These examples from the world of advertising may seem humorous, until you reflect that they are merely one expression of American ageism: our cult of youth, and our negative view of aging. It isn’t a serious matter that 70-year-old models aren’t employed to sell soft drinks, but it is indeed serious that older job applicants are routinely passed over for job interviews, and that older patients receive lower priority for limited resources of medical care. The soft drink and beer ads aimed at old as well as young viewers also illustrate that a negative view of age is not only held by young Americans but is also internalized by old Americans themselves. Surveys by Louis Harris and Associates showed that American people believe that the elderly are bored, closed-minded, dependent, isolated, lonely, narrow-minded, neglected, old-fashioned, passive, poor, sedentary, sexually inactive, sick, unalert, unproductive, morbidly afraid of death, in constant fear of crime, living the worst years of life—and spending a good deal of their time sleeping, sitting and doing nothing, or nostalgically dwelling upon their past. These views were held equally by old people polled and by young people polled, even though the individual old people polled claimed that they themselves didn’t fit those stereotypes applying on the average to other old people.
Society’s rules
We have now considered several sets of factors influencing why societies variously take better or worse care of their elderly: the society’s ability to carry or feed them, their usefulness, and the society’s values, which tend to reflect that usefulness but are also to some degree independent of usefulness. But these are all ultimate explanatory factors unlikely to come up for discussion in practical day-to-day decisions about old people, such as whether or not to cut for Grandpa a choice steak from today’s antelope kill, even though he is no longer able to go hunting himself. The grandchild butchering the antelope doesn’t refer then to a general principle of ultimate value, such as “You remember what foods to eat after a hungi kengi, so we’ll reward your utility by giving you this steak.” Instead, those practical decisions are made in accordance with the society’s rules, which specify what to do in particular situations and ultimately reflect usefulness and values, but which let you divide an antelope quickly without philosophical discussions about hungi-kengis.
There is a host of such rules, varying among societies, to cover a host of choices. The rules empower the elderly to commandeer certain but not other resources. The rules are accepted by young people, who defer to the elderly and let them take the resources, even though there is a clear conflict of interest between young and old people for the resources, and even though the young are strong enough to snatch the resources. But they don’t, and instead they agree to wait until they too are old and will be deferred to. Out of many possible sets of examples, I’ll give just three.
A simple example involves food taboos, which ensure that certain foods are reserved for the elderly, in the belief (espoused by young and old alike) that the foods would endanger young people but that old people have acquired immunity to the danger with age. Every society has its own particular food taboos, which seem arbitrary to other societies, but taboos are widespread among traditional societies. For instance, young Omaha Indians inclined to break open animal bones in order to eat the rich marrow inside were warned by their wily elders that that would make them sprain their ankle, but that old people could safely eat marrow. Among the Iban of Borneo, old men enjoyed eating venison, but young men were forbidden to do so with the warning that it would make them as timid as deer. Old Siberian Chukchi drank reindeer milk but tabooed it for younger people, alleging that it was for the latters’ protection because milk would make a young man impotent and would cause a young woman to develop flabby breasts.
A particularly elaborate set of food taboos was reported for the Aranda (alias Arunta) Aborigines near Alice Springs in the central Australian desert. The best foods were reserved for old people, especially old men, who spelled out the dire consequences that would befall young people if they foolishly ate those forbidden foods. Supposedly, eating a female bandicoot makes a young man bleed to death when he is circumcised; emu fat causes abnormal development of the penis; eating parrots makes a hollow develop on top of the head, and a hole in the chin; and wildcat causes painful foul-smelling sores to break out on the head and neck. Young women were warned of further dangers: eating female bandicoot stimulates continued menstrual blood flow, kangaroo tail causes premature aging and baldness, quail prevents development of the breasts, and brown hawk conversely makes the breasts swell up and burst without producing milk.
Another resource that old men in many societies succeed in monopolizing for themselves and tabooing for younger men is—younger women. The rules specify that older men should marry much younger women and have multiple wives, and that younger men should not expect to marry until they in turn reach the age of 40 or even older. The long list of traditional societies with such practices include the Akamba of East Africa, the Araucanian Indians of South America, the Bakong of West Africa, the Banks Islanders of the Southwest Pacific, the Berber of North Africa, the Chukchi of Siberia, the Iban of Borneo, the Labrador Inuit of Canada, the Xhosa of Southern Africa, and many Aboriginal Australian tribes. I encountered such a case among a tribe in the lowlands of North New Guinea, when an old lame man named Yono pointed out to me a girl who looked to be less than 10 years old, and whom he said he had “marked” as his bride-to-be. He had made a down payment on her as a baby at her birth, had periodically made further payments to her parents, and now expected to marry her as soon as her breasts developed and she underwent her first menses.
As with food taboos and other privileges of the elderly, one has to ask why young people acquiesce in such rules and defer to the authority of the elderly. For young men, part of the reason is that they do so in the expectation that it will eventually be their turn. In the meantime, they hang around the campfire and seek opportunities for sexual satisfaction when the old husband is absent.
These two sets of examples of rules by which the elderly in many traditional societies ensure that they will be cared for—by food taboos, and by rigorously reserving young wives for old men—don’t operate in modern industrial societies. Hence we find ourselves wondering why young people of those traditional societies tolerate such rules. My remaining set of examples will be much more familiar to this book’s readers: the retention of property rights by the elderly. In modern societies today, just as in many traditional societies, most old people relinquish ownership of their property only through inheritance at the time that they die. Hence the threat, lurking in the background, of the elderly altering their wills contributes to the motivation of the young to care for their elders.
A mild example of this phenomenon operates for a !Kung band, whose rights to its land (the n!ore) are considered to be associated with the oldest band members, not with the band as a whole. More coercive examples are nearly ubiquitous among herding and farming societies: the senior generation, usually in the form of its patriarchal male, continues to own its land, livestock, and valuable possessions into old age, and most often until death. Hence the patriarch enjoys a commanding position to persuade his children to let him stay in the family house and to take care of him. For example, the Old Testament describes Abraham and other Hebrew patriarchs as owning many livestock in their old age. Old Chukchi men own reindeer; old Mongol men own horses; old Navajo own horses, sheep, cattle, and goats; and old Kazakhs own those same four livestock species plus camels. By controlling livestock, farmland, and (nowadays) other property and financial assets, older people hold strong leverage over the younger generation.