argia.eus
INPRIMATU
Ageing societies
Uxue Apaolaza Larrea 2022ko otsailaren 10a

From time to time, I hear or read a concern that normally goes through the edge of my attention: the population ages. It's happened to me recently. And through a plunge of data, I'm usually unearthed by the pace and geography of that aging. It tempts us to be serious and to comment that we are drinking coffee, “Our societies are aging! Aging, and there doesn’t seem to be a turning back!”

But actually, the data, in itself, fails to generate too much concern in me, or not in the direction that I should theoretically. In other words, in the light of the data, in the light of where we have more children, what worries me is not the ageing of our white societies, but the fate of women in the places where these strong birth rates are given. Therefore, to have a coffee to put a serious face and “what are women still doing in some places of the world to have and have children, what forces them to do it?” And that concern, yes, because imagination also uses the data that we have at our fingertips, gut acquires a mistakable dimension. Because the answer is not “clear, in these countries they have fixed jobs, they quickly obtain dignified housing, and in their lives uncertainty about the future has less weight than in ours.” No.

"You may think that women are no longer incubators (in some places) and do not guarantee the staffing we need for our wealth to grow."

Well, I'm not able to feel the worry that this aging can create for me. Moreover, I feel manipulated when I hear some concerns related to this data: cases of loneliness will intensify, we will not have enough workers to pay pensions, our cultures will disappear because of strange migrants, who will care so much for the elderly, sad societies will be societies without children (really? )…

Demographic data are used maliciously. I am not saying so, but Marta Luxan who has come to justify in some way my lack of concern about this data. The problems mentioned are not demographic, but our social organization. And Luxan has searched for data, worked it out, and the journalist has left them with his face "what I have to ask now." And to me he has given me a gift: he has given me a concept that I did not have before listening to him (researchers give us occasional fantastic gifts: concepts). Democratization of survival.

That said, who cares about this? Who doesn't want to live longer if he's healthy, careful. Who do the elderly feel sad about? And my discomfort was perhaps justified. Those who are concerned about the ageing of the population, what are they concerned about? “It’s market, it’s friend.” Can you think with the same data, how are we going to live peacefully in those demographic changes, seeing that the (turbo)capitalist model so far does not? Or, you might think, women are no longer incubators (in some places) and do not guarantee the staffing we need for our wealth to grow.

Well, I'm not going to have any more children, and I'm going to try to get to old age. And, looking at the evolution of my humor, I think I'm getting more and more joyful. I'm getting closer and closer to ridicule, fortunately. Society will not be affected by ageing, society destroys markets.