section_path: Perspectives/Societal and historical
section_name: Societal and historical
paragraph_text: Societal and historical
  
  Based on his survey of old age in history, Georges Minois concludes that "it is clear that always and everywhere youth has been preferred to old age". In Western thought, "old age is an evil, an infirmity and a dreary time of preparation for death". Furthermore, death is often preferred over "decrepitude, because death means deliverance".
  
  "The problem of the ambiguity of old age has... been with us since the stage of primitive society; it was both the source of wisdom and of infirmity, experience and decrepitude, of prestige and suffering."
  
  In the Classical period of Greek and Roman cultures, old age was denigrated as a time of "decline and decrepitude". "Beauty and strength" were esteemed and old age was viewed as defiling and ugly. Old age was reckoned as one of the unanswerable "great mysteries" along with evil, pain, and suffering. "Decrepitude, which shrivels heroes, seemed worse than death."
  
  Historical periods reveal a mixed picture of the "position and status" of old people, but there has never been a "golden age of aging". Studies have challenged the popular belief that in the past old people were venerated by society and cared for by their families. Veneration for and antagonism toward the aged have coexisted in complex relationships throughout history. "Old people were respected or despised, honoured or put to death according to circumstance."
  
  In ancient times, those who were frail were seen as a burden and ignored or, in extreme cases, killed. People were defined as "old" because of their inability to perform useful tasks rather than their years.
  
  Although he was skeptical of the gods, Aristotle concurred in the dislike of old people. In his Ethics, he wrote that "old people are miserly; they do not acknowledge disinterested friendship; only seeking for what can satisfy their selfish needs".
  
  The Medieval and Renaissance periods depicted old age as "cruel or weak".
  
  The 16th-century Utopians Thomas More and Antonio de Guevara allowed no decrepit old people in their fictional lands.
  
  For Thomas More, on the island of Utopia, when people are so old as to have "out-lived themselves" and are terminally ill, in pain, and a burden to everyone, the priests exhort them about choosing to die. The priests assure them that "they shall be happy after death". If they choose to die, they end their lives by starvation or by taking opium.
  
  Antonio de Guevara 's utopian nation "had a custom, not to live longer than sixty five years". At that age, they practiced self-immolation. Rather than condemn the practice, Bishop Guevara called it a "golden world" in which people "have overcome the natural appetite to desire to live".