Pursuing a "noble end" among a community of friends:
Dr. Bill Thomas and his vision for Eldershire
 
Editor's note: Dr. Bill Thomas and his wife Jude, co-founders of the Eden Alternative™ and the Green House Project™, two radical alternatives to traditional nursing home care, have dedicated their lives to transforming the culture of aging. At Second Journey's May 2005 Visioning Council on Creating Community in Later Life — held at the Summer Hill Farm, the Thomases' home and retreat center in Upstate New York — Bill Thomas shared his thoughts and ideas about aging, elderhood and Eldershire, his newest project.

Dr. Bill Thomas and Bolton Anthony at Second Journey's Visioning Council at Summer Hill Farm


The liberation of elders and elderhood is not an aging issue.
It is not a generational issue. It is not about government programs or public policy.
It is not about aching knees, weakening eyes, or even the wrinkles that line our faces.
It is a world-changing struggle that can remake the experience of life from cradle to grave.

— William H. Thomas, M.D. from What Are Old People For?
 

Bill Thomas opened his remarks by defining “elderhood” as an ancient and integral part of the human experience which — as a social contract — has EXPIRED for western cultures. A new contract, suited to our culture and our time, must be negotiated. Much that would underpin such a contract is already in place, including economic security (the current national debate is not about whether we should fund Social Security, but how), a significantly extended “health span,” and unprecedented levels in accumulated wealth.

The current culture views aging as inevitable decline and asks, how do we make the bad less bad, how do we mitigate its negative impact? Not all mitigation is bad: titanium hips and lens implants, for example. On the other hand, when it comes to medical treatment, more is not always better (as the book Bill Thomas is now writing will demonstrate).

We can counter the ageism of our culture in three ways. We can pine for the good old days when elders were an honored and integral part of the community. Be aware, however, whenever we encounter nostalgia for the past, it is the surest sign that whatever we are longing for is GONE and irretrievable. Alternatively, we can be anti “anti-aging,” but that turns out inevitably to be untenable ground. Or we can see aging as a “growth phase of life” and celebrate a “positive developmentally oriented elderhood.”

“Community” is simply a tool or device that can support elderhood; it has become rusty in our culture because the modern market economy has led us to believe that we can substitute community with purchased “amenities.” Thomas defines intentional community as “a small group of unrelated people who come together to share the rhythm of daily life and to pursue some noble end.” Each of the four elements in this definition is important.
 
  • “a small group” — Our ability to be in intimate relationship with other people is limited. (Relevant to this point is research Malcolm Gladwell cites in The Tipping Point — research which he says simply confirms what practitioners of community know intuitively: “The figure of 150 seems to represent the maximum number of individuals with whom we can have a genuinely social relationship, the kind of relationship that goes with knowing who they are and how they relate to us” [page 179].) Bill Thomas argues that the social benefits that derive from being well known must be balanced with the values we place on our privacy.
  • “unrelated people” — Intentional community does not depend on the bonds of kinship. Bill Thomas argued that we need to revive the term “relation by affection ” which was used in the obituaries of the past.
  • “to share the rhythm of daily life” — Community offers the opportunity not only of sharing our everyday experience of life, but also of recovering and celebrating the deeper rhythms  — of seasons and stages of life — which are lost to most in modern life.
  • “to pursue some noble end” — To Bill Thomas this last element constitutes the indispensable glue of intentional community. Think of the monastery, the ashram, or the kibbutz, where unrelated people join together to pursue ends which transcend their personal lives. Compare these to our modern gated retirement communities —“life-style enclaves” — which “celebrate the narcissism of similarity” with rituals that revolve around leisure and consumption [Habits of the Heart, p. 72].
     

In his provocative new book, the 44-year-old Harvard-trained physician explains why we age and shows that our mastery of aging is one of the most human things about us. He explores how the obsession with youth harms young and old alike and argues that aging boomers will change our society — one last time.

These reflections are the foundation for new efforts by Bill and Jude Thomas to develop a residential community that adjoins their Summer Hill Farm and Retreat Center. Though the development, Eldershire, will be marketed primarily to elders, it will be an intergenerational community where all ages are welcome. Universal design principles will be employed in the design of the homes and common buildings, and the co-housing model will be adapted to foster opportunities for informal, spontaneous social interaction while at the same time preserving an essential zone of privacy.

As for the “noble end” — that “indispensable glue of intentional community” — Bill Thomas believes that  Eldershire will “create a haven where people can live into elderhood in the context of vibrant, supportive community.” He sees this community engaged in creating legacies and being a “cultural lighthouse” radiating out the virtues of elderhood. This concept promotes growth in the last half of life, where elderhood is understood not as an age or legal status, but a self-determined transition — a developmental vibrancy from which other meanings spin off.

 
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