It’s been my observation that almost all people over 70 act – well, I’m not sure how to describe it, but - old. They’re goofy, gullible, and naive.
Is this a generational thing? In other words, have they always acted this way? If not, does it mean I will start acting goofy, gullible, and naive when I turn 70? Why does this occur?
I would highly disagree that they all act that way…but a lot do, and I think you have to work hard to remain fresh and bright, and keep exposing yourself to new ideas, and being forward-thinking. I firmly believe that at least some of their problems are caused by themselves, unwillingness to change.
My great-aunt was sharp as a tack right up until she died at 90+.
She was exactly the kind of old woman I wanted to be. Tough, no nonsense, she swore like a sailor (ok, albeit an Indian sailor) and knew everything us kids were doing.
I loved her so much.
I have a few relatives over 85. Not one of them is goofy, gullible, or naive. They are very much what they always were, mentally, which by and large means they are very sharp, well-educated, and worldly – but are physically frail. Perhaps the people you know have forms of senile dementia. Or have been silly all their lives.
Crafter, that sounds like confirmation bias at worst, and selective interpretation at best.
They act according to their desires, as all humans always do, have always done, and always will. Their desires and priorities have shifted as they aged, and they no longer give a shit about the things inhibiting them from being “goofy, gullible, and naive”. That’s my take anyway.
Also, in hindsight, did you act like a typical teenager/student/young parent at the time? And didn’t that just feel like you, like yourself? So being old will also feel like you are yourself.
But Psychology says that for the most part, peoples personalities don’t change much. Especially the Big Five personalitytraits tend to remain constant.
But some people do get silly. They stop thinking. They say things like “I’m old, so I don’t have to learn [new technology]”, even if it is as simple as a new phone or new toaster. They say “You kids these days,” totally, totally forgetting they were once kids, too, and probably 100x as jerkish. They completely lose touch because they’re old.
And that doesn’t even count the entitlement factor. “I put in fifty years of work and you owe me.” No Grandpa, sorry. No one owes anything in this world, and it’s a changing world anyway.
No, you have to remain alert and forward-thinking and endeavor to keep your mind fresh and sharp. And those that do, remain so. I firmly believe the brain can atrophy, too, if not used.
I know my Grandpa went from sharp as a nail serious investor to gullible enough to give some random guys £20,000 for ‘fixing his roof’ (I’m not sure if they even had a ladder) over a period of about 10 years.
He did wind up with full-blown dementia, so it probably was an early sign of that.
When you are old you are supposed to be wise. A lifetime of experience is supposed to season you. But look around at the 20, 30 and 40 year olds around you. Most of them are fucking morons. They are not going to get better with age. If anything health issues will make them worse.
Its no act.
In other words, as Loach suggests, most of us are goofy, gullible, and naive anyway. As we get older we become more so, and lose the desire and ability to hide that fact.
And sometimes the brain will be slowly destroyed by dementia, no matter what you “firmly believe”…
Yes, I should have qualified that. Dementia is a disease that I also “firmly believe” 
is real. I didn’t mean to imply that it wasn’t. I just meant the people that stubbornly, arbitrarily decide “I can’t”, because they’re old, not because there’s anything wrong with them.
It’s my theory that getting older tends to accentuate trends already in place at much younger ages. Example: my mother always liked animals, but when she got old, the animals became more important than her and she became irrational about pets.
If you have slightly extreme thoughts about something, say, you dislike green people, when you get older, you hate green people.
If you have a hard time with new technology, you cannot accept it at all later.
So a minor mental quirk at a young age can become a phobia or irrational stance when you get old.
Many times older people cannot hear and refuse to get hearing aids. My FIL is 90 and an example of this. They become very “isolated” because they can’t hear, understand, participate, or much of anything. I have to yell in the face of my FIL to get him to understand. It’s no wonder they seem lost. They are.
I’ve had the same observation / theory. When you’re in your 20s or 30s, and selecting a mate, be sure that you’re OK with their personality quirks and tendencies, because it seems like those are things that are likely to just get bigger and bigger as they get older.
Because of you damned kids with your music and your clothes.
George Carlin had a bit like that, actually. In book form it went like this: “In applying the stereotype that all old people are slow-thinking and dull-witted, what’s often overlooked is that many of these people were slow-thinking and dull-witted throughout their lives. At this point they’re simply older versions of the same unimpressive people.”
My experience is that many of those were the same people who used “I can’t” when they meant “I won’t” all their lives. I’m remebering a 63yo guy who did everything he could to stop the implementation of a new computer program, who was counting backwards to retirement but couldn’t be arsed try to find a “dauphin” among his subordinates. He was also one of those guys who proudly proclaim (or rather, in his case, bark) that they never did any task which could be described as “taking care of others”, because, you see, apparently his dick would have fallen off if he’d ever taken a bowl of soup to his wife when she happened to take sick.
I read an article recently which said that too often people confuse with dementia what’s actually depression. One of the things that told me moving her to a home was the right thing for grandma is that she’s once more saying “the old woman did not want to die because there was so much to learn!” - she hadn’t said it in well over a year. During that year, her memory was shot, she spent navel-gazing any time she didn’t spend asleep, she’d lost all curiosity and didn’t see any reasons to leave the house; while she’s always been a night owl, she was staying in bed most of the day. Turns out it wasn’t dementia.
I think it is because as you get older and older you start to realize how little time you’ve got and the world has been dragging you down for so long…wouldn’t it be nice to play naive and pretend everything is okay, just to have some peace before you go?
Funny things happen to your brain when you get older. The parts that deal with planning/controlling/inhibiting thoughts and behaviors shrivel just a bit. If your grandpa starts saying inappropriate things at inappropriate times (e.g. loudly mentioning some mundane thing to the person next to him during a quiet moment at a church service), this might be part of it.
That goes a long way toward explaining the “goofiness” I think, and may also help explain gullibility and apparent naivety.
Other factors may be in effect, too. My own dad is 79 now, and suffers from Parkinson’s disease (first diagnosed three years ago, but probably had symptoms for a year before that). Most people hear of PD and immediately think of the stereotypical tremor, but there’s an entire constellation of unpleasant symptoms that can be associated with PD. In my dad’s case, his tremor is pretty minor; it’s confined to one hand, and has only become obvious in the past six months or so. But the bigger symptom for him has been slowed cognition: for example, sometimes it takes him a few seconds to wrap his head around a new concept during conversations. Another example: one day he was bemused to discover he couldn’t tie his shoes. Dexterity has been a problem of course, but on that particular day he said he was also having a lot of trouble simply conceiving of how the shoelaces needed to be moved in order to produce the classic result.
As was mentioned upthread, the early stages of dementia (Alzheimers and other forms), before it’s formally diagnosed, may also account for some of the behavioral changes commonly associated with senescence.
…And in some cases, the elderly feel like they’ve “paid their dues” and consciously choose to no longer give a shit about the usual social conventions. Moreover, the usual pressures felt by their younger neighbors just aren’t there: your kids are adults, you don’t have a job you need to get back to, and so on. My dad fondly recalls a newspaper column from many years ago in which a senior citizen was arguing with a bus driver about not having a (free) senior-citizen bus pass. The old man was in the wrong, but in a trivial way; it was plain to anyone who look at him that he was a senior citizen. The officious driver told the man to get off of the bus or he would call the police. The old man sat down and waited for the cops, with the column’s author remarking at this point: “one of the benefits of being old is that you can take the time to be difficult.” 
I also think at some point you get your fill of change. In your 20’s and 30’s you figure stuff out, then when you’re approaching your 40’s things that you’re finally used to and have mastered change. At some point I’m sure I will get tired of keeping up with the “new and improved” versions of things.