An unedited stream-of-consciousness from last night:
I just got stoned, decided to imitate a pedantic philosopher, and developed an argument inspired by Danny Devito in Always Sunny, S8/E9. After an hour or so of work (and it is now nearly 3am), here is the result. It starts off philosophical, goes boomer-friendly, then optimistic, then self-help, eventually nihilist and emo. A wild ride, from my more creative side. It was constructed in the way a beginning programmer might write code “for the computer, not the person,” making sure everything is too precise. Similarly, a young mathematician who writes their proofs as if the symbols were to be read by a computer which would deduce them to sum to “true” or false”. All this to mean, I was thinking about math as I wrote it.
Does age deserve respect simply on the basis of age alone? If not, does age often imply something distinct which deserves respect?
If age does imply something distinct which deserves with respect, then this property must correlate well with age. That is, it must be a characterization of people which generally increases as one ages.
Wisdom: it is clear that age does not completely correlate with wisdom. For wisdom necessitates an open and supple mind, one which questions itself and seeks to improve, that is, change.
Yet there is no indication that open-mindedness increases with age. Certainly, near the beginning of life an empty (and thus trivially completely closed) mind becomes more open, but this is a transient phenomenon. Generally, as a person reaches a certain age in their twenties or thirties, however, their open-mindedness increase slows and then stops, leaving one at maximum open mindedness, which will usually then tend to go down as one ages.
Or are we identifying completely the wrong phenomenon? Perhaps the age of maximum level of open mindedness is better interpreted as the age when one generally reaches a "critical point" of bare knowledge of subtle ideas, beyond which is not evolutionarily favorable to garner more respect, and so we are inclined to close off our minds to better contribute to wisdom in a deeper way.
This deeper way may be becoming less open minded as one further ages, or perhaps better interpreted as becoming more confident and sure of oneself. The question of whether this confidence is justified is exactly the main point under consideration. But, assuming that the confidence is justified, then this is wisdom after all, to tap into ones own personal, valid, experiences to solve problems and succeed in one’s life. What one calls "closed-mindedness" another might call "superb intuition gained from years of trial and error, and hard work".
This then begs the question of whether problem solving gets better as one ages. If so, that would support the claim that closed-mindedness is the wrong interpretation. On this question I am afraid I have no understanding. It is difficult to reason through. Raw data suggest that as one ages (before senility), one’s rate of unsolved problems goes down, but this is misleading in the sense that one simply has less problems as one ages as well (well, perhaps less problems past age 50, and yet the expected level of respect as a function of age still increases past this year, so we can consider it as a point in the limsup we are playing). Therefore, the correct way to interpret these data is unclear. I suspect, however, that raw problem-solving ability does not continue to increase throughout age, so this argument of a justification of confidence (closed-mindedness for the soon returning pessimist) fails. Therefore wisdom, in our current understanding of it, does not increase with age.
Experience: Why do we venerate experience? Is it on its own basis? Certainly not, because the experience we respect is qualified by its specifics. For example, there is no widespread societal respect for the life-long experience of crime, or even the life-long experience of menial, low-class jobs. Though these are vital jobs in society, we do not afford them the status of teachable experience. And here we come to the corollary to the answer "no, we do not venerate experience on its own basis, for we qualify it". That is, we venerate experience because some types of experience are associated with learning valuable lessons (of varying quality depending on the type of experience). But the teachings we value are those which are associated with having wisdom, a previously debunked hypothesis.
Power: certainly not, as one’s power hardly ever increases beyond middle age.
There seems to be no single positive property which, for all people, as a function of age, is eventually monotone increasing. Therefore, age does not deserve unqualified respect. Rather, age correlates somewhat with the perception of a few perceived positive qualities which earn respect, such as wisdom (in the sense of justified confidence, not open-mindedness; though, to reiterate, these are two distinct meanings, which are the negations of each other), or valuable experience.
Why then, do we perceive age as deserving of respect? This traces precisely to the perception of positive qualities increasing with age, which then circularly wraps back to the original question. So, rather than answering, at least we have an equivalent formulation to the immediate question posed: "Why do we perceive qualities such as wisdom in confidence and valuable experience to be increasing with age?" Is it because each of us is biased to believe that we ourselves (as individuals) are always improving, and thus believing that this is true for the all others makes it more acceptable to believe it is true for us in particular?
This seems most plausible, that there is a bias to believe that we are improving (analogous to the perception that we deserve our own confidence), and that this bias convinces us that we should respect people more as they age. At least this would be the classical argument put forth. I offer a radical new approach: LIFE IS SUFFERING, LIFE IS MEANINGLESS, AND LIFE IS UNSTOPPABLE. For, though suffering and meaningless, life has engineered itself to be tasty, to be wanted. We crave life and are naturally repulsed by the idea of taking it (psychological disgust for murder) and the act of death upon us (physical pain that in is in general compulsory with any unnatural death). And this is the ironic way that life is unstoppable, though cruel.
Understanding this, the idea now is that as one ages, one endures more and more suffering, pain, and meaninglessness. And so, in a desperate (though lifelong) act of pity, in the hopes of somehow accounting for the years of despair that is living, we give more respect and consideration to people as they age. For they have seen some shit.
And the take away is this: respect an old person if you feel sorry for them due to the suffering that is life, for then your kindness may partially atone for this. If you feel sorry for them otherwise, then the above does not apply. If you do not feel sorry for them, but have admiration for them, then respect is certainly earned. If you feel nothing, develop a baseline level of respect, and apply that to all people, regardless of experiences or age.
turnnoffyourmind
snowghoul
jbbartram-illu
germansingergirl
