Yes. That is exactly the danger.
Levy is strongest when she says: some of what we call “aging” is socially amplified by expectation and ageism. She becomes much weaker if the argument slides into: old age itself is largely a mistaken belief. That would amount to denying finitude, decline, dependency, bereavement, narrowing possibility, bodily unreliability, and eventually death.
And your second point cuts even deeper: why assume that 7.5 extra years are self-evidently good?
Longevity research often smuggles in an unexamined equation:
more years = better outcome.
But an extra 7.5 years might mean more work, more “productive aging,” more self-optimization, more exhortations to remain cognitively sharp, socially engaged, physically active, sexually alive, financially independent, and endlessly creative. Old age then becomes another neoliberal performance task.
The imperative changes from:
“Do not grow old.”
to:
“Grow old successfully.”
That can be just as tyrannical.
There is also something philosophically odd about turning old age into a defect to be continually corrected. A genuinely non-ageist view should perhaps permit an elderly person to say:
I am slower. I have lost things. My horizon has shortened. I do not intend to turn every remaining year into a project.
That is not necessarily “negative age belief.” It may simply be accurate perception.
So I would separate three propositions:
- Ageism can worsen aging. Very plausible.
- Beliefs can influence health and function. Also plausible.
- Therefore positive beliefs about aging constitute good aging. This does not follow.
And I would be especially suspicious of the last move because it converts gerontology into moral psychology: if you decline badly, perhaps you held the wrong beliefs.
That is perilously close to blaming the elderly for aging.
As for creativity: the cult of “late-life creativity” can become particularly absurd. There is something almost comic in the thought that after seventy or eighty one must still produce another novel, exhibition, company, marathon, TED talk, or “legacy project” to justify remaining alive.
Perhaps one privilege of age ought to be precisely the opposite:
the right to become unproductive.
To look out the window. To reread three pages. To forget the author’s name. To walk one mile instead of five thousand. To leave things unfinished.
So I would revise Levy’s thesis this way:
Do not let society make old age worse than it already is—but do not make old age pretend not to be old age.
The extra 7.5 years are not automatically a gift. Their value depends entirely on what sort of years they are, and whether one still wants them.
