Let us start with the most tangible ground of all: demography. It is the very fabric of a changing reality and the first concrete anchor for expectations. The entire world is undergoing a demographic transition: for the first time in human history, six generations are living side by side. Soon, seven. Life expectancy has risen globally, and the generational balance is being reshaped in a radical way.
And this is where an old pattern to overturn comes into view. It is the one that leads us to think: “at 65 you are old”; “you have to work exactly as you did at 30 until the day before you retire”. The cruelty of this perspective then asserts itself forcefully: you no longer feel capable of doing anything.
As a result, longevity summits focus on care for senior citizens, public policy pushes the retirement age further out without providing adequate tools, and companies treat older workers as a burden to be managed. It is a defensive approach: how do we compensate, how do we adapt, how do we limit the damage of this “problematic” situation. It is cruel optimism: we keep hoping that small tweaks to the system will work, even though we know the system itself has changed.
So we need to flip the question: “How do we ensure that six generations can live their lives well?”
Because a 65-year-old today can do far more, and do it far better, than a 65-year-old 30 years ago – but they cannot do what they themselves could do at 30.
We could put it provocatively: ageing today is no longer simply a matter of years. It is a quiet transformation of roles and expectations. Long-lived societies do not just have to sustain life for longer, they have to rethink how time, care and effort are shared out.
As Arlie Hochschild shows in The Second Shift, modernity has produced a time contradiction. While paid work has expanded and life stories have lengthened, care work – the “second shift” – has remained invisible, outsourced, or simply taken for granted. In longevity societies, the question is not only who works or who ages, but who carries the burden of time.
Collective expectations about who should provide care for children, older people and the vulnerable function like cultural algorithms. They pre-programme roles and behaviours, narrowing the space for negotiating what is possible. This is where the rigidity of our expectations shows: in the time we ask others to spend on our behalf.
The effects ripple outward. If multiple generations are expected to work together, how do we ensure that their priorities become a source of generative synthesis rather than conflict? And as demography changes, what emerging cultures does it give rise to?
The overarching expectation that emerges from this landscape is powerful. It is not about “managing generational differences”, but recognising that value arises precisely from the encounter between sensibilities, languages and expectations shaped by different time horizons. These are the ripples of a new terrain.
