For those of you who have HBO, and who might be interested in such things, a friend recommends a film nominated this year for Best Short Documentary in the Oscars which will be playing on that channel.
It's called "King's Point," and it's one woman's docu about life in a Florida retirement community, and the "common demoninator problem" faced by many of the "inmates" there: alienation and loneliness. I haven't seen it, but I find myself wondering whether it has some parallels (or will, in coming years) to life in the "Heaven on Earth" of Fairfield, Iowa. Will the same alienation and loneliness affect TMers as they age in a homogeneous community in which many people believe the same things and share the same problems (money, health, and WTF to do with their days), or will their "common denominator belief system" provide some kind of buffer to keep the place from becoming, as Leonard Cohen said so well, "Deader than Heaven on a Saturday night?" I honestly don't know. Perhaps those with feet on the ground (in many ways) there in Fairfield who see this will feel like commenting. http://www.tvworthwatching.com/BlogPostDetails.aspx?postId=4475# These are the moments when I wish that Dr. Pete was still with us as an active participant. I'd love to hear his POV on this, both as a psychologist and a Florida dweller. What I'm NOT interested in, for those who will feel compelled to provide it, is a bunch of TM propaganda of the "It can't happen here" variety, telling us how IN THEORY TMers could never feel lonely and alienated in a "perfect" community such as theirs. I think we've all heard too much about murders and suicides in Fairfield to believe any of that theoretical crap. I'm not even *doubting* that a sense of "shared spiritual vision" can be a protective factor as one ages, even if that factor is primarily a placebo. I'm just wondering what people's "on the ground" take is on this subject of the differences between a "theoretical paradise" (either well-designed and maintained rest homes in Florida or the TM "ideal communities") and what that paradise turns out to be like for the people living in it.
