There’s this assumption that the older a person gets, the less flexible they are to change. We have a stereotype of the stubborn old fogey who steadfastly refuses to give up his old-fashioned beliefs. There are some theories about this- one is that we spend our childhood and adulthood establishing our identity and spend so much of our lives building up “inertia” on our beliefs that to change them is to go against the current of everything we’ve been doing up to this point. A lot of older people will use their authority in work or family to maintain their beliefs- in other words, nobody has the “seniority” above them to compel them to change; everyone in their lives is less experienced or naive in their eyes.
Personally I think this is a bunch of bullshit. I believe anybody has the capacity to change their attitude; using their age or authority is a convenient excuse to sidestep the issue. My stepdad is a notorious example of this. Rather than admit he’s choosing not to change, he acts like its “impossible” because of his advanced age (as though people are asking him to perform back flips or something :rolleyes: )
Regardless of whether a person changes their attitude about something, I think its a cop-out for them to try and attribute it to change.
Find: “impossible”
Replace with: “I don’t want to and you can’t make me”
The only difference between a 2 year old and a 72 year old is that the elder is well aware that “I don’t want to and you can’t make me” won’t shut you up.
Except that there are real changes that occur in our brains as we age that impact how we learn.
Impossible to change? No, of course not. But having enough new experiences get remembered and rated strongly enough to offset and override heuristics that have been developed and encoded over many decades is not something that happens as quickly as it does to a younger brain that more rapidly encodes new experiences and has less well established pathways for new heuristics to compete against.
Being open minded is both a choice and a habit. In your own time, a closed mind isn’t so noticeable. But contrasted by changing times it’s much clearer. It’s kind of true, when they say, “everything you’re ever going to be, you are currently in the process of becoming!”. A lifetime spent finding comfort in a closed, static mindset, like the refuge of closing our hearts when we’ve been hurt, is a choice. Without making that choice it’s pretty simple to, by habit, become a close minded stubborn old coot. And, sadly often somewhat miserable too.
But you should cut him some slack. I think he’s being honest when he says he can’t change. Ultimately you are what you practise and he’s probably been at it too long to change now. Life has lots of traps to fall into, and I think this is just one more really. He kind of deserves your pity. Or maybe you could choose to see this as an object lesson in keeping an open mind and an open heart?
My siblings and I used to playfully mock our parents with chants of “Change, change” to the tune of “Brains” from zombie movies. I think they were comfortable in what they knew and were satisfied with having the same 12 dinner recipes. Consistency was their comfort food. They didn’t want to change their way of thinking because that would be an admission that they were wrong for their entire lives, and that’s a pretty profound admission, no matter your age.
Because I saw that so much, I went the exact opposite lifestyle, where I constant question and try out new things. There is absolutely no nostalgia in me. The only reason I have pictures from past events is because my wife took them, I have little interest in reminescing about the past, I want to look forward to my next adventure.
In my case, it’s pretty much the above. While I’m perfectly willing to listen to and follow advice from someone who has more expertise in an area than I have, I’m perhaps a bit less accepting of the nice folks full of have helpful advice that they’re only read about in a book somewhere.
With age comes the realization that not everyone who claims to be an expert actually is one.
What does attitude mean though? And how and why does it change?
If by attitude the op means personality temperament, then it rarely changes much at any age and our op is only complaining that they won’t change to be like him while (s)he is unwilling to change to be like them.
Often though attitude and beliefs means nothing more or less than our learned short-cuts in dealing with a wide variety of circumstances, the accumulation of all of our heuristics. That’s what I was talking about. And that requires learning new information but even more new methods of dealing with new or changed as well as established circumstances.
I can definitely see how an attitude could be the result of learning.
Say that fifty years from now, when I’m in my 80s, society has done a 180 and suddenly it’s cool to be prejudiced against people. For all of my formative years and much of my adult years, I would have been led to believe the prejudice is absolutely wrong…that it’s unfair, unethical, and goes against the Golden Rule, another thing I’ve been taught to respect. To change my attitude towards prejudice would mean I’d have to upend my understanding of these basic concepts. And if prejudice is okay, then a whole heap of other stuff I’ve always believed (e.g., racism is wrong, hate is wrong, people are fundamentally good, etc.) would also have to be questioned.
Younger people don’t have all the baggage. If the sun starts rising in the west tomorrow, they won’t freak out because they aren’t wed to the idea that the sun always rises in the east. An older person, however, has not only been taught that This is the Way the World Works, but they have also done the teaching, it is that deeply entrenched in them. It’s REALLY hard to convince a teacher they are full of crap. A student, not so much.
Just curious, Incubus, but how old are you. I’m 51 and I think as we get older, there are ways that we do get set into. People are generally creatures of habit, and as more years go by, those habits get more ingrained.
I think it’s as simple as that. Are we still able to change? Of course we are. It’s a matter of wanting to badly enough, or needing to.
Watching those town meetings a few years ago, where late-middle aged white people were yelling-down Barney Frank, I realized these were the same people who’d yelled-down their college professors for trying to teach biology when they wanted every class to be a demonstration against the Vietnam War.
If you’re a dumbass at 65, you were probably one at 25.
I’m 32. I understand that people’s habits and a lifetime of experiences can reinforce their beliefs. But I think it also reinforces the excuse that they are ‘too old’ to change their mindset. I find that dismissive and hypocritical. I’d rather someone be honest and say, “I don’t want to” than lie and say “I can’t”.
Somehow, in spite of their age, I have family members who changed/learned in the following ways:
-A mom and great-uncle who learned to play the violin later in life.
-A dad and paternal grandfather that became “born again” Christians later in life.
-A maternal grandfather who became Atheist in his seventies.
If older people were so fixed in their ways, none of these things would be possible, but they were. Obviously people have more capacity to learn and change their beliefs and attitudes than they give themselves credit for!
Totally agree with you. I think people say “I can’t” as a total cop-out, not wanting to discuss the topic - case closed, because it’s an impossibility, so don’t even try to discuss how it may be possible.
It can certainly be aggravating if someone we love says “I can’t” when they really can, or when they won’t even give it a try.
About learning new things later in life, I’ve heard studies on news radio about people learning a new language, and that being correlated to lesser instances of Alzheimer’s.
I think there’s a limit to how meaningfully one can deal with stereotypes. I think many of us could cite examples of stubborn young people insisting on a particular way of doing something, either because they’ve never yet had the experience of seeing it done a different way or because they refuse to acknowledge that someone else’s experiences might be a useful guide. In other words, “you’re not the boss of me.”
So, sure, I think it’s wrong to say that change is impossible. On the other hand, someone might be entirely happy in one’s way of doing things and legitimately not want to change just for change’s sake. Saying “I’m too old to change” might be just a polite attempt to avoid a discussion they find tiresome.
I’m going to be a stubborn old person just to spite the young people who think they know everything. I see/hear references to “the current generation,” which is supposed to be the young people, or “in their day” referring to when the old people were young. You know what? As long as I am alive, I am still current and it is still my day. Now get off my lawn!
I think, a good deal of this depends on what you’re asking them to change.
We have a historical reenacting group in my town and we’re often asked to appear at ceremonial events to fire muskets and whatnot. One member of the group is 80 years old. He was in his late childhood during WWII and lost close family members in the Pacific.
Our town was the home of the first Japanese person to live in the US (in the 1840s) and we often have Japanese dignitaries visit the town. Every other year a Japanese festival is held here. That 80 year old member of our “village militia” will not participate in ANY events that are connected with Japan. So strong are his feelings, even after 70 years, that he cannot bring himself to celebrate anything Japanese.
For my own part, I’m 54. I have a 12 year old daughter. For much of my life, to watch a TV show you bought a TV, plugged it in and voila. Same thing with the phone–the old phone company wall phone in the kitchen of my parents house since 1960 was still hanging there until very recently when my brother remodeled the place. So I get a little upset about the fact that changing technology, upgrades of hardware and software, systems, networks, etc. now make almost everything we buy out of date in a few years. My grandparents had one phone for their entire lives and every time they picked up the receiver the thing worked. My friends are getting new computers, phones, tablets, and i-things every other year or so it seems. I really don’t feel as though I should have to learn a new technology every time want to play a song, dammit!
I’m completely open-minded about religion, race, sexuality. (Don’t bother trying to convert me to your religious belief, though.)
But nobody is ever going to convince me there’s any truth behind “woo,” most conspiracy theories, paranormal activity, etc. If science finds proof of extraterrestrial life, I’ll welcome our alien overlords. Don’t ask me to change my mind today, though, about Betty and Barney Hill. . .
I dunno, I think in this culture we drastically undervalue the experience/wisdom of age. Instead of asking why someone has done it/thought it/acted THIS WAY for 30,40+ years (longer than we’ve even been alive, in some cases), we demand they “change their attitude” to match ours, even though we’ve been nursing our opinions for half the time they have, maybe less.
I think old people seem stubborn because we expect them to immediately bend to modern ways of thinking on the assumption that modern = correct when they simply don’t share that assumption.
ETA: There’s a different sort of stubbornness involved in not wanting to give up driving/move to assisted living/not see a doctor/etc. I’m talking more about mindset.
