Reagan's Rose Colored glasses...why did he say it was morning in America? So besides what the handlers, scriptwriters and the teleprompter helped with, why did he say and believe what his base wanted to hear?... The reasons why have something to do with his age and in particular it has implications in understanding his overall brain health in light of his undiagnosed Alzheimer's... That begs another whole set of questions outside the scope of this diary but worth investigating and writing up in a book length format along the the lines of: did anyone know or suspect? ... who suspected he was losing it and when and who did they tell or choose not to tell and why. So set that aside and focus on some of the implications of electing older people...
Reagan's annoying and mostly baseless cheerfulness can now be better understood. I've just read an article "The five ages of the brain" in New Scientist and the section on old age and the other 4 shed some insight into how people tend to become more conservative as they age... we lose function in some areas and make up for it in other ways. Maybe in future we will have ways to test candidates overall mental age... no more electing those with brain ages in the single digits....
As we get older We tend to remember nicer things and tend to remember less about not so nice things. We tend to get more sure of what we retain and avoid having to doubt things too much (in a way it is a senescent aging based version of suppressing painful traumatic memories in childhood) But for an aging adult If negatives and uncertainty don't stick in memory as well then there is less that needs to be done about them except to keep things as familiar and certain as possible... So we go all Pollyanna and don't even have to consciously try to look on the bright side... it happens naturally.
In fact, your brain is doing it all it can to ensure a contented retirement. During the escapades of your 20s and 30s and the trials of midlife, it has been quietly learning how to focus on the good things in life. By 65 we are much better at maximizing the experience of positive emotion, says Florin Dolcos, a neurobiologist at the University of Alberta in Canada. In experiments, he found that people over the age of 60 tended to remember fewer emotionally negative photographs compared with positive or neutral ones than younger people
St. Ronnie's surprising political switch from progressive to Goldwaterite at a relatively early age and then beyond that into a shill for a mutated toxic form of conservatism may indicate some accelerated changes in key areas of his brain. Existing memories, forming new memories and the ability to respond properly to uncertainty and negative aspects of reality may all have been affected. In all humans comfortable memories of our childhood persist and the negatives both then and later seem to fade in comparison and we get more attached to those enhanced edited positive memories and even try and recreate if not sustain what is remembered as the good things and certainties of the past. In other words many of us may have overactive Pollyanna responses so to speak. We all have it to some degree in order to stay sane. Some really glum people may be more realistic but then they tend to suicide or depression... so we need a balance between the extremes of Overly Happy lalalala blind to some of the harsh facts of reality coupled with loopy defensiveness of that happy-happy delusion state on the one hand as opposed to the opposite where we understand all too well how much the deck is stacked against us and sink into non-coping helplessness... So when we elect a president are we listening to facts and logic or tuning into their own impaired mental coping and defense structures to reinforce our own. With St. Ronnie way too many of us may have been doing just that.
MRI scans showed why. While the over-60s showed normal activation in the amygdala, a region of the brain that processes emotion, its interaction with other brain areas differed: it interacted less with the hippocampus than in younger people and more with the dorsolateral frontal cortex, a region involved in controlling emotions. Dolcos suggests that this may be a result of more experience of situations in which emotional responses need to be kept under control. Older people really do see the world through rose-tinted glasses.
It is worth noting that Alzheimer's also affects these parts of the brain in particular... and if it it a conserved trait to forget nasty stuff that may be part of the reason it is still around in so many of us... being mellow in late middle age would have been a plus when lifespans were shorter and if it was due to early stages of Alzheimer's well it did not make a lot of difference. The Wise elders of the tribe would tend to be ones who did not get impaired till later if at all and could hang around being a resource and repository of important local survival stuff.
And the other side of the equation is that we get annoyed at people and influences that seem to try and spoil the nice aging glow view of the world that the more fortunate of us may be experiencing... especially if you have been reasonably successful, medical needs not too much of a worry, OK place to live, congenial spouse or significant other, extended family and friends, religious and spiritual needs nicely defined and taken care of and all the other comfortable aspects of existence pretty well low stress and uncomplicated. But even those with a tenuous struggling grasp of just a piece of a contented senior status want to defend what they think they have and their chances at more... and be very annoyed even angry and fearful at those who seem to be threatening to take it away and of course value those who appear to be reassuring and "defending" you.... maybe people like your local preacher and your favorite TeeVee Holy stuff interpreters and of course Glenn Beck, Hannity, O'Reilly and all the other familiar faces in the more extreme fear and reassurance peddling media. Happy people don't need them as much but plenty of them who have little understanding of facts and logic need the everything will be OK if you buy into a Foxian world view and the dangerous people and things can be held at bay with "We surround them" nonsense.
But it is a survival strategy for stress in old age for those who cannot understand the world so well. In some ways we are no different to a tribe 10,000 years ago where the Mojo man or woman and odd notions seem to be the only defense between "The people" and the demons of the outer darkness whether real or imagined. In the "Us and Them dichotomy" "Us" are those who give us comfort or a hope for less stress and them... well they are all the enemy "other" who cause all the lack of serenity... Just like Reagan in his time the Rushes, Becks, holy moonshiners and their ilk give shape to the general unease increasingly felt by so many aging people, define the supposed causes and who is allegedly to blame and then set themselves up as the indispensable defenders of their listeners. Works great as a business model for Shamans or Roger Ailes/Rupert Murdoch etc.. as an aid to the success of Tribal elders or corporate America but beyond the audience figures and advertising revenues this Reaganesque reassurance actually does not banish or reduce the actual economic and political factors that erode and attack the well being of older citizens not to mention everybody... Ultimately an addiction to the peddlers of angst and sooth only adds to the problems of the aging. Medical care, purchasing power, environmental health are all worse and remedies more stymied in the corporate friendly arrangements we live with.
In a way our built-in mechanisms to cope with aging also can get in the way of making a more optimum world to enjoy our later years. But it's not all bad...
So while nobody wants to get older, it's not all doom and gloom. In fact you should probably stop worrying altogether. Studies show that people who are more laid back are less likely to develop dementia than stress bunnies. In one study, people who were socially inactive but calm had a 50 per cent lower risk of developing dementia compared with those who were isolated and prone to distress (Neurology, vol 72, p 253). This is likely to be caused by stress-induced high levels of cortisol, which may cause shrinkage in the anterior cingulate cortex, an area linked to Alzheimer's disease and depression in older people.
So again, we know that optimum conditions in old age is a reality for only a minority of older people (I am on the edge of the down slope into that category myself and trying to look on the bright side on the way) as the article also says,
...there is an upside. The abilities that decline in adulthood rely on "fluid intelligence" - the underlying processing speed of your brain. But so-called "crystallized intelligence", which is roughly equivalent to wisdom, heads in the other direction. So even as your fluid intelligence sags, along with your face and your bottom, your crystallized intelligence keeps growing along with your waistline. The two appear to cancel each other out, at least until we reach our 60s and 70s
But Wisdom is relative... If you grew up and thrived in an isolated tribe or a cult with a self contained, internally consistent and logical world view by the time you reached wise old one status you would have seen and done and remembered enough stuff to be "Wise" in that context... you might not have a clue outside the limitations of your experience but that would be fine if you and your people only had to function in the relatively limited constrained. If you are a subtly impaired Reagan kinda guy you might pine for simpler times of your childhood and try and explain things and solve things that seem consistent with that simpler world. And being elected president allows you to be the mouthpiece of others who while less impaired in the emotional memory department share your need for banishing the negatives of the world with what seem like tried and true methods. So simple and straightforward that only commies and Democrats can't see the pure logic of it...
Now the article also goes into more practical science based ways to deal with having an older brain than subscribing to NewsMax, listening to Rush or a winger holy guy. Ronald made things worse for himselft with the insulin and glucose spikes his jelly beans gave him but also probably helped himsleft with the exercise... but log splitting... that may not have been the ideal exercise for him ... the jarring impact on an older eroding brain would have probably have aggravated and sped up some of the degenerative processes. (he also fell off a horse...)
So exercise and good diet and stress reduction without swallowing down a pre-shrunk, predigested world view that derives from people who are even more motivated to exorcise what ever demons they blame and sell to you. Seeing the good in others, looking on the bright side in a reasonably informed way seems more likely to succeed than getting a daily fix from fear-mongers who also sell reassuring pablum to counter the anxiety they pump up.
And finally those with poor memories can easily overlook flip-flopping by their favorite politicians especially when their favorite "never-was-nostalgia" and pablum purveyors ignore the awkward facts that get in the way of whatever they are currently pushing. There is no contradiction if there is no accurate memory of it or even reporting in the first place. Good is good and bad is bad with simple ways of deciding which is which... the media organs of fear and soothing keep a clear labeling system of who has the black hats and who wears the white hats and flag lapel pins... And seemingly once people get into that EZ reality-lite state... it is very hard to think their way out again...
Fortunately there are plenty of older people who get on with living a mellow golden age without losing sight of reality or getting over stressed on what they have to put up with. We can retain our ability to think around and cope the unpleasant without denying it's existence... In fact when our brain is working closer to it's potential that is what wisdom really is. And along the way maybe even vote for people who we understand logically and even emotionally have a better chance of making the world better for kids, adults and whatever you want to call people over or approaching 65....
And if Science can more readily identify and cure or drastically slow down the brain function losses we all face... hey maybe there will be little likelihood of an easily guided elder statesman figurehead ever becoming president again... no more Reagans... or better yet a Reagan who stayed more progressive and kept most of his marbles instead of switching to jelly beans....
Or put in another way, will there be cure for rabid unreal-Conservatism? We can only hope.