Episode 24 - "Why do people not want to be old?"

This week Steve and Christabel take a stab at answering why it is that people don’t want to be old. They begin in Ancient Greece with a conversation between Socrates and Cephalus, drawing heavily on Saloni de Souza’s interpretation of Plato’s presentation of old age in this early passage of The Republic. Even in ancient times, it was known that wealth can help mitigate the downsides of the ageing process, so the duo hop over to France to pick up on the more explicitly class-conscious critiques of society’s treatment of the old, as provided by Simone de Beauvoir and Édouard Louis. They (hopefully) skirt Jeff Bezos’ legal team’s notice in their discussion of the plight of Amazon warehouse workers, describing what Joseph Fraccia describes as “the messages that capital writes on the bodies of labourers”. Christabel points to a UCL study led by Paola Zaninotto that found that the wealthiest can expect to live an extra 8-9 years free of disability. She then has a mild existential crisis at the thought that most professional sportspeople her age are considered significantly past their prime. Steve attempts to draw her out of her spiralling by teaching her about football manager culture (and is extremely rude about the good people of Stevenage in the process). The focus of our intrepid hosts remains steadfastly on the continent as conversation turns to Edmund Husserl’s distinction between the natural and the philosophical attitudes. Christabel relays that both Jessie Stanier and Hans-Georg Eilenberger posit that ageism gets sedimented into the natural attitude. Steve proceeds to dunk on the Silicon Valley Tech Bros who spend millions on the junk science that purports to ‘reverse their biological ages’. The episode closes with a commendation of the work that Jessie Stanier and Rosie Poebright put into facilitating intergenerational conversations between LGBTQIA+ Bristolians, and concludes that we should all be following the good example set by the wonderfulqueers of the Southwest. Email us the impossible questions children ask you at philosophyplaydate@gmail.com Find Steve at https://drstevecross.squarespace.com Find Christabel at https://christabelcane.com/ Philosophy Playdate theme by Piers Cane