Food for Thought

Recently Richard Kleeberg wrote in his “On Point” Winters Express column about wanting to know his life’s expiration date and how no one wanted to really talk about that question. I for one would love to talk about it and oh so much more. You see for some reason I spend way too much time thinking about death. The reasons for that could fill a few columns and a few years of therapy so we’ll save that discussion for another time.

            Today let’s go in a direction that’s going to make a lot of you squirm and most of you will think I’m crazy for even having these thoughts. You see not only do I want to know my expiration date but I also want to know my “Nutritional Value” and my “Thermal Value” as well.

            Why? You ask. Because not only do I think a lot about death I also think about over population and how it’s becoming unsustainable. So what’s that got to do with nutrition and heat? Well to put it simply, for long term sustainability the world needs more power (thermal energy) and more food (nutrition). Uh, oh, now you’re starting to see where I’m going with this.

 Yes, I’ll say it. When I die, I either want to be made into some “Spam” like product for human consumption or burned in some big power plant where my final heat will help turn some giant turbine that will produce a small spark of electricity. That little bit of electricity could possibly save someone’s life (or just power some useless gadget) and a few cans of “Spam-Lis” might keep some starving child alive for a few days. Alright, alright, don’t get all grossed out on me. Do we really know most of the time what we are eating and where it came from? As that old fast food commercial so cynically likes to tell us, “parts is parts”.

            Now before you just write me off as totally crazy, remember that these aren’t original thoughts. I guess at the time I didn’t realize how influenced I would be by the 1973 movie, Soylent Green. If you don’t know that movie the basic plot is that in the year 2022 the world is overpopulated, over heated from global warming, and food is in short supply. Most of the population survives on rations of plankton based wafers called Soylent Green produced by the giant Multinational Soylent Corporation. The movie is a basic detective - science fiction with the major plot twist at the end being Charlton Heston yelling out “Soylent Green is People!” after finding out what the wafers are really made of.

            What has always stuck in my mind from that movie was not the people as food part. It was the depiction of voluntary Euthanasia available at government run clinics. The volunteers who were then unwittingly turned into food had this wonderful last experience of sights and sounds from a natural world that had become extinct. Even as a teenager when I saw the movie I thought that’s how I want to go, and I still feel that way.

            Not that I’m ready to go any time soon. Now when I think about my eventual death, whether it be with an unknown expiration date or with an expiration date of my choosing I wonder have I made a difference? Has anything that I’ve done made a positive contribution to my planet and my species? Do I still have the time, energy, or even the desire to try and make a difference?

            As I’ve written before, I tend to lean towards passivity and laziness. So what can I do to help my fellow man and the giant flying rock we live on? Something that won’t take too much effort since I am kind of busy just trying to survive in this modern world of ours. Those couple of ideas I just put out remind me of one of the things I do now that really helps people, is very easy and passive to do, and if you really think about it is also kind of gross and macabre. Every few months I’m solicited by a club with over a million members whose mascot is a ferocious (but almost extinct) wild animal. What are they asking me to do? They want me to give BLOOD and I do so willingly. Once I give it to them they can do anything they want with it. They could be feeding a small army of baby vampires, or maybe making a delightful blood sausage. No matter what, once it’s out of my hands (literally) it could end up anywhere and hopefully it’s doing some good.

            So yes I’m serious. When I’m dead I want my corpse to help make a difference. And those crazy ideas I just put out there, well they’re just food for thought.

To view the column in it's original form go to page 13 of the following link. Winters Express 10/18/12