Is conscious self-dissolution the evolutionary potential of ageing?

This article was submitted to the Journal Action Research on 27th Aug 2024, following this call for papers: Call-for-papers-Inner-journey-and-mindset-shifts-of-transformation.pdf

The publication was rejected on 17th Sept 2024. Even though it does not meet the journal's requirements, I still see it as a relevant contribution to a transformation of the mindsets of ageing in the context of the development of the collective consciousness and the evolutionary challenges of the present, so that I would like to make it available to interested people here and in other places, even in its incompleteness.

If you have found this article inspiring and it has enriched you with new and perhaps challenging perspectives on ageing, I would be very grateful if you could support my research, which has been fully self-funded to date, the development of this website and the writing and provision of the information with a financial contribution. After six years of a very intensive research process, including several years without income because I wanted to understand the process before I started teaching and writing again, my financial resources are largely exhausted, so I am asking for support to be able to continue my research and writing with a clear mind and a healthy standard of living. Thank you!  paypalme/bettinawichers

"When we talk about poly- and meta-crises, when we name the upheavals and collapses of our old systems, indeed of the old world, when we strive for, call for and urge transformation processes, when we speak of a future that will somehow be different, better, more human and with more planetary awareness: one group is largely left out of the considerations, the discussions and the initiatives about evolutionary transformation, and that are the old and very old right up to the centenarians and older.

Of course, older people are involved in the discussion circles and individual, especially indigenous elders are heard and often quoted, but overall, it is a rather small number of old people who (can) join in the public chorus of crisis actors with a perspective of evolutionary transformation. Especially the voice of the of old age, and an awareness of the responsibility of the entire group of the elderly for individual and collective transformation of consciousness, nourished and informed by the specific phase of life itself, is relatively rarely heard in public discourse. Rather, in the multiple manifestations of (social) media and also in semi-public and private discourses, an equation of (advanced) ageing with increasing physical decline, frailty, loneliness and increasing forgetfulness often seems to dominate the discourse, with increasing withdrawal in general, indicating that the disengagement theory (Cumming & Henry, 1961) as one of the theories of ageing still seems to have a high normative significance, at least for the external perception of (advanced) ageing. The described conditions associated with ageing, but also the perception of widespread poverty in old age and reduced resources of various kinds, make it seem inappropriate to appeal to the responsibility of these people for collective and planetary crises. If dementia is then added to old age as an additional factor, it seems not only ethically inappropriate, but also intellectually ignorant at best and downright stupid to call on old and very old people to take responsibility for the polycrisis of humanity.

And yet I do, as a gerontologist, a consciousness researcher, a dementia specialist and an ageing woman: According to the World Health Organization [WHO] (2023), 55 million people were living with a diagnosis of dementia in 2023[1], and at the same time, the number of older people worldwide also continues to grow; a global population of people aged 65 years and older was estimated at 761 million in 2021 (United Nations, 2023). As a result, of the total population of older people, around 7% are living with symptoms of dementia, and just under one percent of humanity is living with a dementia diagnosis. And according to the WHO (2023), an additional 10 million people worldwide are newly diagnosed with the syndrome every year.

As a result, every year humanity loses another 10 million contributions of factual and experiential knowledge acquired over a long life. With this we lose access to traditional methods and rituals of everyday living, of potential wisdom, of mediation skills, guidance, support and, not least, spiritual strength, which can be of great importance to local communities, especially in times of crisis, while at the same time these 10 million people draw on a high level of resources from their fellow human beings, which does not seem to contribute to further strengthening communities in times of crisis.[2]

This is an uncomfortable perspective, because it seems to attribute responsibility for the world situation also to people with dementia, to whom the current narrative ascribes an increasing inability to look after themselves, sees them per se as in need of protection and considers them to be subject to the increasing care and decision-making responsibility of others, by stating that they are no longer able to decide properly and responsible for themselves. But a holistic view of the global polycrisis is not complete if we do not consider that people with dementia are progressively abdicating their responsibility for humanity and the planetary fabric and thus increasingly becoming part of the burden of others who must try to navigate family, community, humanity and the planet through these crises.

This and everything that follows is expressly not victim blaming, it is about description and not condemnation; in the spirit of action research, I also appeal to the reader's willingness to self-explore, to perceive and accept any pluralistic implications of their own consciousness at this point: They are important and helpful to accompany people with far advanced dementia, but here at this point I must call for transcendence of this level of consciousness - we need the consciousness of at least the autonomous, ideally construct-aware or later (Cook-Greuter, 2013) to be able to take up and examine these theses because only then can we see how we partake in the autopoiesis of systems and how systems can change through our personal perspectival choices. [...]"

You can read the full article here on my website or on Substack.

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