Simone de Beauvoir, in her masterful work La Vieillese (Coming of Age), sees the fear of age as a cultural phenomenon and seeks to give voice to a silenced class of human beings. We often tend to think badly of old age, to see ourselves as we advance in years as separated from society, as a burden, no longer productive. Our technocratic society tries to see in its incessant discoveries the knowledge of the past as obsolete. She finds that we face a hidden conspiracy in our society, where we subject ageing to the “silence of shame”. Old age becomes a taboo.
See all the thought at http://www.npls.org.uk/Sermons/New/Chayyei%20Sarah%205771.html