Imagining Ourselves into the Lives of People Living with Dementia: Toward New Narratives for Aging Societies

Abstract

Aging societies frequently fail to imagine their own collective needs, including the care needs of people with dementia and who will be expected to meet these needs. This essay considers how to build a practice of moral imagination—a capacity to think about current and future challenges in ways that aim at better lives and greater justice—into rethinking familiar cultural narratives about dementia that fail to improve the lives of people with dementia or of dementia caregivers, who are usually family members. Focusing on real-world conditions in the United States and Canada, the essay outlines a public humanities project to improve public understanding and public deliberation about dementia care, through careful reflection on the stories that members of aging societies tell, share, and embed in civic dialogue.