In the Company of Cannibals

I share an address with my parents and hide the shame of it by renting a post office box, but I’m not fooling anyone with that. Over the years I have lived on my own, with my own family, and on my own again after the marriage failed. Timing and circumstance made the idea of moving back into the old house seem like a not-so-horrible idea. A contractor built an apartment out of the expansion attic where I now live. Dad pays the monthly mortgage and I pay what amounts to an exorbitant rent to cover that, plus, but it’s a nice space. It has its own outside entrance, which makes it feel as if I have my own life. It’s legal and included in the Certificate of Occupancy, as long as I don’t renounce my family name. And it feels like home, because that’s what it is. Better still is knowing the folks are there and safe without having to constantly deal with them. Mom and Dad have each other. Even in their mid-eighties, they are physically and mentally … I was going to say sharp, but this isn’t fiction. They’re both in decent shape, great for their ages. They’re both still active mentally, albeit confused by current events, but probably no more confused than they were in the Sixties. Most evenings, I can hear them shouting at each other from my perch upstairs, but that’s usually because they have the television sound turned up so loud they have to yell over it to hear each other. They’re old, and I’m getting there, too.

We’re no longer perishing at the frequency we once did. Formerly celebrated as exceptions, people living into their nineties are now decidedly unexceptional. Medical science and pharmaceutical miracles are working in tandem to stave off nature from one of its prime missions: to keep the great genetic experiment in motion. Average life expectancy in the United States has risen by over 8 whole years from the time my parents first bought the house in 1967 through 2012, and there’s no reason to believe the trend won’t continue. Lines are growing serpentine; the massed crowd is deepening. Funeral homes are advertising in order to keep their chapels filled. I am reminded of the movie Soylent Green, featuring one of Charlton Heston’s less memorable acting turns and, ironically, Edward G. Robinson’s final one. It’s one of those dystopian stories set in a world gone awry from the twin treacheries of too many people and not enough food. The government distributes Soylent Green crackers to the starving masses. A murder investigation headed by Heston leads Edward G. to the conclusion that the main ingredient in the cracker isn’t plankton, which has been depleted from the earth’s oceans, but rather the most accessible form of protein then available — the corpses of recently deceased people. Adding to the horror is the government sponsorship of assisted suicides, designed to feed the cracker factory fresh protein and which eventually counts Robinson’s character as one more meat carcass.

Back in 1973, the movie was intended to provoke shock at such an extreme solution, at the very idea of humans as food, but I’m growing partial to the concept, especially when driving home from work and struggling against the retiree parade coasting down the left lane of Nesconset Highway. I like the idea of those people, at least, being turned into crackers. My question to them, to all of us, is what good is produced from infinite aging if its main activities consist of doctor visits, early dining and staring at a television? Consumption without production is a recipe for a world identical to the one portrayed in the movie. Perhaps the best end is a short, somewhat productive second act in the role of a tin of snacks. It isn’t the worst way for the elderly to pitch in, in the process of moving on. But we aren’t quite there yet. We remain optimistic that there is an answer just out of the mind’s reach. Paradoxically, in maintaining that optimism we arrive at a point of paralysis, waiting for something to happen. It’s like cooking popcorn in a pot. Pour in some oil, turn up the heat and toss in a couple of kernels. When those pop, you know the oil is hot enough. But they don’t pop on a strict schedule. They pop when they pop. We know we’re going to die. We don’t know when, exactly. Even people on Death Row don’t know for sure until the moment is at hand. They pop when they pop. Until then, they soak up the oil and the heat and keep us in suspense. Meanwhile, science continues to find ways to extend our stay above ground while failing to provide a productive use of the extra time.

I’m 60 years old. I don’t want to live to 85 unless I can contribute more than I consume for the duration. It has always astounded me that people who are retired and set financially insist on taking their Social Security payments and Medicare coverage. Those entitlements were intended for the irresponsible and unfortunate among us, not for Daddy Warbucks to cover the annual country club fee. Their argument is that it’s their money, their entitlement, and they’re entitled. And, technically, they’re correct. But being entitled once meant something else, of being humbled, and thankful, and generous with those who were not born under a lucky star. The meaning of the word changed at some point in the 20th century into a synonym for selfishness. The Social Security heist is a petty crime on the moral scale, but it is symptomatic of an overall weakening of individual will among those people who have already benefited the most from the opportunities life presents us. Is it any wonder that the social structure has fractured along socio-economic lines? There isn’t just a chasm yawing between classes; the strong are essentially feeding on the weak, without remorse and without justification.

Some of us do not subscribe to the law of the jungle except in its most practical sense, as it applies to inevitability. We are Death’s subjects, not its agents. If born entitled, or raised to that level, we are still only entitled to what we need in order to pass our time on Earth. We are not entitled to drain the well just because our bucket is large. We are not entitled to avert death by using the less fortunate for sustenance. It has always been the responsibility of the entitled classes to protect the vulnerable, not exploit them. Those who have failed to honor this responsibility in the past eventually reaped the whirlwind and found the roles reversed. But it’s still not a solution. Revolution is not an answer in itself, merely a shifting weight, a rising temperature that converts water to steam and explodes outward. It pops when it pops, under its own motivation and into new forms. Donning the robe of entitlement, the newly risen usually miss the meaning of it, driving society further from its humanist roots. It is society applying pressure to the individual, and the individual resisting, that creates the most havoc in our lives. Society’s answer to social conflict is always for resolution through force; strength in resources versus strength in numbers. This is ultimately how we will end up passing our time, as the fuel to power the engines of our own demise. My parents can’t hear it coming over the din of TV game shows, won’t know it is happening until they are devoured by it. There might have been more productive ways for an aging population to contribute, but we are too busy surviving to seek those out. In keeping company with cannibals, we must eat until we are eaten.