industry & reform
Where have all our elders gone ?
The wilful destruction of the world ’ s most loved brand .
By Mike Rungie
How did we manage to move
so quickly from a world that passionately loved its elders to one that hates them ? It wasn ’ t that hard – we just re-branded them into people we didn ’ t like .
The powerful value of the ‘ elder brand ’ had always been that we respected and loved people who ’ d been around for a while . We liked their life-learnt skills , their time-grown views and their modest way of doing for others . Their individual reputations built into an ‘ elder brand ’ that settled their place in society and therefore their roles , inclusion , support and our expectations of them .
But have you ever noticed the messages about the people who live in aged care that bombard you from the moment you arrive … that build into a ‘ resident brand ’?
The name , the institutional buildings , the rules , the skills of the staff , the lack of personal trappings , the lack of activity , the exclusion of others , the food , the language . All tell you that this lot are dependent and need minding , have left their worlds behind , have nothing to give , are of lesser value , are waiting to die . These messages are unrelenting , and unwittingly we fall into line – in our contributions to their lives and our expectations of them .
This re-branding
“
Ageing requiring you to accept and live your life as an over-ripe apple waiting to fall off the tree . of residents in aged care is just the extreme version of how we have rebranded everyone who has been around for a while .
People are quite suddenly cast into the roles of retiree , pensioner , job-seeker , elderly person , consumer , grey nomad or aged care recipient . These roles are shored up by images , language and rules that demand our compliance . So , we ’ re leant on to believe that you ’ re non-productive , consuming and dependent . That you hang out together and you ’ re all the same . That you ’ re a threat to the economy , freedom and happiness of the rest of us . That you ’ re so much not what we admire – youth , newness , beauty , productivity , freedom and fashion .
Why couldn ’ t today ’ s elders have simply moved to new roles suited to their age and wisdom , that were needed and valued and therefore supported , just like elders of the past who never actually retired or became pensioners ? Well , the Empire saw an opportunity if it could put elders out to pasture . And to do this it needed to brand you as different – so it branded you as ‘ ageing ’.
It convinced us to dislike and fear your oldness . It gave us the ‘ logic ’ to reject you . You were imaged as deviants in our world . And this
‘ deviancy-imaging ’ has now become standard practice for agencies set up to support older people . As bizarre as this sounds , older people have told us time and time again that this is exactly what it feels like .
The genius of the Empire ’ s ‘ ageing brand ’ is that it devalued a good slab of the population , letting us define ourselves by what your failure looked like , kept you out of the road of our glamorous lives ,
12 agedcareinsite . com . au