Pobierz plik - Grundtvig

However, across the centuries old age has been
confronted with ambivalent emotions and
attitudes. Plato claimed that old age was a blessing,
a time free from temptations and responsibilities,
a time for relaxation and reaping the benefits of
a whole lifetime’s work. Aristotle perceived old
age as a curse bringing about mental retardation
accompanying lost vitality.
That dual attitude towards old age, so typical of
the past epochs and cultures, is equally persistent
in modern times. Stereotypes and prejudice to old
age are very persistent. Societies still cherish pictures
of elderly people as unattractive, not resourceful
and incapable of professional or social activity. On
the verge of death, old people deserve pity on the
part of the young, strong, healthy and ‘normal’.
However, in the past years, attitudes towards old
people have gradually transformed. While elderly
people have not regained the authority enjoyed
by senior citizens in the former social structures,
population growth has been accompanied by old
people’s political power and protest against any
forms of age discrimination. Many elderly people
refuse to assume permanent, stereotypical roles.
They look for new opportunities for development,
new activities and ways of self-realisation. They
demand that society recognises their specific
interests and needs. More and more frequently,
old age is associated with fulfilling one’s dreams,
travelling, pursuing talents and comprehensive
self-realisation. A growing number of people
claim that old age is not a time for looking back
and lamenting over lost opportunities, but a time
for activity which allows one to enjoy life as well
as share experiences, competence and leisure
time with the society.
The world is undergoing profound demographic
changes with the number of elderly
people at the third age growing dramatically while
the arbitrary threshold of old age has not been
univocally defined. Associating old age with the
chronological age is a purely conventional practice
related to the social security system. Generally,
people agree that old age starts at the time
of retirement. According to medical and biological
concepts, the onset of ageing is intangible as
ageing is a biological, psychological and social
process taking place between conception and the
end of life. The World Health Organization agreed
that old age does not start before the age of 60.
The European Union offers programmes targeted
at senior citizens to individuals who are more
than 50 years old. Old age is very individual and
hence defies generalisation. It is a process taking
place more in human mentality rather than being
a biologically conditioned process.
Age does not define youth.
Youth is a state of mind,
It is the power of will, imagination, the power of emotion
It is courage overcoming shyness.
(…)
You are young as long as
the sense of beauty,
joy, courage, grandness and power
flow from the earth, from a man
and from eternity straight to your heart.
(A Hindu maxim)
In times of great demographic changes, the
proportion of people who are professionally active
to those at post-working age involves reforms
of social security systems as well as retirement and
health systems. Considerable medical progress
and enhanced financial conditions have resulted
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