Promoting conscious and active learning and aging: how to face current and future challenges?

Book excerpt: The European Union has committed itself to the goal of extending the healthy lifespan of its citizens by two years under the 2020 strategy. This book brings together a diverse range of overviews, reflections and empirical research in the area which arise from the contribution of professionals and researchers from different fields of knowledge. Together they undertake to suggest possible pathways and to inspire action in all those who see themselves as participants in the processes and endeavour of building a society which espouses active, dignified, healthy and mindful aging. The background perspective which informs this project – that which is commonly referred to as Lifelong Education – calls for an integrated approach from diverse areas of knowledge in the service of building a more enlightened society: less susceptible to the influence of prejudices, enriched with human beings driven by ideals of health, justice, solidarity and nobility of spirit. Life must be understood as a totality that takes meaning from all its phases and which stimulates the vast potential that human beings, including older people and society at large, with its various systems, have for the common good. Let us face the challenge of building a new humanism, placing human beings and the sustainability of all forms of life at the centre of the dynamic process of change!