While hostility directed at Australia's most vulnerable citizens is not confined to the aged, contempt for the elderly is the most puzzling since it harms everyone, writes Dr Jennifer Wilson.
THE SENTIMENT that you can judge a civilisation by the manner in which it treats its most vulnerable members is most often attributed (falsely it's argued) to Mahatma Gandhi.
Regardless of who initially made this observation, the truth of it is hard to argue. A brief look at the final report of the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety – specifically paragraphs pertaining to substandard care and abuse – indicates that as a society, Australia is failing the civilisation test.
The removal of all mandatory COVID-19 precautions in the community has also left people in care facilities excessively vulnerable, according to AMA President Professor Steve Robson, who observed last week:
We have known that elderly people are more vulnerable since the early days of the pandemic and have enacted targeted strategies, some from the start … but we obviously haven’t done enough to protect them.
We have wound back almost all public health measures and this puts vulnerable people in aged care at greater risk.
According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), the pandemic has:
“...put into stark relief the vulnerabilities of older people, especially those most marginalised, who often face overlapping discrimination and barriers — because they are poor, live with disabilities, are women living alone, or belong to minority groups…”
In Australian society, ageing has little or no positive value. This is reflected in the documented ill-treatment of older people who are more likely to be regarded as burdens than individuals who are naturally and inevitably coming to the end of their lives, and ought to be cared for to the best of our ability.
Of all the hostilities based on stereotypes, prejudice and discrimination, ageism is the most puzzling, given everyone, barring an early death, will age. And perhaps this inevitability goes some way to explaining the hostility — the elderly confront us with our fate, with the unavoidable changes age brings to the appearance of our bodies, to our agility. Our inherent vulnerability, which many of us go to great lengths to deny, is starkly modelled by those around us who are ageing.
This contempt born of fear is not, of course, peculiar to the aged. They are but one despised vulnerable group among many; indeed, Australia is renowned for its ill-treatment of vulnerability of all kinds. Contempt for the aged, however, crosses boundaries in ways other prejudices cannot.
There are few positive attitudes towards ageing and few positive models. Rather than the acceptance of natural change, there’s more likely to be desperate and doomed attempts to appear young.
According to the Australian Human Rights Commission, ageism is the most acceptable form of prejudice in this country, and the least understood. It is experienced by the young, the middle-aged and the elderly, though perhaps most catastrophically in the latter group as a range of vulnerabilities becomes obvious with age, and nobody is immune from their effects.
Said United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet:
“Ageism harms everyone — old and young. But often, it is so widespread and accepted – in our attitudes and in policies, laws and institutions – that we do not even recognise its detrimental effect on our dignity and rights. We need to fight ageism head-on, as a deep-rooted human rights violation.”
It is almost impossible to “call out” elder ageism without incurring howls of derision. Broadcaster and author Jane Caro recently published a piece on casual ageism based on an example experienced by her husband. The piece provoked a barrage of derisory commentary that entirely missed the point she was attempting to make — that casual ageism is no less ageist for being casual and indeed is on a continuum of contempt that ends in appalling neglect of the aged in facilities supposedly designed to provide them with care.
This alarming reaction supports the Human Rights Commission's conclusion of how acceptable and normalised it is in Australian society to despise and dismiss older generations.
The stereotyping of baby boomers is another example. Initially, a term used to categorise those born between 1946 and 1964, “boomer” has become a contemptuous insult based on the presumed wealth of this demographic — wealth allegedly held at the expense of younger generations.
While there are many very comfortable boomers, it’s also true that the fastest-growing cohort of homeless people is women aged over 55, suggesting that perhaps a class and gender analysis of the boomer generation may be more useful and less prejudicial than anything based solely on age.
In conclusion, whoever observed that the worth of a society can be measured by its treatment of the most vulnerable members was insightful and accurate.
What they failed to grasp is that societies seem disturbingly unconcerned about their moral worth, while maintaining their obsession with material wealth. Vulnerable groups are not known for contributing to that wealth, other than as fodder for exploitation and profit.
The dystopian possibilities of this hardly bear thinking about but consider them we must.
Dr Jennifer Wilson is an IA columnist, a psychotherapist and an academic. You can follow Jennifer on Twitter @NoPlaceForSheep.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Australia License
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