The passions of maturity: Morality and creativity in later life

摘要

Studies of moral development have concentrated on children andadolescents rather than older adults. Yet people continue to face andreflect on moral dilemmas throughout the life-course. This articleexamines how a group of older women and men from a rural New Yorkcommunity deal with issues of meaning and purpose in their mature years,and compares their experiences with those of elders from India. Througha series of ethnographic vignettes, three American approaches to themoral nature of late life are explored: viz., deep involvement inart, in public service, and in self-exploration. Rural people discoveredmany forms of passion, ranging from the personal, professional andpolitical to the ethical and expressive. In their attempts to negotiateboth passion and purpose, these individuals also found themselvescontending with major contradictions in their own culture, especiallythe tensions between self fulfillment and social responsibility, dutyand creativity, and personal meaning and reciprocity. Their sense ofpurpose is compared with that of sannyasins, older spiritual seekersfrom India, whose goals stressed a very distinct set of cultural ideals.