Ageing and Ageism

Every system of exploitation requires a predicate. In the case of guardianship abuse, that predicate is ageism — the most socially normalized of all prejudices, operating through institutions, policies, professional practices, and cultural assumptions so pervasive they are rarely examined and almost never named.

This section examines ageism as a social force, a legal phenomenon, and the animating condition of the guardianship crisis. It traces the theoretical evolution of how aging has been understood — from disengagement theory in 1961 through socioemotional selectivity theory and gerotranscendence — and asks why the legal system has been slowest to catch up. It examines how ageism is encoded in guardianship procedure, how the elder justice field has been inconsistent in confronting it within its own systems, and what it would mean to replace the diminishment of age with its recognition.

The answer to ageism is not merely its absence. It is its opposite: active, deliberate engagement with older adults as full citizens, full persons, and full participants in the decisions that shape their lives. Dr. Elizabeth Podnieks and this author called that conviction engageism. It is not a slogan. It is a standard.

• Keeping Pace with WEAAD's Founder, Dr. Elizabeth Podnieks opens the section because Elizabeth gives the cause its face — and its heart. The analytical and policy essays that follow are, in a real sense, the argument her life already made.

• The Predicate Ageism, the Law, and the Animating Condition of the Guardianship Crisis Ageism is not simply individual prejudice — it is the most socially normalized of all biases, embedded in law, medicine, and institutional practice, and the foundational condition without which guardianship abuse could not function at the scale it does.

• "Out With the Old, In With the New": Resolve to Abolish Ageism by Practicing Engageism Mid-century modernity declared war on anything old — buildings, neighborhoods, and people — and the cultural damage has never been fully repaired; this essay names the practice that repairs it: engageism, the deliberate replacement of age-based diminishment with age-based recognition.

• A Strategic Framework for a National Plan on Aging: An Assessment and Recommendations An eight-part assessment of the federal government's Strategic Framework for a National Plan on Aging — arguing that framing is not a communication strategy but a foundational determinant of policy effectiveness, and that guardianship is the litmus test for whether the plan is serious about rights. Begin with the Preamble.

• Let's Elder Justice With 'elder' as a verb with high transitivity Language shapes thought — and the way we talk about aging shapes what we are willing to do about it; this essay proposes treating elder justice not as a noun describing a field but as a verb describing a practice, and asks what changes when we decide to act on it.

• The Right to a Different Story How fifty years of bad theory, a landmark lawsuit, and a scientific reckoning converged on a single truth — and why that truth must now be carried into every clinic, courtroom, and conversation about aging A landmark Medicare settlement established that improvement is not required for coverage; a landmark 2026 Yale study confirmed that improvement in later life is not exceptional but common — and together they demand a fundamental rethinking of the assumptions that drive clinical practice, Medicare policy, and guardianship law.

Image: Kaibab National Forest, AZ