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Page 1 of 2  A guru on aging writes about the shift toward spirituality.
Theodore Roszak, the author of the Longevity Revolution about the changing aging dynamics says that aging or brushes with death have brought to fore many people who have a sense of eternal values, whether or not they are religiously inclined. And there are no more compelling circumstances in which people learn, or revive their sense of eternal values than experiencing health crises; their own, or those of their spouses and friends. Health crises bring wisdom to most, and we, as longer-lived people, are in the throes of what I would like to call an epidemic of wisdom. What years of yoga might teach, a life-threatening disease can reveal in hours.
A hundred years ago, most people were gone by age 55. Today, we expect to live to 75 or more; so even if one lives a healthy lifestyle, biological nature catches up with all of us. In that regard, the economics of health and illness and vastly increased longevity is explored in the "Entitlements and the Ethics of Affordability" chapter.
He also identifies how many age, class and gender stereotypes are dissolving as the population matures. Many people in mid-life are less invested in being "all man" or "all woman," finding to their delight that being all human is quite enough.
For example, once men live long enough to mellow beyond competition and "warriorhood," we grow beyond the rigid roles to who we really are as a person. Of some cultural encouragement is the fact that TV sitcoms are increasingly holding gender stereotypes up to ridicule. (In 1970, Ted and Betty Roszak collaborated on one of first Masculine/Feminine readers, an anthology of sexual mythology and the liberation of women.) During our lunch on the deck, we agreed that men and women are increasingly seeing one another as adjacent, not opposite.
Thankfully, Roszak isn't preaching an agenda. America the Wise is abundant with core ideas, yet Roszak is really teaching a process of perspective change. And hopefully, practical agendas will emerge from the process, because far from being a solely philosophical tract, the book shows us the practical problems and potential solutions of vastly extended age, in chapters such as "Entitlements and the Ethics of Affordability."
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