The useless eaters

Jack Deatherage

"In the ideology of Nazi Germany, a useless eater is a person with a
 serious medical problem or disability, seen as requiring help
from society but giving nothing back." - wiktionary.org

(5/2023) The Utopian models I've read about tend to hint at useless eaters - their lack of productive skills and their being uneducable.

"In the 21st century we might witness the creation of a massive new unworking class: people devoid of any economic, political or even artistic value, who contribute nothing to the prosperity, power and glory of society. This 'useless class' will not merely be unemployed - it will be unemployable." - Yuval Noah Harari, historian, philosopher.

A couple of years before the DW and her aunt decided to shut down the factory that had employed me for nearly four and a half decades, a wholesale buyer of our leather goods came into the shop to show us a wallet made in China. Wholesale price? $2.50. Our similar, better quality wallets were made from leather that cost more than the wholesale price of the imported wallet. I knew then that I had become useless - a factory drone replaced by similar drones laboring for considerably less money than I was being paid.

I began submitting applications to area restaurants in the hopes of getting hired as a dish washer, a task I had excelled at forty - three years earlier. Unfortunately, I was 60 years old and the kitchens thought they needed younger workers. Fortunately, the factory continued operating a few more years and I eventually signed up for early Social Security (SS) benefits, something I was furious about having to do. However, the DW pointedly asked if I'd like to continue eating. We lived off of that money for six months after the DW shut down the factory and she was finally able to sign up for early SS draws.

Uneducable, lacking marketable skills, surviving off a failing government handout program, we truly became useless eaters.

"Idle hands are the devil's workshop." - Proverbs 16:27 (depending on the translation)

These days I'v'n't the energy or the ambition to do much more than nap between pages of some novel or baking book. In spite of many of my clan elders living well into their 90s, I avoid doctors and hospitals and expect to maybe survive through my 70s - barring the laughing gods interfering. The current economic system will likely support me to that end. And if the system collapses as many are predicting? Meh.

So what becomes of people decades younger than I? Those also unable to develop marketable skills? The useless class of eaters? Do the powers that are see those useless people as potential devil's workshops? A threat to their Olympian perches?

Past attempts at creating utopias provide the most obvious solutions for useless eaters: mass sterilization, extermination and starvation. Toss in laboratory engineered viruses unleashed upon cities and towns deliberately packed with useless eaters and the Utopians are well on their way to a better, brighter future.

"Welcome to the year 2030. Welcome to my city - or should I say, 'our city.' I don't own anything. I don't own a car. I don't own a house. I don't own any appliances or any clothes. It might seem odd to you, but it makes perfect sense for us in this city. Everything you considered a product, has now become a service. We have access to transportation, accommodation, food and all the things we need in our daily lives. One by one all these things became free, so it ended up not making sense for us to own much." - Ida Auken, a Danish politician, member of the Social Democrats political party.

I wonder if my parents, in the midst of The Great Depression, not yet teenagers, knew about the budding utopias that would dominate their lives - Germany's National Socialism and Russia's Soviet Socialism? If they had been aware of the coming nightmares could they, children of poor farming families, have done anything to stop the insanity of the Utopians? Of course not. Their task was to survive and secure the next generation.

Can I do anything to stop the new wave of Utopians from forging the next humanity shattering utopia?

Nope. (pronounced with a popping "p")

Until J. R. Kipling's "Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return", as they always have, best I can do is help prepare the next generation to endure. Mass sterilization and extermination are beyond my limited control. Avoiding starvation might not be impossible.

Yes, I'm coming across as a raving, maniacal conspiracy believing whack job, almost as insane as my leftist Utopian acquaintances. However, some of the delusional leftists are also end - of - the - world preppers and gardeners. In spite of our opposing beliefs as to which boogeyman is after us, we share the gardener's mantra - Next year's garden will be better.

The fact that I'm able to interact sanely with gardeners I know to be mentally ill, and who believe I'm also off my rocker, gives me comfort. Building gardens together means we're likely to survive the nightmare we believe is about to engulf us.

The really cool thing about being either a raving, maniacal conspiracy believing whack job or an insane, delusional leftist Utopian is the pea seeds from Sweden, the radish seeds from China, the tomatillo seeds from Mexico, the kale seeds from Europe, the mustard seeds from China, the cucumber seeds from Western Asia, the strawflower seeds from Australia, the 'Jacob's Cattle' bean - said to have been gifted from the indigenous people of Maine to Joseph Clark in the 1600s, the 'Rich Sweetness 132' melon seeds from the Soviet Union, the tomato seeds from South America's Andes, the Bulgarian, Hungarian, Macedonian, Syrian, New Mexican pepper seeds bred from their ancestors in South America that I'm hoping to plant this season DO NOT give a damn about my, or anyone else's hopes, dreams, or fears. They just need good soil, water and sun to do what they have done for centuries, nay epochs! - grow and pass on their genetics! A lesson the jabbering apes seem to have forgotten.

"Old jobs will disappear, new jobs will emerge, but then the new jobs will rapidly change and vanish. Whereas in the past human had to struggle against exploitation, in the twenty first century the really big struggle will be against irrelevance. And it is much worse to be irrelevant than exploited." - Yuval Noah Harari (World Economic Forum 2020)

Be relevant. Join a community of gardeners.

I can be reached via the post office:

Deatherage

PO Box 417

Emmitsburg, MD 21727

Ph: 301 - 447 - 2151 (if the answering machine picks up, please leave a contact number - speak slowly and clearly.)

Email: jackdeathjr@juno.com

Or check out the Facebook group - "Emmitsburg Youth/Community Garden" where I post under the DW's account as TOM (The Old Macaque). I stifle myself there as well as in the garden.

See? I'm harmless, mostly.