40 Nos vieux
Les personnes âgées ont besoin des autres personnes âgées, mais aussi des jeunes, et les jeunes ont besoin du contact avec les plus vieux.
Il y a une tendance naturelle chez les personnes âgées à se rassembler en grappes ou en communautés. Mais quand ces communautés âgées sont trop isolées ou trop grandes, cela impacte les jeunes comme les vieux. La jeunesse ne bénéficie pas de la compagnie des plus âgés, et ces derniers eux-mêmes sont bien trop isolés.
Traités comme des «outsiders», les aînés se regroupent de plus en plus pour s’entraider, ou pour apprécier la compagnie les uns et des autres.
Tout cela reflète le triste état des choses dans notre culture occidentale. Le fait est que la société contemporaine éloigne les personnes âgées. Et plus éloignées elles sont, plus la fracture entre la jeunesse et la vieillesse se creuse ; les vieux n’ont plus d’autre choix que se détacher par eux-mêmes.
Ils ont, comme tout autre individu, leur fierté ; ils préfèrent ne pas être avec des plus jeunes qui ne les apprécient pas, et feignent la satisfaction pour justifier leur position.
La séparation générationnelle provoque la même fracture à l’intérieur de chaque vie individuelle : plus l’isolement des anciens s’accentue, plus leurs liens avec leur propre passé deviennent non reconnus, perdus. Leur jeunesse n’existe plus dans leur vieillesse - les deux se dissocient ; leurs vies sont coupées en deux.
Dans les cultures traditionnelles, contrairement à la situation actuelle, les aînés étaient respectés et même essentiels :
Cette façon de voir les anciens semblent avoir été pratiquement universelle dans toutes les sociétés connues. On a d’ailleurs identifié, dans différentes cultures, de nombreuses moeurs liées à l’ancienneté de quelques individus ((The Role of Aged in Primitive Society, Leo W. Simmons, New Haven: Yale University Press, I945, p. 69.).
Plus précisemment :
On observe que les très jeunes et les très vieux au sein d’une même famille ont souvent des relations privilégiées. Ils ont laissés ensemble à la maison, pendant que les membres de la famille dits «valides» vont travailler. Ces vieillards, dans leur sagesse et leur expérience, ont protégé et instruit les petits, tandis que les enfants à leur tour, ont agi comme les «yeux, les oreilles, les mains et les pieds» de leurs vieux amis affaiblis. En bref, ils s’occupent et se rendent service mutuellement.
Sans conteste, si les vieux ne sont pas physiquement intégrés dans la vie quotidienne contemporaine - c’est-à-dire qu’ils partagent les mêmes rues, boutiques, services, et lieux publics avec tout le monde -, ils ne peuvent pas être socialement intégrés. Mais en parallèle, certains vont avoir plus ou moins envie de côtoyer leur propre groupe d’âge, et auront plus ou moins besoin de services médicaux ou d’aide en fonction de leur état de santé.
Malheureusement aujourd’hui très souvent, les personnes âgées sont placées dans des centres de repos qui ne sont pas du tout adapté à leurs besoins. Cela entame leur mental, leur résistance et même parfois leur santé physique !
40 Old people everywhere
40 Old people everywhere
Old people need old people, but they also need the young, and young people need contact with the old.
There is a natural tendency for old people to gather together in clusters or communities. But when these elderly communities are too isolated or too large, they damage young and old alike. The young in other parts of town, have no chance of the benefit of older company, and the old people themselves are far too isolated.
Treated like outsiders, the aged have increasingly clustered together for mutual support or simply to enjoy themselves. A now familiar but still amazing phenomenon has sprung up in the past decade: dozens of good-sized new towns that exclude people under 65. Built on cheap, outlying land, such communities offer two-bedroom houses starting at $18,000 plus a refuge from urban violence . . . and generational pressures. (Time, August 3, 1970.)
But the choice the old people have made by moving to these communities and the remarks above are a serious and painful reflection of a very sad state of affairs in our culture. The fact is that contemporary society shunts away old people; and the more shunted away they are, the deeper the rift between the old and young. The old people have no choice but to segregate themselves they, like anyone else, have pride; they would rather not be with younger people who do not appreciate them, and they feign satisfaction to justify their position.
And the segregation of the old causes the same rift inside each individual life: as old people pass into old age communities their ties with their own past become unacknowledged, lost, and there fore broken. Their youth is no longer alive in their old age - the two become dissociated; their lives are cut in two.
In contrast to the situation today, consider how the aged were respected and needed in traditional cultures:
Some degree of prestige for the aged seems to have been practically universal in all known societies. This is so general, in fact, that it cuts across many cultural factors that have appeared to determine trends in other topics related to age. (The Role of Aged in Primitive Society, Leo W. Simmons, New Haven: Yale University Press, I945, p. 69.)
More specifically:
. . . Another family relationship of great significance for the aged has been the commonly observ~ed intimate association between the very young and the very old. Frequently they have been left together at home while the able-bodied have gone forth to earn the family living These oldsters, in their wisdom and experience, have protected and instructed the little ones, while the children, in turn, have acted as the "eyes, ears, hands, and feet" of their feeble old friends. Care of the young has thus very generally provided the aged with a useful occupation and a vivid interest in life during the long dull days of senescence. (Ibid. p. 199.)
Clearly, old people cannot be integrated socially as in traditional cultures unless they are first integrated physically - unless they share the same streets, shops, services, and common land with everyone else. But, at the same time, they obviously need other old people around them; and some old people who are infirm need special services.
And of course old people vary in their need or desire to be among their own age group. The more able-bodied and independent they are, the less they need to be among other old people, and the farther they can be from special medical services. The variation in the amount of care they need ranges from complete nursing care; to semi-nursing care involving house calls once a day or twice a week; to an old person getting some help with shopping, cooking, and cleaning; to an old person being completely independent. Right now, there is no such fine differentiation made in the care of old people - very often people who simply need a little help cooking and cleaning are put into rest homes which provide total nursing care, at huge expense to them, their families, and the community. It is a psychologically debilitating situation, and they turn frail and helpless because that is the way they are treated.
We therefore need a way of taking care of old people which provides for the full range of their needs:
1. It must allow them to stay in the neighborhood they know best - hence some old people in every neighborhood.
2. It must allow old people to be together, yet in groups small enough not to isolate them from the younger people in the neighborhood.
3. It must allow those old people who are independent to live independently, without losing the benefits of communality.
4. It must allow those who need nursing care or prepared meals, to get it, without having to go to nursing homes far from the neighborhood.
All these requirements can be solved together, very simply, if every neighborhood contains a small pocket of old people, not concentrated all in one place, but fuzzy at the edges like a swarm of bees. This will both preserve the symbiosis between young and old, and give the old people the mutual support they need within the pockets. Perhaps 20 might live in a central group house, another 10 or 15 in cottages close to this house, but interlaced with other houses, and another 10 to 15 also in cottages, still further from the core, in among the neighborhood, yet always within 100 or 200 yards of the core, so they can easily walk there to play chess, have a meal, or get help from the nurse.
The number 50 comes from Mumford's argument:
The first thing to be determined is the number of aged people to be accommodated in a neighborhood unit; and the answer to this, I submit, is that the normal age distribution in the community as a whole should be maintained. This means that there should be from five to eight people over sixty-five in every hundred people; so that in a neighborhood unit of, say, six hundred people, there would be between thirty and fifty old people. (Lewis Mumford, The Human Prospect, New York, I968, p. 49.)
As for the character of the group house, it might vary from case to case. In some cases it might be no more than a commune, where people cook together and have part-time help from young girls and boys, or professional nurses. However, about 5 per cent of the nation's elderly need full-time care. This means that two or three people in every 50 will need complete nursing care. Since a nurse can typically work with six to eight people, this suggests that every second or third neighborhood group house might be equipped with complete nursing care.
