Occasionally, I see a piece of news about the WHO criteria for classifying the age of the elderly. Previously classified as 60 or 65-year-olds, older people are now divided into three stages: young seniors (60-74 years old), older adults (75-89 years old) and long-lived seniors (over 90 years old).
What is the basis for such a division? Is it scientific enough? The above questions will not be discussed for the time being, but what is the role of reclassification and qualitative in this way?
Everything has a life cycle, and this is true of plants, animals, and human beings as higher animals. Ancient emperors tried every means to pursue the art of immortality, but in the end, they could not escape their fate.
From the day the baby falls to the ground, as the baby grows up, its body and intelligence grow together, and finally reaches its peak at about 25-30 years old, and then begins to decline, that is, begins to age. In other words, human beings are basically very young from birth to before the age of 30, and they begin to grow old after the age of 30. So after 30 years of slow aging, we say that 60-year-olds are old people, and that's true.
With the development of global aging, there are more and more elderly people, which is an undeniable status quo. How meaningful is it to reclassify the criteria? Is it possible that young and old people are comparable to young people in every way? How many employers are willing to hire young and elderly people looking for jobs? By defining people aged 60-74 as young and old, can we ignore the fact that the physical functions of such people have been declining for many years? I am an ordinary worker, I am over half a hundred years old, and I am a young person according to the new standard or the old standard. It is no exaggeration to say: now that I have left this job, there are only a handful of jobs I can find, as it is said on the Internet, ordinary women reach a certain age, and the final way out is cleaning; When an ordinary man reaches a certain age, the last way out is security. There is no other choice, whether it is cleaning or security, you have to be disease-free, at least able to move.
As a young man like me, who is over half a hundred years old, I am not engaged in heavy physical labor, and I am worried about whether I will be able to take on the important role of cleaning and security when I become a young and old person. What's more, countless migrant workers are engaged in heavy manual labor day after day, and some of them are sick and old before the age of 60.