Given the advanced age of the author I'm reminded of a project in Bavaria where older people lived in an autonomous community. Healthy people as well as people with typical old age problems and with some assistance from caregivers, but for the most part the focus was on those people taking care for each other.
I think it was generally considered successful. People were in good health, it seemed like a genuine way to get older people to have a social life that isn't just playing games in some nursing home and it kept them self-reliant which gives people a lot of dignity.
I don't think there's really a clever answer to the philosophical loneliness that's also part of the article that people deal with even when they're around others but as far as physical and communal isolation goes I think projects that bring elderly people together and give them responsibility and active lives is a good thing. A necessary one even I think given the demographic changes almost every country goes through. Many 80+ year old women in particular will outlive their spouses.
I think it was generally considered successful. People were in good health, it seemed like a genuine way to get older people to have a social life that isn't just playing games in some nursing home and it kept them self-reliant which gives people a lot of dignity.
I don't think there's really a clever answer to the philosophical loneliness that's also part of the article that people deal with even when they're around others but as far as physical and communal isolation goes I think projects that bring elderly people together and give them responsibility and active lives is a good thing. A necessary one even I think given the demographic changes almost every country goes through. Many 80+ year old women in particular will outlive their spouses.
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