody, not even the woke-highnesses of this generation, seems to give it a lot of thought. Even public policy puts a cap on human productivity at age 60 or 65, which exacerbates the perception that older workers have lower levels of performance and less ability or willingness to learn, not to mention higher pay, but why shouldn’t they be entitled to higher pay? They have paid their dues. They have been working since these young people were only figments of their mothers’ imagination.
But there’s also the problem of our aging population. In 2020, according to the Philippine Statistics Authority, there were 9,508,800 senior citizens aged 60 and above. Of the total population, projected at 109,947,900, in the country, that was 8.65 percent, up from 7.5 percent in 2015, and rising exponentially. The United Nations Department of Social Affairs projects that by 2032, ours will join the many other countries with an aged population. With extended lifespans, we are in dire need of public policy that has more teeth than 2015’s Republic Act No. 10911 (An Act Prohibiting Discrimination against Any Individual in Employment on Account of Age and Providing Penalties Therefor). “OK, Boomer” should be banned like the N word or the F word — I’m not kidding!
But it’s not just us. World population is aging. Birth rates around the world aren’t keeping up. “There are now more people over the age of 65 than there are under the age of five,” according to the World Economic Forum.
You’ve got to do something, especially if you’re 40 or under. Why don’t you start with what your mother should have taught you about respecting your elders? And I mean “Respect,” as you use it on social media when you mean it. If we’re going to have a future of old people, we better make sure we find every way to keep them inspired, productive, and less prone to depression and isolation and diseases by empowering them now.
Ageism, when you think about it, is self-sabotage. Anything you do, think, or feel about the old, you do, think, or feel about your own future. The future, in which, without a doubt, you too will be an old person.
Karma is a b—, you know.
(AA Patawaran is the editor of Manila Bulletin Lifestyle section.)