Coronavirus has confronted us with the subtlest form of discrimination: ageism

As we approach the climax of the coronavirus crisis, it is necessary to step back from the fray and reflect on what we, the British, have learned about ourselves as a people. This test of our national character, our ability to rise to the occasion, has exposed something that we had not hitherto taken very seriously: the Janus-faced nature of our attitude towards old age. 

That attitude can be summed up in a single word: discrimination. The word carries a great deal of baggage. What has come to be its primary meaning is undoubtedly negative. Discrimination on grounds of race, religion, gender or sexual orientation is illegal in this country and across the Western world. But the prejudices that underlie discrimination persist, fuelled to some extent by resentment at the fact that they can no longer be openly expressed.

Discrimination on grounds of age, however, is still commonplace and, except in certain narrowly defined areas of employment law, it is broadly legal. Ageism, the term coined to denote prejudice against the old, carries nothing like the weight of analogous terms such as racism, sexism or homophobia. 

To give one example: it is considered entirely acceptable for the University of Oxford to preserve compulsory retirement for academics at the age of 67. Legal challenges to this rule have been mounted, but the courts have thrown them out. There are no strikes or protests. And yet compulsory retirement is discriminatory — flagrantly so. It is justified on the grounds that younger dons deserve a chance. Other comparable  institutions solve that problem in various ways without depriving themselves or, more importantly, the public of the benefits of older professors continuing what is in many cases invaluable work. But Oxford gets away with it.

Discrimination against the old has suddenly, however, become a matter of life and death. The Covid-19 pandemic is filling the intensive care units of our hospitals by the day; some are already at capacity. If this trend continues, tough clinical decisions will have to be made by doctors about which lives are worth saving. Indeed, this already happens, albeit in less dire circumstances, all the time.

As a society, we have hitherto accepted without question the premise that, other things being equal, a younger person’s life is more valuable than an older person’s. Now that we have been confronted with such choices at a national, even global, level, however, we need to acknowledge that discrimination against the elderly is precisely that: discrimination. Those who are calling for the needs of the economy to be given priority over measures to limit the spread of coronavirus are, in effect, demanding that the lives of the elderly should be subordinated to the interests of the rest. This is no longer about best interest decisions in the care of those who are anyway at the end of their lives. If “the NHS cannot cope” with the pandemic, then patients over a certain age will be denied life-saving equipment and treatment. The lockdown and social distancing are intended to prevent the need for such discrimination. But nobody questions its legitimacy. The only question is whether society as a whole should make huge sacrifices to avoid a scenario in which our readiness to discriminate against the old becomes too obvious to deny. We are faced with the paradox that, as life expectancy has increased, respect for seniority has diminished. 

The word “discrimination” is, however, itself Janus-faced. It can also have a postive connotation. A discriminating eye distinguishes between a good painting and a great one; offered a vin ordinaire and a rare vintage, a discriminating palate does the same. Discrimination in this sense is akin to good taste or connoisseurship. It is the product of learning, wisdom and experience — and hence characteristic of older rather than younger people. One of the most precious contributions of the middle-aged and elderly is the ability to discriminate between quality and quantity, between the meritorious and the meretricious, occasionally even between right and wrong. 

Cultures that value their older people also tend to be those that treat all humanity with compassion. Conversely, is it not the case that a callous attitude towards old age indicates a brutalisation of society in general. At the end of the Second World War, the inhabitants of the Japanese island of Okinawa, faced with a US invasion, were forced by their commanders to slaughter their elderly parents. A postwar revulsion against such inhuman, unquestioning obedience has allowed Japan to become again a country which reveres old age highly. This, surely, is the mark of a mature civilisation.

As we emerge from the pandemic, we should meditate on the meaning of our unenviable predicament. How has it come to this? We are confronted with the ultimate, unthinkable consequences of our own unspoken prejudice against the elderly. It does not have to be like this. The generation that is now in the firing line is also the one that overcame its own prejudices and dismantled the structures of discrimination on grounds of ethnicity, sexuality and disability. The older generation that is now so vulnerable is also the one that set its face against that particular form of injustice. Do we not owe them a debt of gratitude? Is a temporary economic sacrifice disproportionate to the large scale loss of mainly older lives that would result from a policy that lets the weakest go to the wall?  

The shocking discovery of Nazi Germany’s crimes against humanity led the postwar era to turn its back on eugenics. It would be a tragedy if the generation that enabled the world to move beyond the utilitarian ethics of the survival of the fittest were now, in old age, to become victims of that ideology. Ageism is the most insidious form of discrimination. Insidious, yes; ineradicable, no. Now that ageism has reared its ugly head, it will be the task of the younger generation to banish it from civilised society.