
“The next time you’re asked to imagine an aging person, we hope that you won’t quite know where to begin.”
So reads a quote from the early pages of a new book – The Future of Aging from SE Health in collaboration with Idea Couture, which had its launch event in Toronto on February 19th. I first got wind of this book when one of the authors Zayna Khayat, Future Strategist at SE Health first noted it was in the works on TVO’s The Agenda one full year ago in 2019. What a wonderful wait.
At first read, if you are relatively new to the multifaceted study of aging and longevity, you will walk away with a well-painted big picture view of the interwoven dynamics of an aging society. It’s not like this conversation suddenly arrived. Over the last ten years alone, a swell of commentary has filled the media pipeline that you would wonder how much more might one possibly say. Plenty as it happens.
My journey through research, learning, writing and speaking on aging and longevity matters took root in 2001 with the read of Longevity Revolution by Theodore Roszak. As revolutions go, things could go wrong in any number of ways said Roszak,“even more likely…there will be a concerted effort to incorporate everything that is deep and wise about the experience of aging into the dynamics of the marketplace.”
For me, two decades later, this book The Future of Aging brings Roszak’s optimistic observation full circle. Still much a work in progress, the future of aging is now. A 21st century phenomenon. In that sense, while the book is big picture, it takes us deep and wise in search for a holistic way to develop the social narrative around aging. Themes are framed crisply in five chapters – Aging & Community, Health Interventions, The Promise of Gerontechnology, Economic Contexts, and Identity.
The Future of Aging could serve as an inter-generational study guide
The techniques used within each chapter to articulate the storyline are consistent and help the reader take in the information in a manner that makes it easy for anyone. Well researched with North American and international insights, and supported with poignant quotes dotted throughout the pages, you never leave each chapter with loose ends, yet certainly more to ask.
Where so many articles and media pieces tend to present the aging population story as a crisis, spiked with heaps of statistics and scary warnings around such topics as the burden of the cost of healthcare, or (as one recent Australian headline describes) the risk of ‘pension poverty’ for older workers; The Future of Aging book never whines or whinges. Rather it takes a realistic futuristic stance on how to pick up the pace with positive responses to questions of consternation.
No doubt, there are challenges related to people generally living a longer later life now and into the future, and as such, we need to be as I say, “recoding a longevity society” for future generations of older adults. Today, the conversation may be buoyed to a large degree by generations born before 1965, but by 2030, there will be a new set of older adults moving into their 50’s and 60’s, who are already bringing new perspectives. That is one reason why I believe The Future of Aging could serve as an inter-generational study guide.
As the authors submit early in the book, “We must respond to the challenges by asking: How can we begin to reimagine social systems and infrastructure, to implement training for skills and capabilities, and to create products, services, and technologies that will improve the lives of people getting older longer?” This is partly what I mean by recoding.
One of the best flow through features of The Future of Aging is the way each chapter leads with what the authors call, “experiential insights”, identifies current “signals of change” and closes with “design strategies”. This all makes cause for diving down more, so over the next few weeks I will post more reviews and comments on each of the five chapters. Each chapter can be read as a stand-alone, so for me it is tempting to start in the middle chapter where my current thoughts go around gerontechnology – a diverse area where so much is happening, yet not so much is publicly understood.
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On a reflective note, after my first read, I did feel a sense of good fortune that we in our Western society (as the book refers to in places) are able to discuss and design new models for our future of aging in such an able and articulate way. With other parts of the world today suffering civil conflict, oppression, climate disruption and millions of people in mass migration, we should pause and ponder how we can help with the future promise of aging for them. Often I feel that books like this one, as a valued gift, can serve us best to help think out our greater humanistic tendencies.