Culture has tremendous inertia,” he said. “That’s why it’s culture. It works because it lasts. Culture strangles innovation in the crib. - Atul Gawande

Pain is a symphony - a complex response that includes not just a distinct sensation but also motor activity, a change in emotion, a focusing of attention, a brand-new memory.

Modernization did not demote the elderly. It demoted the family. It gave people — the young and the old — a way of life with more liberty and control, including the liberty to be less beholden to other generations. The veneration of elders may be gone, but not because it has been replaced by veneration of youth. It’s been replaced by veneration of the independent self. * * *

Yet — and this is the painful paradox — we have decided that they should be the ones who largely define how we live in our waning days.