"What do you read?" I asked. "What do you want to hear? A list of
German concentration camps? An account of the cremation of some six
million innocent people by Germany? A survey of conditions in Russian
slave labor camps? A discussion of physical torture as it is used
by modern police in America? Or by military men? Or as a political
instrument in Europe? Or as a diplomatic measure, by, let us say,
the English, in their colonies? Do you want to hear a discourse on
the behavior of Jap troops in war? On our own troops? Would you like
to have me run over the treatment of people in American lunatic
asylums? Shall I touch on lynching details--and other minor unpleasant
experiences of the American Negro? Would you like me to talk about how
we Americans disposed of the Indian problem? Would you be interested in
some studies of corporeal punishment as it is administered in American
slum homes and on American farms? Shall I recite the prison methods
and jail practices common amongst our agents of law enforcement? Or
would a review of the various effects of intense radiation on the human
body, as well as its genes, coupled with the fact that about every
other American is sitting around these days asking why in hell we don't
atom-bomb Russia, tend to persuade you that we are not, essentially,
humane people? Shall I discuss brutality in sports? Are you interested
in considering our annual million smashed in automobiles as evidence
of a certain basic scarcity of the humanitarian impulse? There are
various business practices I could go into, in documenting the matter.
Not the ruination of widows and orphans. Not the adulteration and
poisoning of products. Just the little results of the basic premise
of business which is that making money is the whole object, without
reference to kindness or love. Or would you like to review the various
sorts of crimes committed by the people in our fair land? Would you
like to contemplate the interesting and vicious psychology of many
of the _victims_ of these crimes? Shall we look at the degree of
obliviousness, smugness, or rejection which Americans held toward
the atrocities before the recent war--or hold now toward massacre
and famine in India--famine in China--ruthless dictatorship in a
dozen nations--Spain, for instance--Argentina--a lot more? Or shall
we, on the other hand, investigate a whole field of cruelty as large
as the one just hinted at: the _psychological_ cruelties of modern
men? It would double the scope of the survey. The teachers--devising
torments to sweat off their frustrations on their pupils. The common
office techniques of the average man-of-affairs. The torments of the
soul written into the class structures of society. The awful havoc
wreaked on man whenever a minister preaches hell-fire and damnation.
No fooling! We are not humane. We are--per capita--the cruelest people
who ever lived, because, unlike the poor thieves on the two other
crosses--we do know what we do!"
Tom took off his fogged spectacles and wiped them. I pushed the
advantage. "Cruelty among doctors. An interesting little sidetrack. I
recall, for example--"
"Skip it." He looked sorrowfully at me. "You win that one."
"All I want," I said, "is for people to _be_ truly humane. _Truly_
loving. But, to gain that, we'd be obliged to give up a great deal we
now cherish dearly."
We had lemon ice.
Later, we walked into the Park and sat down....
The people on the newspapers on the grass, the silo smell of trees at
night in heat waves, lamplight and music--as I have said....
"Cruelty in doctors," Tom repeated musingly, after we found a bench on
the Mall, where we could feel the breeze if one came.
"Last night," I responded, when he didn't go on, "I was reading a book
that suggested the whole philosophy of medicine was cruel. Saving
babies--increasing the life span--only so people will go hungry by
millions."
"Vogt? Osborne? I read them. What's true humanity? I don't know--except
sometimes, in individual cases. What about old people, for instance?"
"What about them?"
He looked back over his shoulder as if he could see through the night,
the trees of Central Park, and the blocks of buildings, to the East
River. "Out on the Island--I take care of a ward filled with them.
Chronics. Sixty years old. Seventy. Eighty. Ninety. Some been in bed
for twenty years. No cure. No hope. No chance--in a high percentage--of
doing a thing, ever. An organ's shot--ruined beyond repair. Half of
them touched with senile dementia; a quarter, sunk in it. Mess their
beds. You feed 'em with spoons. And yet they go on--year after year
after year."
"I've seen the ward."
"America has millions of such people. Only a fraction of 'em in
hospitals. Moms and pops, grandmas and grandpas, hanging on to the
last, sick gristle of existence. Spoiling the lives of other millions
of people. Taking their time and their energy. Absorbing funds that
young kids desperately need. All for nothing. Wheedling and whining
and complaining if everything isn't soft and easy for them. Reminding
sons and daughters and grandchildren of their 'duty.' The duty to be
enslaved by meaningless, useless senility. The food and the clothes,
the beds and the service, the tax money, the energy, the topsoil, if
you go for Vogt--and the metal--pours down their gullets and is worn
out by their worn-out bodies--and not one single, solitary useful
thing is accomplished."
"You're stealing my act," I said.
Tom laughed ruefully. "It's an easy act for a doctor to crib! Tell me,
why in hell do people look forward so much to old age? Nine times out
of ten, it's a mess. Even proud, independent people, when they get old,
usually lose their pride and their independence--and go down begging
for handouts."
"The best reason I can think of," I said, "is that they're disappointed
in life as they've lived it up to middle age."
"The whole country grows older," Tom went on, after nodding to himself.
"The American landscape will soon be cluttered with human antiques.
Pension-seeking, vengeful, dogmatic, persecuting, bloc-voting,
parasitic millions. An ocean of wasteful protoplasm--Old Men of the
Sea--and old Women--riding on the backs of everybody. Is a thing like
that humane?"
"It is richly sentimental."
"In the labs, thousands of my colleagues are sweating to bring it
about. Studying the degenerative diseases. Trying to lick cancer
and heart trouble and hypertension. Trying to lick aging itself--to
keep the old, old indefinitely! Geriatrics--a whole science for the
maintenance of second childhood! Sometimes, Phil, I actually think the
world is as crazy as you say it is. Sometimes--when I run into a bright
kid whose parents can't afford to have its legs straightened--and then
when I visit my ward--I'd like to sweep the place clean with a Thompson
gun and move in the kids who need it."
"There is the Townsend Plan," I offered. "Two hundred dollars a month
for everybody who's old, if they spend it right away--and millions are
too stupid to see the catch. In fifty years--Pensioned Old Age may
be the great goal that progress and prosperity are today. Of course,
there isn't enough stuff to go around, and there will never be, so two
hundred bucks, if you gave it to the gaffers to spend, soon wouldn't
buy a good-sized roast. But they may try for it."
Tom laughed somberly. "They are trying. You should see the pension
literature in my ward. The letters they write. The voting they do.
Should I shoot them? What the hell do you really believe about it?"
"There is the death wish," I said.
"They don't want to die! Not one in a dozen! Even if they're blind,
vomiting on the hour, spoon-fed, and in pain--they want to go on
living--and are proud of it."
"It's Jung," I answered, "who keeps talking about the law of opposites.
The death wish is subjective. But we translate it into its opposite
form--in this case, the objective. We want other people to die--to
suffer--to bear our load--to take our responsibility. We hate. What
did you say about your old folks? Vengeful and persecuting and
parasitic? That's the death wish turned wrong-side-out. Or--take this
pair of opposites. We have applied reason to extending life. So we
have automatically obliged ourselves to apply reason to death. That
is a psychological consequence of administering life--stretching it,
maintaining it--of baby-saving and so on. Only--being egoists--blind
to the basic laws of instinct--we won't kill anybody. Millions of
Russians, maybe, but not one American. It's even against the law for a
person to kill himself, for whatever merciful and laudable a reason. So
what? We insist on our right to save and maintain every life. We also
insist on dodging the resultant duty at the other end of the natural
spectrum: death. The living have no recourse left but to extravert
their death wish. To hate others because of the hatefulness of the trap
they're in."
"How do you work it out?"
"In the better world," I said, "a person who had enjoyed the long
conscious control of his life would feel somewhat responsible for
controlling his death. When he got useless, he would give up. He would
regard it as rational--and as part of that 'greater love' that almost
no man, these days, hath a sign of."
"Voluntary euthanasia?"
"Why not? And if you came a header and couldn't do it for yourself--the
state would do it."
"Do you think," Tom said with asperity, "that the people would permit
anything like that? Or think of it as _idealism_? Why--it's a sin--!"
"Sure. Sin. It's one of the sins that keep the churches full and the
heads and hearts of the folks empty. Vested interest."
"How many people would do it?"
I shrugged. "Couldn't say. You've seen cases. You'll likely witness
another--my own--before long--"
"Good God! I'm sorry--Phil--!"