Sexism, racism and ageism, are they culturally ingrained?
1. Sexism means that males are to be afforded higher dignity and shown greater preference over females.
2. The lighter one is in color the more respect and the more appropriate place one deserves in society. (We might add here, the taller and more slender, the better.)
3. Youth is more acceptable than maturity and the elders are to receive less dignity than the rest.
4. Money however, the source of economic holiness changes the order and the priority of things.
Are these additional commandments or new articles of the constitution?
Whichever sex or race, age is a common basis for discrimination, especially in the American society. People of age, have been treated with dignity in Europe and Asia, more in the past than perhaps today. Yet Scandinavian countries among others provide the best of accommodations for their elders.
Wealthy people of age, however, receive greater respect throughout the world than people of lesser means, perhaps because of the goodies that they can bestow, a temporary type of respect -transferal.
Wealthy people therefore, age better in society than those wanting. If on the other hand, the aged were respected for their acquired wisdom rather than acquired wealth and for successfully having lived, then age would be a lesser factor of discrimination.
I have urged that society look toward extending the usefulness of individuals long after 65, which of course is a made up number. It seems also, that society discriminates against people of poverty. Unfortunately, it is said that the poor shall always be with us. So a poor old man or old lady remains both poor and old.
Based on the respect for both the aged and those of wisdom, people of Japan have treated their aging with respect while they socially see the need to treat the aged with as much gentleness as possible, while trying to afford them as much comfort toward the end of life. ( We have always done this with our aging cats.)
Unfortunately today's economic thrusts have begun working against that former culturally-held respect among the children of elderly in some Japanese families.
In America where life is to be respected from its very beginning, where some children are coddled until at least age 22, we might ask, should the end of life not deserve as much esteem? In a global society where wealth acquisition is the main thrust of life, the religious concept of honoring our fathers and our mothers seems to be falling by the way side.
Soldiers at war are to be respected, but those who survive to old age, are they to be forgotten in a society that was founded on liberty and equality? Does God favor the young and the wealthy over the old and the poor? These certainly are not questions without answers, but they are of the sort that my UFO friend would ask. Perhaps one has be from outer space to make these observations, but not necessrily.
