THE FEAR OF OLD AGE
This fear stems primarily from two sources. First, consider the possibility that old age will bring poverty. Second, and by far the most common source of origin, false and cruel sectarian teachings that have been so well mixed with “fire and brimstone” and “purgatories” and other nonsense that humans have learned to fear Old Age because it meant the approach of another, and possibly a much more horrible, world than this one, which is already known to be bad enough.
In the fundamental fear of old age, man has two very sound reasons for his apprehension: one stemming from distrust of his fellow men, who may seize whatever worldly goods he may possess, and the other from the terrible pictures of the world to come, which were deeply planted in his mind long before he came into possession of that mind through the law of social heredity.
Is it any surprise that men dread the approaching of old age?
