Reasons Why Ageism Persists

The American Psychological Association’s trade journal, Monitor on Psychology, did a March 2023 cover story titled, “A New Concept of Aging.” It cited studies that refute stereotypes and made some suggestions. In this post, I present eight less-commonly cited ideas to help explain why ageism persists, ignoring the more common reasons such as fear of death, physical decline, and residential isolation.

1. We aren’t woke. I recognize that wokeness has become a contested concept. Those suspicious of wokeness have been calling it "wokeism." But I mean it in this first section in its original, positive sense. It referred to the awakening of Black people as they grew up and left their loving homes and had their eyes opened to the racism in the larger world. It’s disconcerting and disheartening, at least at first, to realize you are despised, and not for things you did but for prejudices held about you.

Black people know they are Black and recognize racism once they wake up to the fact that other people are prejudiced. We old people, on the other hand, don’t fully realize we’re old. Sure, there’s strong evidence in the mirror, but we don’t always take it in, and things change so gradually that it is hard to notice aging. Black people were always Black; their core psychological identities, formed in adolescence, include their Blackness. Our core psychological identities were also formed in adolescence and don’t contain any hint of elderliness.

Consequently, when we are treated with ageism, we aren’t woke to what’s happening, so we are much less likely to call it out. All hegemonies interpret silence as assent.

The rest of these ideas address wokeism in its destructive sense of canceling people who have diverse viewpoints or don’t fit in.

2. We’re less likely to get swept up in the next new thing. In my field, 100 years of psychotherapy research have produced one three-letter acronym after another, hailed as the next best example of evidence-based practice. The same research debunks one three-letter acronym after another and shows that what works is what has always worked, a plausible case formulation, and a strong working alliance around implementing it. Older people always seem to be resisting the latest and greatest innovations when, in reality, we are just doing the tried and true. This pisses off the up-and-comers, especially those in a bifurcated mindset who think you’re with them or against them.

3. We don’t buy your act. The famous historians Will and Ariel Durant wrote in The Lessons of History, “Nothing is clearer in history than the adoption by successful rebels of the methods they were accustomed to condemn in the forces they deposed.” But on whom especially do successful rebels vent their spleen when they find themselves in power? On their former enemies, of course, but also on anyone who holds a mirror up to them to show them the dictators they have become. When politically correct administrators are even more autocratic than their politically incorrect predecessors, the elderly don’t root for the new order; they roll their eyes. This attracts the ire of the newly installed rebels.

4. We’re pretty conservative, not in the traditional political sense, but in the practical sense of not jumping on every bandwagon. Almost no one looks to history for context, but older people provide their own context with personal memory. Racism, homophobia, sexism, xenophobia, and poverty have gotten better in our own lifetimes. Awareness of progress makes us patient with the pace of change, and this leads some younger people to interpret us as obstacles.

5. When you start working alongside us, we don’t jump at your overtures. We’ve been there a while, and we already have our networks. We’re like Audrey Hepburn in Charade: “I already know an awful lot of people and until one of them dies I couldn't possibly meet anyone else.” Younger people may interpret this as rejection, and it irritates them.

6. We hang on in jobs where we’re not welcome, and thereby again are treated as obstacles. People who can leave oppressive workplaces usually do so, allowing unitary thinking to fester. Older workers have a harder time leaving for three reasons: One, ageism makes it harder to find other work. Two, our lives are far more embedded in a context that increases the cost of relocating. Three, enduring an oppressive workplace has a different algebra for older workers since we will be enduring it for a smaller duration. As Maurice Chevalier sang in "I’m Glad I’m Not Young Anymore," “Forevermore is shorter than before.” This means that still-competent older workers don’t toe the party line, and other people get irritated with them.

7. We’re not trying to get promoted. The desire for promotion, especially in nonprofits like universities and professional or political organizations, produces conformity, because there’s a payoff for not making waves. The fact that the elderly are generally no longer trying to get promoted, but instead look to the finish line and appreciate their work–life balance, makes us stick to our principles rather than trying to be good corporate citizens. Organizations that measure employees’ value with the yardsticks of conformity and rah-rah support of the administration hate people with principles.

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8. We’re not quick to villainize ourselves. Wokeism expects many categories of people to acknowledge how spoiled they are. But Hamlet’s list of generic reasons to kill oneself—"the whips and scorns of time, the oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely, the pangs of disprized love, the law's delay, the insolence of office, and the spurns that patient merit of the unworthy takes”—are unknown only to the extremely fortunate and the young. We, elders, are intimately acquainted with this basket of bitterness, and yet we putter on. Too aware of life's sorrows to characterize ourselves as highly privileged, we are canceled by the woke.