Themes of Adult Life - Book Report/Review Example

Number: Part A There are some concepts Beauvoir discusses to make a point, and then there is thepoint that guide her investigation on a fundamental level. Among those of the latter category, one that clearly stands out is whether old age and its physiological and psychological consequences represent a pure and inevitable natural process, or whether itis, in fact “ an artificial product of a society that rejects the aged” (p 503) and as a result denies their existence and shuns them. Beauvoir does not altogether deny the fact that old age is accompanied by certain physiological and mental decline. She wonders, instead, through her whole novel, to what extent “is the society responsible” (541) for those factors we associate with decline in old age. For answers, Beauvoir makes use of an approach that initially appears a rather slow, deliberate and exhaustive multidisciplinary investigation, one that clearly takes, by the end and surprisingly, the form of a philosophical inquiry in the tradition of Socrates. She questions society’s basic assumptions about age in a way that involves and implicates all age groups. And true to this ancient philosophical tradition, Beauvoir demonstrates that her ideas are fundamental to our philosophical understanding of a good and satisfactory life. Old age denotes “an inescapable process” (p 539) one that is marked by an experience of physical and mental decline aftercertain number of years. However, this may be the “only universal truth about age” (539) that one can state with any degree of certainty. The aging process seems instead to be a rather slow and inexact process whose manifestation are the same as one similar to a limited number of ailments that appear, as well as, as pathologies and incapacities in most if not all other age groups. Youth, the future and decline top the list of these universal ambiguous concepts. According to Beauvoir, the concept decline has no meaning except in relation to a given end-movement towards or further from a goal (86). Decline stands in disapproval to progress. These two notions appear to be an anthropocentric simplification of a biological process that is more complex. Rather, they appear to refer to the extent of the future one has in front of oneself. But only a fabricated future may have an end and, therefore, a beginning. The future is not in anybodys control. It is not yet clear what the future involves. This is at the base of our human condition and is indispensable to the vulnerability of human presence. Alternatively, one may refer to a point in time between childhood and old age during which one is fit to perform something optimally. Roughly, this corresponds to a period widely known as ‘Youth’, beginning certainly sometime after adolescence until one is considered as if by some form of magic, to reach ‘midlife’, after which one begins the descent into the state of becoming obsolete. Behavior uses the words ‘misleading’ and ‘illusion’ to describe this way of thinking that first separates and then glorifies or misleadingly “graces Youth” (p. 292). The other complicated factor in defining old age is the often unacknowledged fact that human aging, viewed purely as a biological or mental process, is neither a uniform nor an exactly calibrated event. Far from it, some people show some physical signs early on with no indication of mental decline until death. Still others may manifest mental decline much earlier with no physical signs. As inexact and hard to define as old age, our psychological and communicative and habitual manners of measuring it only add more difficulties. We have in our possession a rather universally primitive system of measuring age, with which we communicate among ourselves. Intrinsically, this system is of little practical use. It may, in fact,is highly biased and unjust. What we have is a limited set consisting of terms such as ‘young’, ‘middle’ and ‘old to describe one’s age. This as useful a system as one that was previously used for reporting temperature (cold, warm, and hot) before the advent of the thermometer, a system that also served humankind for a long time before it proven unhelpful for the needs of practical living.In the case of aging, however, precision does not appear to be an issue. As Beauvoir demonstrates, old age, since the primitive past, has been viewed with revulsion, if not an outright repulsion. There are several ambiguous notions involved in the discussion of age until now, benefited from a nearly universal immunity from scrutiny. Part B. How does our society fare five decades later, in comparison? While the material condition of retired workers in the current world has somehow improved, they still live lives hovering by and large close to, it not under, the poverty live. The prejudgment and disgrace remains. While work benefits and pensions have improved in limited professionalsector, pensions at the present level do not meet the rising costs of living. For example, jobs are scarcer, the job market has shrunk, and more and more old workers are without jobs before reaching retirement. Worse, government of all stripes have been chipping away at pension programs. Those lucky enough to reach retirement find their finances and thus their livelihood are at the mercy of undependable stock markets and the economics of traditional financial institutions. No less important is the plight of the working population in the emerging economies such as India and China, where inhuman working conditions similar to, if not worse than, those in Europe and America in Beauvoir’s time exist. More significantly, these workers’ working environment makes possible the cheap commodity prices that poor workers, both currently and retired, rely on to get by. Therefore, capitalistic socio-economic injustices in one part of the world feed the same kind of injustices at the other end. Beauvoir argues that “during the first year of retirement, the death rate is far higher than any other time” (268). However, things only get worse from here. As the worker’s family has no longer relation to his or her employment, the private home environment loses much if not all the dynamics of its past, such as the passing on roof the workshop or the farm to children in return for continued care and support in old care. The dissolution of family life and the collapse of the family as a durable social unit in the west have had dire consequences. As it formerly was, the care of the aged is no longer within the domain of the community. While Beauvoir remarked elsewhere that care by the family too was problematic and sometimes led to abuse in the eighteenthcentury Europe. Now that care has become institutionalized, the type of the problem has changed radically. Care now has become the subject of the government policy, much like the care for mental patients and people with disabilities. As such, old people have become prey to exploration and abuse by higher organizations and business. In 1970s, old people in France were “doomed to the slums” (247). Certainly the shantytowns are not of their experience. When they were inadequate to look after themselves, they would be conceded into institutions. Beauvoir shows, through various studies, that more that 50% of the aged admitted to these institutions died within the first year after arrival. After two years, nearly 65% of the old people had died. She lists a number of causes for this phenomenal mortality.aside from the importance of habitat to one’s well being, she cites the loss of agency, privacy and the ability to work in pursuit of a personal project as the main causes of high institutional mortality (252).Consequently, loss of dignity and agency seem to have a serious significance. The inability to pursue one’s personal project, that which would animate one’s life, proves devastating. Firstly, it is often difficult to find interest so late in life, when one’s intellectual appetite is at its normal ebb (452). There are few individuals who manage to uphold a multitude of interest throughout their lives. The absence of a personal project leads to inactivity that in turn discourages curiosity and enthusiasm for new learning, resulting in boredom, a feeling of uselessness and depression (454). Secondly, the insecurity resulting from worries related to poverty, health, mobility and imposed social isolation leads to physiological and mental illness. Beauvoir cites numerous studies that report an alarming rise in the incidence of mental illness, including different kinds of neurosis in the elderly (494). Behaviour final verdict four decades ago was that while decades of struggles brought to the working class the recognition of their humanity and dignity, however, limited, it was done little for those workers when they age. Behavior has examined the experience of aging and the dilemma of old people in former times. Her main claim is that our societies age the workers prematurely. If justice was held- the working members, as opposed to those for whom others work, of our societies, retained a decent degree of control over their work and were also fairly compensated for their services to othersthere would have been nothing for Beauvoir to write about.Beauvoirs main argument is that one’s career is the single most important predictor of one’s mental and to a greater degree, one’s physical state of ages. In other words, the disempowerment individuals experience in their productive activities through their working livesby virtue of loss or suppression of self-expression, self-development, agency and povertyhas an invisible but undeniable, cumulative, adverse, and by and large irreversible impact on them. Therefore the difficulty in separating the two seemingly different domains of work and aging. Hence any philosophical inquiry into aging, not unlike a medical study, for instance, needs to go back to the source, to the root cause of what could be described as failing a subpopulation of our society. In the same way, that the question of women as disadvantaged and disempowered portion of the population could not have been divorced from the abundance of advantage men enjoyed in the societies of the past. Behavior examines aging in two perspective; descriptive aspect and normative aspect of pain being their remedy. A just economic system cares about the satisfaction and the job security of its working population. A social division of labor based on principles of justice and equity would focus not only and purely on economic rationality at the expense of ignoring all other nationalities. It would reward its members for participating in the realization of the collective good even after they cease to be actively employed. Consequently, it would care for the physical and mental health citizens, thus supporting them to remain in control of their varying life circumstances. A just economic system would encourage and deepen the sense of civic responsibility of its workers by assuring them of and providing them with the needed support when they become less independent, in turn for their social cooperation in the division of labor. Only an economic system relying on short-term profit maximization schemes and a cheap disposable workforce would conduct itself in ways and manners that are detrimental to the physical and mental health of its working population. Any socio-economic system claiming adherence to principles of justice would consider health and wealth as well as equity for all its members regardless of their relative position in the managerial hierarchy of economic institutions. It would not consider the endeavors of other people more favorable than others. Such an economic system would naturally give priority to policies of jobs creation as opposed to those that motivate job reduction. Any policy to enhance productivity would consider how and in what way and to what purpose the resulting savings would be utilized. Works cited De Beauvoir, Simone. “The coming of Age”. Patrick O’Brien trans. W.W. Norton and Company, 1996. Print Read More