I know it’s apt and amusing that Camus’ *The Plague* is selling well in these interesting times, but may I also recommend Simone de Beauvoir’s *Old Age*?
In it, Beauvoir described the hypocrisy of societies that claimed to value ‘human’ life. 1/
In it, Beauvoir described the hypocrisy of societies that claimed to value ‘human’ life. 1/
If the economy is founded upon profit, she said, “the entire civilization is ruled by profit. The human working stock is of interest only insofar as it is profitable. When it is no longer profitable it is tossed aside” (OA 13). 2/
In such societies, the reality beneath the rhetoric is that the value of a human being has an expiration date and the old are past it. ”It is not mere chance that makes families speak of a child who is ‘extraordinary for his age’ and also of an old man 3/
who is ‘extraordinary for his age’: the extraordinariness lies in their behaving like human beings when they are either not yet or no longer men.” The child, however, represents the future, whereas the aged person is “no more than a corpse under suspended sentence” (OA 244). 4/
When she wrote these words, being “a corpse under suspended sentence” meant having a minuscule pension, loss of status and possibilities, and loneliness: “Society appears to think that they [the old] belong to an entirely different species: 5/
for if all that is needed to feel that one has done one's duty by them is to grant them a wretched pittance, then they have neither the same needs nor the same feelings as other men.” (OA 9)
I wonder what it feels like now.
#herdimmunity #COVID_19uk
I wonder what it feels like now.
#herdimmunity #COVID_19uk
Quotations from OA refer to: Simone de Beauvoir, Old Age, trans. Patrick O'Brian, London: Penguin, 1977.
