Historical Setting: 789 C.E. Jutland
That misunderstanding of Marian’s freedom or enslavement seems rooted in a common misconception having very little to do with freedom and slavery. In the case of a child and an old man, this perception of them as less than human is all about agism. Sometimes there seem to be only four stages of life, not counting dead: 1st Infant, 2nd, Child, then some amorphous stage which seems to be the ruling class, and 4th Old. According to the fallacies of this 3rd stage, in this nondescript life stage known as adulthood, a child is a thing and not a life stage, and old is always a lame curmudgeon, also, not really the same as a human.
That would be an easy assumption if the world were peopled with time travelers such as I am, always healing back to life as a man in his thirties. But I’m not the vanguard of an ageless reality. I am simply a sign, a literary device, a creation of human imagination invented to reveal the history of us. It is only by human imagination that a man could live throughout time, always as thirty something. The human error, common, even among human beings who themselves are passing through these stages of life, is to think childhood is a permanent condition and old age is always someone else’s swan song. But the truth is, all living beings are moving through predictable phases of life. Trees, frogs, birds, bugs, even flowers have their season. The same person who is old now, was once a child. But agism causes the same person who is in this random state of adulthood, to see children and elders as a different species altogether. And that, too, is a fantasy of human imagination — a fantasy, though it happens in real life.
It is only by the good fortune of life continuing, that oldness can become half again as long as a whole lifetime.
So how is it that a whole culture becomes agist? How do we lose sight of the value of children and the usefulness of old people? It is obvious to me, having recently lived in a wolf pack. This disrespect for life stages happens when people are not living in complete families. They’ve been organized by purpose, not family.
So, I wonder, what happened in this north land that cost this whole culture their empathy for the seasons of life.
(Continues tomorrow)
Lazarus Ink 