The Errors Of Ageism

Whereas someone cannot change their gender or race by willing it to be so, economic/social class can be changed by a variety of circumstances, some of which are within a person's control.  In contrast to all of these qualities, age changes, but only passively.  There is nothing a person can do to slow or accelerate their age, only physical characteristics associated with aging.  Age does change as each moment, month, and year passes and is by default something that cannot be unchanging.  A person who is born will always increase in age until their life ends.

Liberals and conservatives, just as they oftentimes celebrate or support one gender or race at the exclusion of other people, frequently indulge in stereotypes based on age.  A liberal might think that anyone who is old, whatever exact age range they would mean by that, must be selfish, apathetic, hypocritical, racist, or sexist, and demonize or hate people just for having lived to a certain number of years.  Conservatives, on the contrary, tend to belittle, fear, or despise people who are young, often assuming that if they care about any sort of social justice issue, they must be emotionalistic or hypocritical, or that they must be irrational--as if there are more than just a handful of rationalist adults!

Those who are old were once young, and those who are young will reach old age unless something prematurely kills them.  These insects who respect or disrespect people because of their age are to stupid or uncaring to realize that no age is by logical necessity accompanied by any particular worldview or personality characteristic.  While there are general physical traits that develop in specific periods of a person's life, it never logically follows that the do or do not have any of the traits that align with stereotypes, and if they do happen to have those traits, it is not because of their age.

Just as fools make assumptions about someone because they are female or male, a given skin color, or wealthy or poor (though all assumptions are idiotic, no matter what they are about), they might stereotype people based on how old or young they are.  The young and old alike are just people, people who are rational or have a specific personality or skill on an individual basis.  Being young or old does not make someone irrational, evil, or uninterested in reality (which is only known by rationalistic thought in accordance with the laws of logic).

Even the general biological correlations with age, such as the eventual decay of the body and mind, are happenstance contingent variables that could have been quite different.  It could have been the case that people forever become stronger until the moment of death or suffer dementia in childhood and then remain impervious to it in their elder years, not that non-rationalists would ever discover any of this.  However, these are all separate from the ideological, spiritual, moral, and personality characteristics that so many people actually think correspond to age as opposed to an individual's decisions (their philosophical stances and moral character) or natural psychology (personality).