The author of "The Liberation of Growing Old", Anne Karpf used some interesting ways to convince the reader of the article that ageism really does exist and young people may hate elderly people more in our country than others, which, according to the author, should be stopped in order for the increasing number of old people in the country not to get hate from American culture. Anne Karpf has described in detail how, through some different experiments, it was found out that in an experiment on the mentality of younger people towards their elders, “three-quarters of the groups were found to denigrate old people. More than a third advocated banning old people from public activities like shopping. (Ageism) tells us that age is our defining characteristic and that, as midnight strikes on a milestone birthday, we will become nothing but old — emptied of our passions, abilities and experience, infused instead with frailty and decline.” this means that because so many people value their age so much, they have become afraid of what they will (hopefully) be one day, perhaps thinking of the person they will be as a stranger rather than themselves, and recognizing that in the future, one will still be the same consciousness. The author explains this, hoping to appeal to our natural selfishness and includes several links related to the explanation of the strange psychology humans have of not being able to view themselves far in the future as as being themselves and not a different person. The author also tries to explain how the fear of getting old today has evolved. She states that age has started to be viewed as a medical problem, something to be avoided, rather than just a stage of life.
The author uses many different techniques of convincing and explaining to the reader what each point about ageism and growing older has been affected by society and will affect you. She uses countless amounts of statistics about this problem, and there are some very concerning numbers such as in the experiment that was mentioned before that are obviously meant to make the reader think about the attitudes of themselves even, or their friends. Because everyone can relate to this subject somehow (everyone is always growing older) the author makes a point of showing how many Americans think that they will become increasingly miserable as they age, while the opposite is actually true. The article also makes you consider how you think about your future self, as a person you fear to be, or conveniently ignored or someone to think about when making decisions that may affect the far future.
I was in some ways convinced by this article. I think that it is especially interesting to me, because New York is not really that much of a city of old people. I agree that ageism doesn't make very much sense, because why would a person dread growing and living through more than they are at the present? Though, perhaps I can't exactly relate enough to the problem to comprehend it. I thought that it is a good point about the low regard and pay of looking after old people who cannot take care of themselves as well. However, there is some understandable fear of growing old, although not the fear the article described. Because health problems come with age and the exact ageism faced today that makes people fear getting old, is something to fear.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/04/opinion/sunday/the-liberation-of-growing-old.html?ref=opinion
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