Title : A new perspective on aging: Creativity, empowerment and sustainability
Abstract:
Population aging constitutes one of the most significant social phenomena of the twenty-first century, requiring a revision of traditional paradigms that associate old age with decline, unproductivity, and dependence. A new perspective on aging proposes shifting this deficit-oriented view toward a more complex and affirmative understanding, in which creativity, empowerment, and sustainability occupy a central place. This approach recognizes aging as a heterogeneous process, shaped by biological, psychological, social, cultural, and political dimensions, rather than as a homogeneous or merely residual stage of life. In this context, creativity emerges as a fundamental potential of aging. Far from being restricted to formal artistic production, creativity refers to the capacity to invent ways of living, to re-signify experience, and to adapt sensitively to transformations of the body and the world. In aging, it may be expressed through the reworking of autobiographical narratives, the transmission of knowledge, the experimentation with new practices, and the reinvention of everyday life. By recognizing older adults as creative subjects, the logic of stagnation is disrupted, opening space to understand old age as a time of symbolic, critical, and ethical elaboration of existence. Empowerment, in turn, concerns the expansion of autonomy, social participation, and decision-making capacity among those who age. It is a concept that goes beyond the individual sphere, involving material conditions, public policies, and institutional frameworks that guarantee rights, visibility, and recognition. Empowerment in aging entails access to lifelong education, comprehensive healthcare, culture, and work in its multiple forms, as well as confronting ageism and the gender, class, and racial inequalities that shape the experience of growing old. In this sense, empowered aging means being able to intervene in one’s own life course and in the collective sphere, affirming oneself as an active social agent. Sustainability further broadens this perspective by linking aging to environmental, social, and economic issues. Thinking about aging in a sustainable way implies considering both the sustainability of care systems and social protection, and the contribution of aging populations to more solidaristic and responsible ways of life. The experience accumulated over the life course, traditional forms of knowledge, and intergenerational care practices can play a strategic role in building more sustainable societies. Moreover, valuing aging challenges development models based on disposability, acceleration, and obsolescence, proposing instead an ethics of time, continuity, and care. Thus, a new perspective on aging, grounded in creativity, empowerment, and sustainability, allows old age to be shifted from the position of a social problem to that of a field of possibilities. Such a change in focus not only transforms the ways in which individuals age, but also redefines modes of social organization, promoting more inclusive, intergenerational relationships committed to a shared future.
