On freedom and aging: An interpretation

This article explores stages of historical development of age status and relates this to the present. Old people, already in the transition from tribal society to literate high culture, lost their leading social position. Moral and economic support was granted to them, yet the old as a social and cultural group never came back to power again in Western history. In technologically highly developed societies of the present countertrends of a new valorization of older people have set in. This is no return of gerontocracy. However, the main increase in social and cultural prestige of old people as individuals can be observed. This "readmission" is connected with the general sociological phenomenon of individualization in postmodern value orientations and lifestyles and will continue to expand.