Unjudged submissions are thoughts inspired by this year's prompt from writers who are not eligible to compete for the prize. All are invited to share something. This piece was written by Julie Gabrielli.
I am closing in on that age noted by my parents years ago as one entry point into elderhood: when the U.S. President is younger than me. With Obama, I’ve just squeaked by; he is sixteen months older than me. If Clinton or Sanders win the 2016 election, I may be okay at least for another four years. Maybe that’s part of their appeal to some people—the wisdom and equanimity they must have accumulated during long, eventful lives.
In general, though, our culture seems to lack positive archetypes for older people, especially women. NPR’s Ina Jaffe has reported about issues facing older Americans for years, and even she doesn’t have a good word to refer to them. Polls are inconclusive; most older people don’t like any of the usual words. But the problem is more than skin deep.
Ms. Jaffe notes that this failure of language points to a general discomfort, or distaste, for ageing. The cultural shadow of ageism blankets everyone, young and old. The cult of youth has been around for long enough that most of us have a vague feeling of getting older as a contagious disease that we’re trying not to catch. Often, older people move to retirement communities and don’t mix much with the general population. This is a shame because we lose access to life experience, wisdom, and valuable perspective.
The shaming and blaming that our culture does to anyone not in the sanctioned “majority” affects us as individuals. Being a woman has given me a lifelong view of this. There is a constant pressure to fit in, to conform to male rules and standards—everything from dress to vocabulary to work habits. Any deviation is swiftly and severely punished with ridicule, rebuke, ostracism, and marginalizing.
This goes on in every segment of society that does not occupy the pinnacle of privilege, the hierarchy of worth and value. So, anyone who is not male, white, youthful, wealthy, famous, well-educated (but not too much), strong, healthy, vigorous, possessed of an ideal body mass index, confident, and extroverted is automatically on a lower rung of status.
You can see how quickly hierarchy becomes an absurdity. The insidious paradox of these entirely subjective hierarchies is that no one can ever be perfect enough to occupy the tippy top of the heap. It requires an exercise of force, control, power, and hubris to get there. Even violence.
The 2016 Presidential race is a good illustration of this. Violence of ideas and of language betrays the aim of several candidates to get to that pinnacle by any means necessary. One in particular is constantly saying that he is the best, which betrays his purpose to master the hierarchy. He treats the campaign as a game whose winner gets to be the sole person at the pinnacle. His popularity shouldn’t be a surprise, since many people—consciously or unconsciously—aspire to be there too. If they can’t be, at least he can be their proxy.
We are so indoctrinated to the world of hierarchy that we are rarely aware of it, let alone have the space to wonder about alternatives. Historian Ronald Wright’s book, A Short History of Progress, details the dangers of enforced hierarchies, historically, in the collapse of seemingly invincible civilizations, one after another. His purpose was not to suggest alternatives, but the stories in his book should be enough to motivate a serious search for them.
I am not advocating any sort of revolution of us-versus-them to dismantle forced hierarchies. Many of us are feeling the urge to speak up, though. A number of women friends and colleagues are feeling a great pull to bring more feminine energy to situations, problems, and relationships—in our kitchens, in boardrooms, and the halls of legislatures and courtrooms.
As elders, what is the call? To speak up for the mysteries and depths of the human psyche. To offer profound wisdom, hard won over a lifetime. To contribute, to be of service, to mentor, now that the pressures to earn and get ahead may have lessened.
Our search for alternatives to forced hierarchy could be led or at least initiated by those of us who have been marginalized by a society bent on ranking and culling and controlling. And by that I mean all of us, because, interestingly, everyone in a hyper-hierarchical culture has been marginalized in some way. Even wealthy white men, though it’s hard to imagine how. Some of them are unhealthily overweight, so that’s something.
Hierarchies are useful frameworks, for without some sense of order, we descend into anarchy. Natural systems have an order at every scale, from the sub-atomic, to the cellular, to organisms and ecosystems. Hierarchy is one aspect of living systems, but as a model for human affairs, we would do well to exercise caution and leave a wide margin for interpretation.
Maslow’s famous pyramid of needs is a good example. It’s immediately understandable that basic needs like safety and shelter are shared by all, and are a prerequisite of sorts for frills like friendship, achievement, creativity and enlightenment. It would, however, be a gross distortion to see Maslow’s hierarchy as a value judgment, relegating people in danger or poverty to lower stages of spiritual development. This is simply not accurate, as anyone who has traveled in so-called “developing” countries can attest.
Of course, speaking up is not limited to women and elders. I like to imagine a world if even ten percent of us stood up and defied the marginalization of enforced hierarchy, with its attendant slide into selfish competitiveness. I love the idea of living in a culture with plenty of room for everyone “at the top.” I think we would find that hierarchies are subtler than we imagined and constantly shifting, more like improvisational dance than marching.
I am closing in on that age noted by my parents years ago as one entry point into elderhood: when the U.S. President is younger than me. With Obama, I’ve just squeaked by; he is sixteen months older than me. If Clinton or Sanders win the 2016 election, I may be okay at least for another four years. Maybe that’s part of their appeal to some people—the wisdom and equanimity they must have accumulated during long, eventful lives.
In general, though, our culture seems to lack positive archetypes for older people, especially women. NPR’s Ina Jaffe has reported about issues facing older Americans for years, and even she doesn’t have a good word to refer to them. Polls are inconclusive; most older people don’t like any of the usual words. But the problem is more than skin deep.
Ms. Jaffe notes that this failure of language points to a general discomfort, or distaste, for ageing. The cultural shadow of ageism blankets everyone, young and old. The cult of youth has been around for long enough that most of us have a vague feeling of getting older as a contagious disease that we’re trying not to catch. Often, older people move to retirement communities and don’t mix much with the general population. This is a shame because we lose access to life experience, wisdom, and valuable perspective.
The shaming and blaming that our culture does to anyone not in the sanctioned “majority” affects us as individuals. Being a woman has given me a lifelong view of this. There is a constant pressure to fit in, to conform to male rules and standards—everything from dress to vocabulary to work habits. Any deviation is swiftly and severely punished with ridicule, rebuke, ostracism, and marginalizing.
This goes on in every segment of society that does not occupy the pinnacle of privilege, the hierarchy of worth and value. So, anyone who is not male, white, youthful, wealthy, famous, well-educated (but not too much), strong, healthy, vigorous, possessed of an ideal body mass index, confident, and extroverted is automatically on a lower rung of status.
You can see how quickly hierarchy becomes an absurdity. The insidious paradox of these entirely subjective hierarchies is that no one can ever be perfect enough to occupy the tippy top of the heap. It requires an exercise of force, control, power, and hubris to get there. Even violence.
The 2016 Presidential race is a good illustration of this. Violence of ideas and of language betrays the aim of several candidates to get to that pinnacle by any means necessary. One in particular is constantly saying that he is the best, which betrays his purpose to master the hierarchy. He treats the campaign as a game whose winner gets to be the sole person at the pinnacle. His popularity shouldn’t be a surprise, since many people—consciously or unconsciously—aspire to be there too. If they can’t be, at least he can be their proxy.
We are so indoctrinated to the world of hierarchy that we are rarely aware of it, let alone have the space to wonder about alternatives. Historian Ronald Wright’s book, A Short History of Progress, details the dangers of enforced hierarchies, historically, in the collapse of seemingly invincible civilizations, one after another. His purpose was not to suggest alternatives, but the stories in his book should be enough to motivate a serious search for them.
I am not advocating any sort of revolution of us-versus-them to dismantle forced hierarchies. Many of us are feeling the urge to speak up, though. A number of women friends and colleagues are feeling a great pull to bring more feminine energy to situations, problems, and relationships—in our kitchens, in boardrooms, and the halls of legislatures and courtrooms.
As elders, what is the call? To speak up for the mysteries and depths of the human psyche. To offer profound wisdom, hard won over a lifetime. To contribute, to be of service, to mentor, now that the pressures to earn and get ahead may have lessened.
Our search for alternatives to forced hierarchy could be led or at least initiated by those of us who have been marginalized by a society bent on ranking and culling and controlling. And by that I mean all of us, because, interestingly, everyone in a hyper-hierarchical culture has been marginalized in some way. Even wealthy white men, though it’s hard to imagine how. Some of them are unhealthily overweight, so that’s something.
Hierarchies are useful frameworks, for without some sense of order, we descend into anarchy. Natural systems have an order at every scale, from the sub-atomic, to the cellular, to organisms and ecosystems. Hierarchy is one aspect of living systems, but as a model for human affairs, we would do well to exercise caution and leave a wide margin for interpretation.
Maslow’s famous pyramid of needs is a good example. It’s immediately understandable that basic needs like safety and shelter are shared by all, and are a prerequisite of sorts for frills like friendship, achievement, creativity and enlightenment. It would, however, be a gross distortion to see Maslow’s hierarchy as a value judgment, relegating people in danger or poverty to lower stages of spiritual development. This is simply not accurate, as anyone who has traveled in so-called “developing” countries can attest.
Of course, speaking up is not limited to women and elders. I like to imagine a world if even ten percent of us stood up and defied the marginalization of enforced hierarchy, with its attendant slide into selfish competitiveness. I love the idea of living in a culture with plenty of room for everyone “at the top.” I think we would find that hierarchies are subtler than we imagined and constantly shifting, more like improvisational dance than marching.
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