in genetics,
telomeres affect the age of the cell. They shorten in duplication. The concept of having borne your
young is at the heart of "old": "open country" as in the
plentiful earth and "
world" as backdrop for a context having little by which to fundamentally (as in, the will) affect events/actions of that in it, as
us on this planet, and as an old
person to their
body. Old currently assumes that generative efforts result in degredation of self and therefore self
sustenance, in the case of being internally measured; or assumed progress with the march of time and "
evolution" or
progress, in the case of being externally measured (and by progress, I mean no insinuation that there is some intrinsic good by which all other qualities must be judged -- no moralism here, only dynamism :-).
More generally, having been passed out of
present use, such that versions you've created/a part of you has
engendered,
carry premium instead of you yourself. That doesn't mean that contributions are less
useful in themselves, only relative to where the rubric for their application has resolved. Measured
directly, they are less *likely* to be
generatively significant. Less likely to help the further-evolved apprehend new
meaning. Like reading a basis for a more practically-direct rubric, such as the Bible or the Koran,does little to
progress -- is old -- but is still
significant. This can be ideological, psychic, cultural, physical...
Aging can be because of
context, or relative to self
sustenance. I propose the former will be with us forever, the latter is always qualified, but will always be around by virtue of our not controlling resources for everything, fudamentally.
Old does not denote "less
meaningful". When external, "old" is due to context. When relative to self, reduced self sustenance. Time has nothing to do with it. Genetic research has now proven that -- so far we had thought of a cell as a discrete thing -- the fact is, it's all constituent parts that affect dynamic in its environment, in a way that perpetuates certain static aspects of the parts' arrangement, and that we call an "object". Dee Hock's chaords. Take away the software errors, supplied by telomeres' absence, supply an endless stream of material, and you have an endless "object" because endless arrangement of material in which those dynamics can play out.
So far, time has typically seen the inexorable plodding of all these factors that comprise aging, but that process can be halted, even reversed, because it is comprised of *those factors*. Our current
concepting of 3-D space and time. Its difficulty with freely understanding the nature of aging is
particularly facilitated through language's -- particularly the
English language's -- weaknesses, which stymie perception-based feedback loops for conceptual evaluation of what's (supposed to be) possible, and, thereby, formation of new terms -- effectively, the generative apprehension of significance and formulation of meaning itself, the
process of "
evolution".
I suppose the only real meaning of "old" would be by elapsed time, and time's relative to the heavenly bodies, so long as we can't move the whole universe at once, or a majority of what we perceive of it, we'll have just cause to keep this meaning around :-).