Ken Dychtwald describes himself as “the nation’s foremost visionary and leading authority on the implications of the aging of America.” As should be evident, he does not suffer from shyness. This 50-year-old Californian has been making predictions about this country’s shifting older population for the last 25 years and claims even greater authority now that he has reached life’s midway point himself.

Even a short press conference with this whirlwind of an opinion-former leaves journalists like me with ideas enough for many columns. A sampling of Dychtwald’s opinions expressed at the recent San Diego meeting of the America Society on Aging will serve here to inform readers about important issues and to provoke further thinking. Each set of opinions, incidentally, came in response to a question asked by a journalist.

1) The older workers scene. People past middle age who want to work still expe-rience strong barriers. The presumption that older people cannot and should not be employed dates back to Franklin D. Roosevelt who inadvertently “created a century of age discrimination.” Social Security had the effect of moving older people out of the workplace so that younger people could have jobs.
Once members of the baby boom generation experience the difficulty of getting jobs in middle age, they will lead a revolt against the system. Putting up with the subtle bias of employers will stir them to resentment.
Though, according to Dychtwald, “we have made almost no progress on age dis-crimination,”  some signs of change in employer attitudes have appeared. In fact,  the space voyage of 77-year-old John Glenn can be called “the watershed event of the last 25 years.”
Elders, for their part, will have to make changes if they wish to be employed. We must be willing to reinvent ourselves. Perhaps we should look on work for its psychic rewards rather than for making a living. As things stand now, older Americans volunteer at the lowest rate of any age group.

2) The long-term care system. This system displays misplaced priorities galore. Instead of putting money into home and community-based care, we have favored institutions, especially nursing homes. But now the federal government is practically fighting a war against nursing homes and no one wants to go into the business because a decent profit cannot be made.
The solution is three-fold: a) organize an all-out push to solve Alzheimer’s disease; b) develop a better home-based system; and c) make elder care a benefit that goes with employment.
If these steps are taken, one can envision a future with very few nursing homes.

3) Intergenerational relations. Relations between the baby boomers and the older generation are currently excellent. Today’s older people are much admired by their juniors because of their achievements in war and peace. However, when the boomers become old, they may not enjoy the same repute from the so-called Generation Xers, people born after 1964 and notoriously self-centered.
Both the current older generation and the boomers are overwhelmingly white. But that will change as the ethnic mix among today’s young comes to the fore. The racial and ethnic dimensions of the population will then become interesting. “How, for example, will a  35-year-old Latino feel about contributing to the support of elders who live in country clubs?” Dychtwald asks.
Questions about longevity will then arise. People with money will be able to buy themselves another 10 to 50 years of life. Will not that increase the tensions between rich and poor?

4) The situation of women. Increasingly, it looks as if American women will be unpartnered and without children. Perhaps that will lead to new and creative life styles. Even  now, many older women do not feel content to take on the traditional role of widow, but instead reach out and form friendship networks that invent innovative forms of social life.
Another approach to this question would be an effort to make men live as long as women. “No one seems troubled that men die earlier,” says Dychtwald. But if men were empowered to take better care of their health, he feels, then the overall social situation would improve.

5) End-of-life issues. Of the three options, active euthanasia, passive euthanasia, and suicide, the first seems unlikely to find widespread acceptance. About this option Dychtwald says, “I don’t think we’ll ever be comfortable with it.” But he believes that  the latter two options will find increasing acceptance. The baby boomers, accustomed to self-empowerment, will want the right to end their lives when  the quality of life has declined irreparably.
This, then, is a sampling of leading-edge opinion about five areas of vital interest to an aging America. Ken Dychtwald may not be right about his views of the issues mentioned here, but he deserves credit for taking them on in such a bold and provocative way. Perhaps the rest of us can pitch in and be heard on these issues ourselves.

Richard Griffin

“Get up off your apathy.” This is the challenge given by Dr. Robert Butler to the baby boomers of America. He speaks authoritatively as the most prominent geriatrician in this country and a man who has raised national consciousness about the ongoing longevity revolution.

Baby boomers, Americans born between 1946 and 1964, now make up one-third of our population. Yet, according to Dr. Butler, they are woefully unprepared for later life. “They are not saving, they are not taking care of their health, and they are sedentary,” he claims. If the United States is the second fattest nation in the world (after Tonga), members of this generation can claim a fair amount of responsibility for this distinction.

The trouble is that so many of the boomers have not yet caught up with the good news about aging. As Bob Butler states it:  “A lot that we call aging is under our control,”.

Butler was in town last week for celebrations marking the opening of a new exhibit called “The Secrets of Aging.” Hosted by the Museum of Science in Boston, this innovative display began on April 5th and runs for six months. When it leaves Boston, the exhibit will travel to five other sites across the country.

David Ellis, president and director of the museum, calls the exhibit unique because it combines the latest science with the personal face of aging.  “We hope that people will see aging in a new light,” he explains, “as part of the normal life span.”

The main secret behind the “Secrets of Aging” is the targeted audience. Though the mu-seum hopes that older people will come to see the exhibit and take part in it, they are not the main target. Rather, as the vice-president of exhibitions, Larry Bell, told me: “The real reason for the exhibit is because the whole baby boom generation is approaching this stage of life.”

About members of that generation he says: “There is an aspect of denial.. They say ‘I’m just the same person I always was.’ If I myself had not been working on this program, I would have torn up the AARP invitation, and told them to contact me in fifteen years.”

More than forty distinct stations in the exhibit halls, most of them interactive, deliver in-formation about aging. These stops are grouped into four main theme areas that provide the exhibit’s structure.

The first section is called Body and poses the question – “What happens to our bodies as we age?” Among the exhibits that I visited, one comparing the aging of identical twins stands out in memory. Photos showed graphically the difference in appearance caused by life style practices such as smoking, sun exposure, and diet. One woman looked many years older and less healthy than her sister.

In the second section, called Mind, the question is similar to the first. “What happens to our minds as we age?” The old assumption that brain cells grow fewer in number with aging is shown to be wrong. Also Alzheimer’s is shown not to be a normal part of growing older but rather a disease. Differences between learning abilities of older and younger people are shown and games, puzzles, and tests enable visitors to exercise their brain power.

The third topic is Society. “How does society deal with aging?” This section features computerized images of celebrities such as Walter Cronkite and  Maya Angelou. Visitors can interview them and ask them about their experiences of growing older. A series of photo essays carries the message that maintaining social relationships helps people to age well. Another set of videos, these produced by children, shows them in conversation with their grandparents.

Finally, the fourth area focuses on longevity. “How long can we live?,” it asks. No one yet knows the answer to this question but many scientists are trying to find out. The exhibits here explore the two main factors that determine aging – genetic inheritance and lifestyle. Visitors will look in on research efforts such as caloric restriction with animals and see how scientists manipulate genetic material. Bar graphs show the varying longevity averages among various ethnic groups in this country.

As this century progresses, this latter question of longevity is bound to grow in interest. Dr. Butler, in a talk at the press conference before the official opening of the exhibit, recalled that the average age of Americans at the time of the Boston Tea Party was thirty-five. The conclusion he drew, as he compared then and now, is worth pondering. “What was once the privilege of the few,” he said, “has become the destiny of the many.”

The museum has planned many other services and events in connection with this exhibit. For example, in June and July there will be lunchtime lectures given by local and national experts on longevity and health.

Further information is available at (617) 723-2500 or at the museum’s web site: http://www.mos.org.

Richard Griffin

“Clocks have shaped my life,” confesses Andrew Achenbaum, a distin-guished historian of aging in America. “I spend much of the day wondering how much I can pack in,” he adds ruefully.

But Achenbaum tries to break this pattern so typical of modern culture: “Occasionally, I give time to focus in on life’s exquisite mysteries.” That’s when time becomes liberating for him as he attends to its possibilities.

This historian was a keynote speaker at last week’s meeting in San Diego of the American Society on Aging. There, people involved in a wide range of stu-dies about older people and services to them came together around the ambitious subject “Aging and the Meaning of Time.”

With heartfelt approval Professor Achenbaum quotes the late spiritual writer Henri Nouwen: “People must ripen.” These words suggest the purpose of aging – allowing ourselves to continue growing.

All faith traditions share the insight that long life allows for growth in spi-rit. They see time as a gift that makes spiritual development possible. As another speaker, Mel Kimble, wryly says, “God invented time to keep everything from happening at once.”

Kimble, teacher at a Lutheran seminary in St. Paul, Minnesota, now sees time very differently from earlier in his life. Recovery from two life-threatening diseases, cancer and stroke, has led him to speak of “my post-mortem life.” From his survivor’s vantage point, these are his “bonus years.” For him, everything – family, friendships, the world of nature – has new meaning, enriching his expe-rience of time.

“How time and aging intersect depends on what we bring to the expe-rience,” says Robert Atchley, now a professor at Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado, a young university that operates according to Buddhist principles. Na-ropa tries to bring together the inner journey of students and teachers with the subject matter being studied.

Moments of silence, Atchley points out, change one’s feelings about time. That’s why Quakers begin business meetings by an interval of quiet. Ideally, this practice introduces soul into the discussion from the start and lays a foundation for consensus.

In private conversation, I asked Robert Atchley whether he has sets aside a special time for prayer and meditation each day. His answer pleased me because it gives hope to those of us who find it difficult to schedule spiritual practice. Rather than a set schedule, Atchley chooses to meditate during moments of respite during the day, waiting in line at the supermarket, for example.

Of course, this practice of “finding God in all things” does not itself come easily but demands a high level of spiritual maturity. When seized upon, such moments enrich time by infusing it with meaning that reaches beyond.

The Jewish challenge, according to Rabbi Samuel Seicol of Boston, is to look forward. This tradition says that “you don’t have to finish the task, but you must start it.” The patriarch Abraham was told by God to get up and go. He went toward the future without a map but with hope.

Rabbi Seicol, chaplain at the Hebrew Rehabilitation Center in Roslindale, challenges residents there “to see what they already know,” a seeing that the rabbi calls hard to do. Maybe that involves some responsibility for imposing our own meaning on time.

The sabbath and other holy days change the nature of time. They remind Jews that there is a point when time ends. But until that point, Rabbi Seicol says, time moves forward and challenges us to grow, no matter how learned we already are.

Another speaker, Susan McFadden, who teaches at the University of Wis-consin at Oshkosh, loves to distinguish between chronos and kairos. The first Greek word refers to ordinary time that can be measured by clocks. By contrast, the second word points toward those times that are filled with meaning. The New Testament is full of this distinction and moments of kairos loom large throughout its pages.

“What if no moment had any more importance than any other?,” Professor McFadden asked. In doing so, she alluded to the burden of chronos in those nurs-ing homes where one day is much like another.

Even for older people living in their own homes, however, building enough kairos into our lives can be a challenge. I will never forget the molasses- like pace of a year in my life when I lived in northern Wales. Almost nothing happened during the average day and I thought that this ten-month period would never come to an end.

McFadden terms the culture in which we live a chronos society. “Many people have trouble finding any meaning in society,” she says. Yet the beginning of the year 2000 seemed to be a kairos moment across the entire world. Maybe that moment of grace gives hope to us who are searching for the values hidden in the time of our lives.

Richard Griffin

What does a fellow like me do when everybody else thinks a talk is fabul-ous but he himself judges it shoddy? That was my situation last week at the end of an address by the celebrated writer Tom Wolfe.

Even I was taken with Wolfe’s costume, however. Wearing his trademark brilliant white suit complete with a vest featuring white buttons, along with shoes striped in white and black and socks interwoven with white, this 69-year-old lite-rary lion evoked applause on sight. When, in the course of his speech, he first pulled out white half-glasses, the audience laughed appreciation.

Like others, I had come filled with expectation. My experience had been like that of the fellow sitting next to me, Kevin Honan, State Representative from Allston-Brighton. “I’ve heard rave reviews about him,” said my neighbor. And his wife, Mary Honan, added: “This man is a giant in literature.”

A friend in the row behind had a more personal reason for being there. “He was an old beau of mine at Yale,” she confided.

Wolfe’s announced title was “Manliness,” an unlikely topic for the Ken-nedy School of Government to host. But it was given something of a political context in the introduction by Harvey Mansfield, a Harvard government profes-sor. Mansfield described the current era in American history as “a time of victim-hood, a soft squishy time.”

To my disappointment, Wolfe himself spoke in a rambling, disordered style. His speech was often labored, halting and, to my mind, dull. Even he admit-ted going on too long, something like an hour and a quarter. Had the talk ap-proached the brilliance of his writing, I would not have minded. To judge from the brief interviews I did afterward, other people did not care about its length.

Here, in absurdly abbreviated form, is a summary of Wolfe’s message:

By reasons of their genetic inheritance, males are inherently aggressive. Their natural instinct is to be combative and the worst thing you can do is to “diss” them, that is insult their dignity. That will inevitably lead them to fight and fighting is what comes natural.

At this stage in history, however, American males are becoming decadent because society is suppressing their combativeness. After World War II, American intellectuals fell under the sway of European intellectuals. It’s the spirit of irony and contempt, characteristic of these thinkers, that has broken the spirit of boys and men here.

Why, it has gotten so bad that a lot of young men in colleges and universi-ties are not keen on going off to get killed. A survey has shown that eighty per-cent of Harvard students would not serve in the wartime military unless they ap-proved of the particular war. How many of them have ever met anybody who has served in the military?

The armed forces themselves have been weakened by the inclusion of women. It is ridiculous to see the unequal ranks of cadets marching at West Point, big guys and small women.

Still, “the male spirit does not die.” It finds expression, among other plac-es, in high-profile team sports. And the sports craze felt by so many Americans gives evidence of the old spirit of fight.

Most people, I suppose, do not take all of this very seriously. Rather, they regard Tom Wolfe as a performer, a witty manipulator of words out to amuse people, not instruct them.

However, I found in this material a lot of political implications that I do not much like. For me, it’s a welcome sign of progress in human relations that American males have taken on more of the qualities and values normally asso-ciated with women. And I am glad that women have moved into the mainstream of more and more American institutions.

I especially welcome the readiness of young men to be discerning about whether or not to enter the armed forces. That they have become cautious about the wars which they will fight seems to me a sign of social maturity rather than effeteness.

I agree that political correctness may distort our views about important areas of our common life. We do in fact need sharp-eyed people to warn us about the distorting effects of an artificially imposed set of beliefs. But these prophets must be truly discerning.

Perhaps it’s a sign of my advanced years that I regard the great American celebrity system with growing skepticism. Yes, I can be entertained by the grandstanding of Donald Trump of and even some of Dennis Rodham’s antics. But when Tom Wolfe, a man of some literary reputation, gives a speech that is riddled with weak generalizations and dubious historical analysis, then I must stand against the consensus of fellow audience members.

The advance of years has freed me to dissent from the crowd. I now feel entitled to take a contrarian view, even if I may be wrong. For this, as for so much else in advanced age, I feel grateful.

Richard Griffin