Old age is not exactly a time of life that most of us welcome, although

globally speaking it is a privilege to reach it. In Western societies, the

shocked realisation that we are growing old often fills us with alarm
and even terror. As Simone de Beauvoir writes in her magisterial
study of the topic, La vieillesse (1970) – translated in the UK as Old
Age, and in the US as The Coming of Age (1972) – old age arouses a
visceral aversion, often a ‘biological repugnance’. Many attempt to
push it as far away as possible, denying that it will ever happen, even
though we know it already dwells within us.

In fleeing from our own old age, we also seek to distance ourselves
from its harbingers – from those who are already old: they are ‘the
Other’. They are (with some exceptions) viewed as a ‘foreign species’,
and as ‘outside humanity’. Excluded from the so-called normal life of
society, most are condemned to conditions where their sadness, as
Beauvoir puts it, ‘merges with their consuming boredom, with their
bitter and humiliating sense of uselessness, and with their loneliness in
the midst of a world that has nothing but indifference for them’.
Beauvoir’s work sets out to show how old people are viewed and
treated as the Other ‘from without’ and also – by drawing on memoirs,
letters and other sources – to present their experiences ‘from within’.
Her aim is to ‘shatter’ what she calls the ‘conspiracy of silence’
surrounding the old for, she insists, if their voices were heard, we
would have to acknowledge that these were ‘human voices’ (emphasis
added).
On Beauvoir’s view, most societies prefer to shut their eyes rather
than see ‘abuses, scandals, and tragedies’ – they opt for the ease of
accepting what is, instead of the self-scrutiny and struggle that is
required to envision and enact what life could be. Speaking of her own
society, she claims that it cared no more about orphans, young
offenders or the disabled than it did about the old. However, what she
finds astonishing about the latter case is that ‘every single member of
the community must know that his future is in question; and almost all
of them have close personal relationships with some old people’. So
what explains this failure to face our future, to see the humanity in all
human life?