In a recent Fast Company article," Shoshana Zuboff, author of The Support Economy, wrote:
“Modern adulthood is a place with no maps. Until the late 20th century, there was no concept of midlife, because there just wasn't enough time in between climbing out of adolescence and dying.”I’m tired of hearing how older people today are unlike any previous generation of older people, starting with how adults now live much longer. The truth is, adults are not living much longer than they did a hundred years ago.
About 22 years of the total 29 years in life expectancy gains between 1900 and 2000 accrued to people under 18.
Adult longevity increased relatively little during the 20th century. According to Social Security at www.ssa.gov/history/lifeexpect.html, a man reaching 65 today can expect to live only about 2.6 years longer than a man reaching 65 in 1940.
Perhaps more mind-catching, a person celebrating her 85th birthday today has slightly less than a year greater life expectancy than her 85-year-old counterpart a century ago. In other words, the human life span (how long we can live) has not changed in modern times. It is the same as it was a thousand, two thousand years ago. Our only gains have been in longevity – how long we do live. And those have been relatively little for adults, especially after the age of 50.
Zuboff further writes:
This new new adulthood is about becoming a truly unique individual who cannot be reduced to a role or a Rolodex, a net worth or a network -- a person who is more than the sum of his or her own parts, more than achievements and the expectations of others, more than titles, statuses, and all the glittering prizes.”
There is no “ new new adulthood.” Zuboff ignores what Maslow called self-actualization, Carl Jung called self-realization, and theologians and philosophers for centuries have described as a letting go of worldliness when youth is spent. Midlife was not, as Zuboff claims, a 20th century concept.
The term “midlife” may have been coined in the 20th century, but what it stands for has been around for millennia, spoken to in the annals of Vedic scriptures, classical Greece and notably in the works of the Roman stoic philosopher, Seneca.
If an esteemed Harvard Business School professor like Shoshanna Zuboff can get away with such sloppy scholarship, one wonders about the long-term costs to our society of continuing to “dumb down” entertainment, advertising, news presentations – and higher education. As time goes on, we seem less able to discriminate between truth and fancy, for opinion increasingly outweighs critical thinking in human affairs.
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