The fear of aging seems more prominent in our time than it ever has in the past; the last few generations have all dreamed of retirement and living their "golden years", and reaching old age was seen as a marker of success and pride in many societies of the past. Why, then, are we so averse to aging now? While there has always been some fear of the physical decline that came with aging, the outright hostility that seems more and more common by the day appears new in my analysis. You can argue many potential causes of this heightened fear of aging, and I would like to put forward a few of my own
The first explanation that came to my mind is actually somewhat paradoxical, but I think it can do a lot of work. We simply live much longer. One would assume living longer would, on average, assuage some of our worst fears on aging; we experience more things, go more places, talk to more people, all things of that sort. I would argue that, in some cases, the opposite is true. Firstly, most people have much more free time than they would have in the past. No longer do they have to till the fields from sunrise to sunset. For the most part, people just have more time to do what they please with. This presents a problem in a socially atomized society. A significant amount of people almost never voluntarily interact with anyone else, and some of them even avoid going outside in any capacity for noteworthy periods of time. This was simply impossible in the past. People didn't have these methods of escape from the social world as much; there was no TV or internet to entertain yourself with. You generally had to engage in hobbies of some sort (woodworking, writing if you were literate, composing songs, etc.) or in social activities (games, conversations, community events). This had the effect of minimizing the chance to feel as if you were wasting your time, I think. Generally speaking, becoming closer to people in your life is a fulfilling process, especially when society was tighter-knit and fostered these connections more easily. A less connected world where we have more time to ourselves, both as a percentage and raw amount, would provide many more opportunities for the feeling of "wasted time" and the guilt that often follows, to compound. Adding a few decades of time for these feelings to stew really up pumps the odds of developing some aging-based neuroses
There are also a lot more options of what you can do at any given time. In the past, your options were rather limited. As previously discussed, you couldn't do all that many things with your time. You could work (either a "job" or hunting/gathering/farming), you could be social in some sense, or you could engage in some solitary hobby. Maybe you could meditate or something if you had the time. In the modern world, your options are nearly infinite. You can consume almost any media ever made, especially if you speak english. You can go pretty far away from home if you have a car or can hitch a ride. There are just way more choices for daily activities for the broad majority of people in the developed world. Even if you work two jobs, you still will generally have more possible options for what you can do at any given moment than a person in, say, ancient Egypt. I think this creates a small, but persistent, level of analysis paralysis in some people; there's always a slight hint of the fear of missing out. This is especially true once we actually reach old age. We see many options, but can increasingly engage with fewer and fewer of them in any meaningful capacity
The fall in religiosity is another obvious factor. It's harder to terror manage when you don't believe in god or follow some kind of religion that offers guidance when it comes to what happens after death. This has some downstream effects. I think that this decline in religiosity also impacts the social status of old people. In the past, old people were regarded as spiritual authorities at some level. As explicit spirituality becomes less important to westerners (or their faith is channeled through megachurches or other relatively modern forms of religion), this benefit of being seen in high regard as you age is diminished. We try to distinguish ourselves from the elderly much more than we did in the past. Generational gaps have widened over time as people have been having less kids and waiting longer to start their families. This, combined with the increased speed of cultural change in the modern era, generates an increased level of discontent between young and old, which makes us want to avoid becoming elderly
Consumerism is another contributing factor to gerascophobia. Creating discomfort around natural processes such as aging is great for the cosmetics industry. In a way, the cosmetics industry was one of the first subscription models a lot of people were directly exposed to. You just have to keep buying. The problem never goes away, because as of 2026, there is no way to permanently end aging, even in a cosmetic sense. Consumerism advocates an out with the old, in with the new mentality, so it makes sense that a more consumerism-oriented society would dislike aging more than most others. This is even more true for women, who are evaluated by their appearance more often, and generally are seen as "expiring" as they age in a way that simply isn't as true as it is for men
Why is everyone under the age of 40 completely insane now? There are many possible answers, but the most immediately obvious one is the financial system and the impending sense of doom that surrounds it. People have a hard time imagining a better future when they’re living in misery. The loneliness that is brought on by the increasingly competitive and atomized society we live in only accelerates this immiseration. There’s a real sense that we’re nearing the end of the order of the world as we know it now. Companies and governments seem to be operating as if tomorrow won’t come. A lot of people on an unconscious level seem to have believed in the idea of an impending permanent underclass narrative before it was really a widespread thing they were consciously talking about. The natural response to loneliness and economic anxiety is desperation.
Gambling is a pretty obvious response to financial pressure. When you don’t have enough money you find a way to make more. The odds may be bad with gambling, but if your odds of making rent at the end of the month are zero, betting your paycheck on an unlikely parlay has a better chance of success. Degenerate options gambling and being glued to polymarket all day only really have an appeal when more substantive ways of making a living fail. Gambling being legitimated on a societal level also contributes of course. Sports leagues used to not even allow advertisements for las vegas, but now most majors sports-related institutions are closely tied to gambling in some way. I haven’t done the research, but I’d imagine sports gambling is almost a male-exclusive activity. I find it hard to believe there’s a significant population of nonbinary people that just punt all their money on sports or predictions markets and I’ve literally never heard of a woman with a sports betting addiction. I’m sure some of them exist but I’ve never heard of it happening. I suspect this is because men generally have less close relationships with other people and and feel lonelier. Sports betting is an activity that can give you a semblance of a social life. You can talk about the game with other people and post about it online. Even if you don’t get this direct socialization, seeing all the people betting on the apps can make you feel like you’re participating in society. You see people’s opinion change in live time (allegedly), you have this financial connection to the collective unconscious. It’s the appeal of the decadence and depravity of the kentucky derby sterilized and individualized the most possible.
GLP-1s (Ozempic, Mounjaro, etc.) are another outlet for the fear of living in the permanent underclass to be expressed through. Chemicals focused around self-improvement are in general becoming a bigger thing nowadays but the weight loss ones are the biggest, so I will primarily be speaking on them. If modern gambling is an attempt at furthering financial capital, GLP-1s and the horrible stew of bullshit we call looksmaxxing is an attempt at gaining social capital. This surface-level “self improvement” without deeper reflection leads to aimless ambition. The goal becomes accumulation. You stop trying to look good to get a date or have sex or whatever and just focus on the activities that are supposedly getting you there. Self-improvement with the sole aim of impressing others leads to maximizing for the measurement instead of the goal that the measurement was intended to assist in achieving. Gambling tends towards representing homosocial desires for companionship, but GLP-1s and other artificial attempts at improving the body are largely heterosocial behaviors. I would say heterosexual, but this isn’t really true. If you spend some time learning about the ideation that defines a lot of the culture around looksmaxxing you find people that feel like people of the opposite sex, even ones they’re not romantically interested in, won’t address them at all unless they’re exceedingly sexually appealing. This culture has interesting implications. You have straight men objectively rating the sexual market value of other straight men and arguing about what other straight man is the hottest. Putting this much effort into physical appearance has, at least most of my life, been associated with homosexuality. I’m not the first person to note this obviously, but it’s still interesting. Perhaps this could lead to men becoming more comfortable with examining the male form. I doubt it due to how competitive the culture surrounding it is right now, but you never know. It would be nice if this made more men realize they’re just gay as fuck though
It’s easy to wave stuff like this off as just men being evil but I think that’s really quite foolish. The reason why men seem more prone to these problems is the extra loneliness most men carry. I saw this post online from a trans man talking about how lonely he felt after publicly transitioning and being forced to move in male spaces and how much less connected they feel. I think this is a rare issue in which women actually get a better deal than men in our society. The reasons men are lonely are the same as the reasons why women are oppressed. If you think society should be more equitable, you have to acknowledge how current systems harm everyone, not just women. My loyal readers are far too intelligent to be philosophical misandrists but it doesn’t hurt to say it. The root of this problem is economic but it interacts with culture in some interesting ways. I'm not here to write a dissertation or anything though