Old age and loneliness: is it that bad?
5 books about the liberal interpretation of loneliness in old age
Dmitry Rogozin, Post-scienceThere is no such force that will do everything without you and for you.
The power is only in yourself. You are that one power.
You don't act – don't rely on the actions of others.
Alexander Zinoviev, "Yellow House"
At the March conference on the liberalization of aging (within the framework of the international symposium "The Ways of Russia: Alternatives to Social Development 2.0", March 22-23, 2013, Moscow), Kristina Victor gave a typology of loneliness (according to Gibson). The leitmotif, which runs through the works of many modern researchers of older age groups, distinguishes four types: living alone, being alone, isolation and solitude.
We are used to viewing loneliness in a negative light, and defining the lives of lonely old people through exclusive practices that require immediate deconstruction and redefinition. At the same time, loneliness is not always associated with destructive consequences, depression and lack of self-realization. Living alone and being alone are incompatible and sometimes incomparable states. Escape from loneliness can result in the destruction of solitude, abandonment of oneself, from understanding one's place and environment. Older age is a time of summing up, rethinking and realizing the path traveled. To give up privacy is like giving up your "I", from the years you have lived.
Therefore, books about loneliness, on the one hand, reveal one of the bleeding ulcers of modernity – the abandonment and abandonment of the elderly, on the other, they construct a positive view of aging, the liberation of a significant period of life from prejudice and media cliches. Only the emphasis on the second property of loneliness allows us to take this topic out of the rhetoric of militant politicians and publicists who are more concerned with objectified cliches about saving the elderly than with subjective representations of the elderly, their difficult and sometimes heroic destinies.
Townsend, P. The family life of old people (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1957)One of the first sociological works devoted to aging.
Peter Townsend examines the life of the elderly in detail, emphasizing the most significant social group in old age – the family. Over the years, family relationships become the most significant. In the light of the completion of the life path, they acquire additional value and meaningfulness. Work, hobbies, infatuations, office romances, friends, rivals and coworkers – everything gradually fades into the background. And only the family, the genus, do not lose their original qualities, allow them to relate themselves to something more general and fundamental. The value of marital relations is being redefined, attachment to children and grandchildren is being rethought, relations with near and distant relatives are being rebuilt. The discrepancy between the emerging expectations and the actual, often predetermined past current relationships leads to a loss of orientation, the development of a sense of loneliness, abandonment and forgetfulness. Starting from a detailed analysis of interviews with married couples, widows and single men of older age groups, Townsend points to the breakdown of family relationships as the main reason for the isolation of the elderly.
The objective reduction of ties, the departure of friends leads to an acute dependence of an elderly person on close relatives. Peter Townsend, a leading expert in the study of poverty, emphasizes that only through coordination and overcoming accumulated misunderstandings can one get rid of pathological depressive states, often not directly dependent on the financial situation of the family.
Victor Ch., Scambler S., Bond J. The social world of older people: Understanding loneliness and social isolation in later life (Maidenhead: Open University Press, 2009)The book reflects the results of a large-scale research project supported by the Economic and Social Research Council of Great Britain and implemented as part of the National Program on Aging.
Statistical data coexist in the monograph with narrative and biographical stories gleaned from communication with people. The emphasis is placed on the justification and development of social policy, a departure from the stereotypes prevailing in Britain about the forced nature of loneliness, the need to overcome it in older age groups. Inclusion in social relations does not necessarily require constant presence in public space, hypertrophied activity and complicity. Demand, attachment and neediness in older age are manifested through a justified distance that creates context and meaningfulness of communication and social interaction.
Unlike the tradition laid down by Peter Townsend, the authors of the monograph do not place the family in the epicenter of life at an older age. Other social relationships (former work colleagues, friends, neighbors, seemingly casual acquaintances, etc.), in their opinion, play an equally important role in the inclusion of older people, the development of a sense of demand and need from the environment. The social world of the older generation has changed a lot. The Internet, social networks, gadgets have not spared the elderly, they have transformed the world of everyday life, which previously tended to shrink catastrophically with age. Now a more significant role in the isolation of older age groups is played by their own prejudices. Despite the sometimes disparate economic opportunities of the elderly in the UK and Russia, similar conclusions are quite applicable to our country. Solving economic problems does not remove the problem of loneliness, and postponing consideration of the latter until better times is an unacceptable luxury.
Gibson H.B. Loneliness in later life (Foreword by P. Laslett; New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2000)Hamilton Gibson begins the book with an overview of the definitions of loneliness, highlighting four main types: physical aloneness, loneliness as a state of mind, a sense of isolation as a personal characteristic (the feeling of isolation due to a personal characteristic) and solitude.
Dwelling in detail on the problems associated with loneliness, he describes various ways of measuring both the psychological state and the social phenomenon. Overcoming loneliness – rather, being lost, if we choose more accurate words in this context – G. Gibson sees the possibilities of positive interpretations of solitary (solitude) states, allowing you to distance yourself from the noise of current events and significantly expand your own ideas about what is happening. Living alone does not mean being lonely, and loneliness can be fully experienced by being in the family circle and maintaining close relationships with close relatives.
G. Gibson complements such non-trivial conclusions with the destruction of the stereotype of loneliness as a consequence of aging. Older people are no less lonely than young people. They are only more attentive to this state, which leads some to deep reflection, others to ignorance, grumbling and total dissatisfaction with the world around them. The lack of involvement in the squabbles of what is happening, the detachment and humility so characteristic of the former, stem from a solitary state, or loneliness without a nagging sense of pain and abandonment. Therefore, overcoming loneliness, according to Gibson, lies outside of visible programs and activities, forced communication and ostentatious activity. First of all, it is necessary to change the attitude to the world and see the importance of older age, not to run away from the past years, but to fill them with the meaning of new interpretations, to open oneself to dozens and hundreds of new opportunities and types of activity, among which social ones are not in the last place.
Kon I. 80 Years of Solitude (Moscow: Vremya Publishing House, 2008)It would seem that an autobiography cannot be related to the list of scientific books that reveal the problem of loneliness.
But Igor Semenovich Cohn continues a number of special, exceptional autobiographical publications. The author of hundreds of scientific works in the field of sociology, psychology, sexology, pedagogy and history, which can be read excitedly, without stopping, in the last years of his life "took a break" and told us about the fate that is not tied to the career race and parental obligations. The loneliness of the master continued throughout his life indicates his early adulthood, old age, which came instantly, wisdom learned in his youth.
In the context of conversations about loneliness, the book is indicative of lively and direct arguments in favor of the distinction between abandonment and solitude. The first state leads to depression and despondency, the second – recreates a person, preserves his destiny from external threats, allows him to be realized.
Using the example of his life, I.S. Cohn shows that the liberation of loneliness from the prejudices and attitudes of the simpering public is the only opportunity to take place in this world, to be free and to give freedom to his students and followers. He was lonely, but his loneliness was meaningful and controlled. To grow old young is the lot of geniuses, to whose galaxy, without any doubt, belonged Igor Semenovich Cohn. The allusion in the title to the novel by the famous Colombian seems to hint that the written text can be replaced by a dozen, if not a hundred, works similar in conceptualization of biographical loneliness. Charles Dickens, Thomas Hardy, James Joyce, William Golding, Arthur Schopenhauer, Henry Bergson, Marcel Proust, etc., etc. Here, independent scientific (in the full sense of the word) studies crystallized from autobiographies, compiled not so much for edification as reflection and observation of public loneliness. It turns out that the latter can be considered not so much as a problem, but as a justified choice that allows you to create new meanings without claiming to be new and original, giving you the opportunity to remain yourself and not adjust to the opportunistic bends of the environment.
Aging in community (Ed. by J.M. Blanchard, B. Anthony; Revised ed. Chapel Hill, NC: Second Journey Publications, 2013)It is a mistake to believe that the liberalization of aging, based on the rejection of total and obsessive care for the elderly, denies the importance and value of social relations, communication and joint activities in the family, local community, with friends and people sharing common interests.
The collection of works edited by Janice Blanchard and Bolton Anthony clarifies the situation in which life in the community becomes possible only through maintaining distance, meaningful loneliness. Social support coming from state guardianship authorities or non-profit organizations in such a perspective is necessary not for direct impact on the elderly, but to ensure spatial and psychological conditions for their self-realization. In other words, the desire to monetize assistance to those in need often hides helplessness, if not irresponsibility in the face of the emerging challenges of an aging society.
Until conversations about the support and protection of the older generation give way to a constructive analysis of the conditions and means of a full life, responsibility for decisions and actions will not be returned to an aging person, society will remain a helpless collection of confused people, temporarily united only by regular regulations, programs and reports.
The collection is divided into five self-contained parts, revealing the significant characteristics of solitary life in the community. The first one – about the "third way" – tells about the features of building a community of the elderly. In the second – "creating a physical container" – we are talking about the material conditions of social interactions. The third, dedicated to the "creation of social architecture", presents ways of intergenerational interactions, the formation of effective opportunities to mobilize the potential of older people. The fourth part describes research and policy objectives, the solution of which allows improving the quality of life of older age groups. Special emphasis is placed on the Internet space and blurring the differences between online and offline communities. The collection ends with a small fifth part, which the editors designated as "reflections". It calls into question the conceptualized view of old age in the collection, describes the possibilities and threats of active interventions by politicians, researchers and social scientists in a still marginal area of public interest. Despite the dominant presence of the older generation, the cult of the young, formed in the era of industrialization, which has long been a thing of the past, still dominates in modern society.
William Thomas and Janice Blanchard in the opening article of the collection "Movement out of place: aging in society", conceptually describe the "third way" in old age, denying the usual opposition of collective living in nursing homes and individual living in their own desolate household. Living in a community is an opportunity to preserve individuality and privacy while maintaining and developing social ties. Bolton Anthony in his work "Creating a Community in old age" focuses on the dualism of collective interactions. On the one hand, they take place in specific social conditions and require an appropriate place and time, on the other hand, they are supported by internal, non–material motives for communication, the need for social connections and exchanges.
Such close attention to loneliness in older age groups is not accidental. Janice Blanchard ("Redefining the Social Structure of Our Communities") provides very impressive facts about North America. According to the US census, only 51% of the population of the older age groups are married, in 1960 it was 72%, and one third of all single-person households are made up of people over 65 years of age. Everywhere, social researchers state a drop in people's involvement in social processes, a decrease in social relations, friendly and neighborly ties. Of course, loneliness is not the prerogative of older age, but it is in the declining years that it becomes too critical and significant, since there is no longer an opportunity to hide your confusion in work, family or noisy parties with friends. Instead of stigmatizing modernity, J. Blanchard calls for redefining the role and place of an elderly person, mentions the social movement of "meaningful aging", in which the social fabric of a modern, fairly aged society is anthropocentric. Such descriptions cannot be considered something innovative, rather, we are talking about a certain time constant that guarantees a successful aging. To live in peace with yourself and others, you should decide on the distance and take responsibility for what is happening to you and others. The period of infirmity, the impossibility of personal care has shifted significantly over the last century, and meaningful aging is, first of all, overcoming the decrepitude of consciousness and indifference to one's own fate ("we have already outlived our time, now is the time of the young"). A positive response to this position is the liberal view of aging, which is constituted in the books described above.
About the author:
D.Rogozin – Candidate of Sociological Sciences, Director of the Center for the Methodology of Federative Studies of the RANEPA, Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences of the Moscow Institute of Social Sciences, Senior Researcher at the Center for Fundamental Sociology of the Higher School of Economics
Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru02.04.2013