Ageism, the chronic disease of our society

In Italy, the population over 65 amounts to over 14 million people, which represents 24.7% of the total population. Over half of this population, or more than 7 million people, is at least 75 years old. We are an aging country and yet there is so much rhetoric and enormous disinterest around the elderly. We are an old nation that has not, in fact, developed consideration for its elderly, who are almost completely absent from political and intellectual debate.

It is a phenomenon, that of indifference towards old age, not limited to Italy, indeed typical of contemporary society and defined by experts with a precise term: ageism. As Marco Trabucchi, psychiatrist and one of the great Italian experts in geriatrics, tells us in a book entitled Ageism (Erickson-Il Margine, 2025, Euro 16.00, pp. 192. Also Ebook), this word refers to an invisible prejudice that discriminates against the elderly. In a world like the contemporary one that glorifies youth and marginalizes old age, ageism manifests itself through the reduction of rights, the devaluation of experience and social marginalization. Social marginalization, if not loneliness, are conditions that too often rhyme with old age in our times. Marco Trabucchi analyzes this phenomenon considering it not only as a cultural issue, but as a problem that affects the well-being of people and the stability of the entire social fabric. It examines the historical and social roots of ageism, researching its impact on public policies, intergenerational relations and the quality of life of older people. In the volume it highlights the need for a change of perspective: it is not just a matter of guaranteeing greater rights, but of revaluing the role of the elderly in society, recognizing their experience as a collective heritage.

The problem, in our opinion, is precisely this: we continue to see the elderly population simply as a problem and a cost for the community. Those who have left the work and production cycle are considered obsolete, useful as babysitters for working parents, but otherwise to be marginalized. It is a shame that, by reasoning in this way, our society is becoming increasingly uprooted, without its own memory and roots. It is becoming less and less capable of looking at things with a different gaze than that which comes to us from immediacy and frenzy. To us, all this seems a shame and a waste.

Perhaps then it is really time to try to look back and try to create meeting spaces and aggregations between generations in neighborhoods and towns. There are, in fact, a thousand initiatives in which the elderly could be involved: from accompanying children to school as happens in many European cities to entrusting them with the management of playgrounds or those activities that public administrations can no longer support due to lack of funds.

Of course, we need to create the conditions to involve these people more and more and not make them feel part of the social context in which they live. It takes will and commitment on the part of the institutions just as we all need to do our part to start looking around again and recreate communities. As Marco Trabucchi writes in his book: “A life, that of the elderly, extinguished by ignorance and stupidity is, in any case, a life that disappears, together with its richness and its importance for everyone”. Because communities thrive when none of those who are part of them are marginalized or forgotten…