Anticipating deep autumn: a widening lens L LaCivita Nixon, L A Roscoe ............................................................................................................................. J Med Ethics: Medical Humanities 2002;28:82–87 Medicine has become one of the most powerful influences of the twentieth century, and currently dominates how we approach and think about another powerful phenomenon: the aging of the world’s population. Our reliance on the medical model, with its focus on pathology, physiology, and biomedical interventions, makes it difficult for aging men and women and those in the health care field who care for them to seek alternative ways to attach meaning to the process of growing old. This article explores the role of the humanities as an alternative to the biomedical model which can enlarge our abilities to see the multidimensional aspects of aging. Age related writings and visual images by Kenyon, Neel, Olds, Valadon, and Hemingway are discussed to illustrate how fictive representations can and do serve as a moral impetus or stimulus for meaningful reflection about life stages that have not yet been experienced. .......................................................................... The writer, though ignorant of every scientific punctilio, will command the leap into the Other. That is how tales are made. 1 M edicine has become one of the most pow- erful influences of the twentieth century. It is not surprising that the medical model, with its focus on individual pathology, physiology, and biomedical interventions, cur- rently dominates how we approach and think about aging and the ever growing number of older men and women in our society. The biomedicalisation of aging has fostered views of “inevitable decline, disease, and irreversible decay” and has convinced the public of the “primary and rightful place of medicine in the management of the ‘problem’ of aging”. 2 Where in the past religious interpretations about the place of aging in the human life course provided a sense of meaning and possibility, our reliance on the medical model for managing aging has made it more difficult for aging men and women to seek alternative ways to attach meaning to the process of growing old. 3 Now that major demographic projections have moved from abstract statistics to concrete, real life family situations, newspaper accounts, economic forecasts, resource evaluations, and institutional limitations, the public is increasingly aware of the aging phenomenon and is beginning to look beyond medicine for interpretations, meanings, and options. In order to prolong life and prevent disabilities suffered by parents, many men and women at midlife and beyond are paying closer attention to diet, exercise, alternative medicine, and food supplements; increasing numbers of people are practising and promoting preventive care. In addition, this generally well educated, more affluent, and influential population cluster (including the so-called baby boomers) is dissat- isfied with provisions for older people in society and has begun to speak articulately and persist- ently for change. By projecting themselves into their parents’ lives, with an understanding that their own longevity continues to extend, this cohort is simultaneously euphoric and anxious. Partly because of undesirable impressions of institutionalised care combined with “Peter Pan” notions about prolonging youth, they both cling to and abhor their dependence on medicine and technology. Concerns about isolation, abandon- ment, and neglect have generated a new interest in choices, decisions, and experiences that have more to do with the values and purpose of human life. More people than ever before are attentive to subtle winds and tremors at early stages of what is foreseen as a very long autumn season. In this article we explore the role of the humanities in enlarging our abilities to see the multidimensional aspects of aging and alternative ways of attaching meaning to the aging process. Age related writings and visual images by Kenyon, Neel, Olds, Valadon, and Hemingway are discussed to illustrate how “imaginative abilit[ies]” and fictive representa- tions can and do serve as a moral impetus or stimulus for meaningful reflection about the objective other or stranger (who may soon be our mirror image). 4 The selected pieces provide antici- patory insights from artists whose verbal or visual narrative looks ahead from midlife in the aging process to subsequent stages; in doing so, these anticipatory writings and paintings demonstrate Rorty’s observations about the capacities of fiction to inspire or generate moral guidance about a life stage before it is actually experienced. The role and value of literature and art as tools or “vehicles of moral change and progress” is woven throughout the discussion as a necessary corol- lary for nourishing the human spirit in ways that the medical model cannot. 4 IMAGINATIVE ABILITIES For there will be the arts and some will call them soft data whereas in fact they are the hard data by which our lives are lived. 5 As a society, we remain fixed on inherited impressions and language or what Rorty calls the “final vocabulary”—the “set of words which See end of article for authors’ affiliations ....................... Professor L LaCivita Nixon, Division of Medical Ethics and Humanities College of Medicine—MDC 19, University of South Florida, 13901 Bruce B Downs Blvd, Tampa, Florida 33612–4799,USA; lnixon@hsc.usf.edu Accepted 28 June 2002 ....................... 82 www.medicalhumanities.com on March 1, 2022 by guest. 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