Abstract
And so we postulate that the call to reinstate the themes of “fate and mutability, mortality and finitude, suffering and wisdom” (see Cole 1992, p. 243) are certainly noble ideals; nevertheless, they have been swept aside by the rising tide of a postmodern culture that has not only embraced the ever-expanding sphere of the “ageing industry” (Estes 1979, 1993) but has taken the scientific management of ageing and morphed it into many macro-level extensions of a “scientific-industrial” complex emerging out of the 1950s.There may be a “new ageing enterprise” (Moody 2004/2005, 2008) on the rise, but we argue that there has not been any relinquishment of the hegemony found with the “positive” pole of the duality (i.e., the striving toward an optimal ageing) and instead, ironically, there is the emerging value-laden zeitgeist in gerontology that seems to embrace only the way forward—exponentially—without much regard for premodern, modern or postmodern values of ageing at all.
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Felsted, K.F., Wright, S.D. (2014). The Definition and Delineation of Each Inflection Point. In: Toward Post Ageing. Healthy Ageing and Longevity, vol 1. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-09051-1_2
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