Betty Dodson with Carlin Ross

Better Orgasms. Better World.

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Dear All,

I’m not sure how seriously we should take these findings.  The first problem is with the stated methodology:

“Dr Carstensen asked volunteers ranging in age from 18 to mid-90s to take part in various experiments and keep diaries of their emotional state.”

If the study relied on volunteers, one is immediately faced with the problem of quantifying the moods and cognitive abilities of those who did not volunteer. Self-selecting members of a sample group are always going to be representative of people who self-select for the activity in question, whereas those who do not self-select might have very good reasons for not taking part – many of which might be due to unhappiness, disability, financial considerations, depression, isolation and so-on.

Secondly, it occurs to me that the extent to which emotions are ‘balanced’ is an entirely cultural and relative judgement; for example, one’s political and cultural belief system will make a huge difference as to whether or not it is appropriate to be angry, sad or happy or content about the world one sees around one. And the extent to which one makes an effort to change the things about which one is unhappy might be considered either valiant or foolish, depending upon one’s point of view.

Thirdly, one has to be able to agree that ‘happiness’, and other related qualitative emotions, exist as a real phenomena as opposed to cultural ideals if the concept of the study is to make any sense, indeed the assumption that:

“This includes adopting a healthy daily routine and ensuring some social investment is spent outside of the workplace and family home.”

is, itself, a socio-political statement.

Who says daily routine is healthy? If one were a person of independent means one might sacrifice any number of routines (linked to poverty, for example) in order to do and experience a vast quantity of things that are interesting and worthwhile. What if one does not have a workplace or a family home? Millions of people all over the world have neither work nor home, nor welfare system nor medical facilities and old-age is often a painful and ghastly proposition when in one’s youth no prospects for a better life are evident.

I have read some of Dr. Cartensen’s work and it is full of culturally biased assumptions about the United States that are extrapolated qualitatively to include a wider and unfounded set of assumptions about the world in general; it is as if the way in which people live in the USA is treated as a model for the rest of the world. I’ve copied a typical sleight-of-hand paragraph below: 

“Virtually all educated people are aware of the graying of the United States, yet relatively few are as aware of its implications for science, technology, and human culture. Longer life is a remarkable achievement, but now we need to apply what we are learning in the natural and social sciences to redesign human culture to accommodate long lives. We need to find cures for Alzheimer’s disease and arthritis, develop technologies that render many age-related frailties such as poor balance invisible in the way eyeglasses now compensate for presbyopia, and begin seriously rethinking cultural norms, such as the timing of education and retirement.”

In the same piece (Growing Old or Living Long: Take Your Pic) at http://issues.org/23.2/carstensen.html she opines:

“The challenge today is to build a world that is just as responsive to the needs of very old people as to the very young. The solutions must come from science and technology. Unlike evolution by natural selection, which operates across millennia, improvements in functioning due to technological advances can occur in a matter of years”.

I would myself opine that the vast majority of the world’s poor share little of the socio-economic benefits of technology and that, with a few exceptions, the technology of the 1950s is as adequate to feed, cloth, house and make well the vast majority of the world’s population if only they had access to it. In other words, the solutions, far from requiring new (...must come from…) science and technology require political action; anything else is simply icing on the cake and we all know who controls the cake and who will, without political vision, continue to get the icing and who will get the crumbs or no cake at all.

Older and madder,

Chu

Tom likes and agrees.

See me and my story in the Art Gallery: http://dodsonandross.com/art/coming-age

People also just get better as they age! But let's talk about sex. I've always been turned on by a pretty face or an intelligent, experienced person. I've had sex with older women since I was twenty. Now that I'm in my thirties, it's unfortunate how many women younger than me don't understand I would rather be with their mom or even grandmother. I explain only that I love all women's bodies, but even moreso when it's attached to a beautiful mind. This is an ephinay that alludes most people, and causes them to be insecure. Older people realize "sexy" goes way beyond the physical and sometimes has nothing to do with it!

There is one thing I worry about. Complacency. I can't underestimate how good it feels when someone is interested in seeing you naked and showing genuine interest in your genitals. The often "experienced attitude" is "been there, done that", your genital is just like everyone else's - "a penis is a penis, a vulva is a vulva". I explore in detail in part of my partner's vulva, and even if she's in her eighties, I sometimes can still teach them a thing or two about their bodies!