The Rate of Aging[1]
Okay, you "metaphysicists", here's an article that should get your juices flowing. The Wall Street Journal recently reported research that showed some people appear to age much more slowly than others.
Okay, you "metaphysicists", here's an article that should get your juices flowing. The Wall Street Journal recently reported research that showed some people appear to age much more slowly than others.
What is happening here? Is chronological time passing at a different rate for study participants?
If so, does this suggest that individual differences in the rates at which time passes may be more common and much greater than we have thought? We know, for example that people living at different altitudes move through time at measurably different rates as do people traveling in an airplane and stationary people on the ground. But these are minute differences that can only be detected with atomic clocks.
Are there causes for differences that we did not previously suspect?
What evidence is there to support or refute your answers?
Notes
1. See pages 79-83 of Donald W. Jarrell, At the Edge of Time: Reality, Time, and Meaning in a Virtual Everyday World (North Charleston, SC: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2012, 2014.) See At the Edge of Time
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If so, does this suggest that individual differences in the rates at which time passes may be more common and much greater than we have thought? We know, for example that people living at different altitudes move through time at measurably different rates as do people traveling in an airplane and stationary people on the ground. But these are minute differences that can only be detected with atomic clocks.
Are there causes for differences that we did not previously suspect?
What evidence is there to support or refute your answers?
Notes
1. See pages 79-83 of Donald W. Jarrell, At the Edge of Time: Reality, Time, and Meaning in a Virtual Everyday World (North Charleston, SC: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2012, 2014.) See At the Edge of Time
Next post on a biweekly schedule: 8/14/15
How to comment, for first-time commenters: With the blog page open in front of you, find the post that you would like to comment about. Go to the end of the post and click on "comments" which will allow you to read previous comments (if any). You will be invited to enter your comment in a "comment" window.
6 comments:
This issue of “differential aging” reminds me of some recent research regarding resilience among disadvantaged young people. Briefly, it seems that “overcoming the odds” comes with a cost, specifically a health cost. The researchers looked at 496 black teenagers from working-poor families in rural Georgia.
Some excerpts …
“Measuring DNA methylation, researchers found that in disadvantaged communities, the cells of children who exhibited more self-control (and became more successful) visibly aged faster than the cells of children who maintained the status quo. In short, the most upwardly mobile kids were the most physically unhealthy. … ‘We call this phenomenon skin-deep resilience,' said Gregory Miller, a psychology professor at Northwestern and the lead author on the study. … Equally troubling, but less surprising, is that the findings only hold true for low-income, disadvantaged teenagers. Individuals from advantaged backgrounds who exhibit resilience and go on to great achievement generally have better health than their highly advantaged, but less- successful peers.”
So … “Kids from challenging backgrounds are caught in a catch-22. ‘Do you do well in school... or do you have good physical health?’ Miller asked. ‘People shouldn’t have to be making a trade-off.’"
Reference:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/the-danger-of-skin-deep-resilience_55a7c87ce4b0c5f0322c76ed?
Thanks, Jeff. This is a very interesting study that I was not aware of. Gregory Miller, the lead author on the study, is exactly right: disadvantaged youth should not have to make this Hobson's choice between success and longevity.
Shortly after you published this comment, a light went on in my head causing me to ask: Is this finding related to research done in the 1950s by Abraham Maslow? Maslow is well-known for his idea of hierarchically arranged needs. Less well-known was his study of what he called peak experiences that sometimes occur in the lives of people. (A.H. Maslow, “The Good Life of the Self-Actualizing Person,” in Theron M. Covin, Readings in Human Development: A Humanistic Approach (Beverly Hills, CA: MSS Publishing Corp., 1974), 46-53.)
According to Maslow, all the peak experiences he studied involved a very characteristic disorientation in time and space. Later studies of peak experiences in performers in various occupations such as ballet dancers, professional sports figures, and race track drivers, confirmed that peak experiences involved what the performers felt was a marked change in the rate at which time passed. (Kenneth Ravizza, “Peak Experiences in Sport,” Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 17: 35-40, 1977.)
Now to return to the study you cited, Jeff, to me the findings of a trade-off between longevity and great achievement may only hold true for low-income, disadvantaged teenagers and not for their advantaged, equally-successful peers, because of health-related issues. For example, perhaps the additional stress associated with their steep climb out of poverty and disadvantage results in poorer health for the first group. Or, as Maslow's research suggests, perhaps more rapid biological aging is the driver and age related declines in physiological health is the result. Because the low-income, disadvantaged teenagers are making a very rapid and steep climb out of disadvantage and poverty one can imagine that, for them, peak experiences with possible effects on the aging process may occur very frequently. It would be interesting to see if the lives of high-achievement disadvantaged teenagers are accompanied by a greater number of peak experiences (with the Maslow characteristic time disorientation) than the lives of high-achievement advantaged teenagers.
If there are both high-achievement disadvantaged and high achievement advantaged readers of this blog, it would be interesting to hear from you. Have you had peak experiences as described above? More generally, have others had experiences where it seemed that time was passing at other than the normal rate?
Interesting connection to Maslow! (Benjamin Bloom did some similar research related to highly "talented" individuals in various areas, such as music, sports, and math.) I agree that, for disadvantaged youth, corresponding health issues may account for much of the physical stress of achievement. But, given the correlation with aging (and your own connection to Maslow's peak experiences), this is an area ripe for more research! If nothing else, it does challenge the simplistic "if the poor would just try harder, they could succeed like the rest of us" notion so popular on the political right.
Yes. Simplistic solutions are not goig to work.
If more rapid aging of upwardly mobile disadvantaged kids proves to be correct, it may be that so long as we have great disparities of income and advantage, those who manage to climb out of poverty and disadvantage will pay an inevitable price for doing so—shortened life spans.
some things repond differently to time. note how some people seem to age more rapidlly than others. There have been cases o cildren at age 10 have the appearance of nonogenarians,
Thanks for the comment, Paul. Yes, I remember hearing of these persons who appeared to be much older than their chronological age. We now know that they could well just be aging very rapidly—time was passing much more rapidly for them than for other people. Did the experts feel this was a health issue?
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