Don't Put Me on an Ice Floe: What to Do With the Elderly

When I turned 65 last year, it occurred to me that having to fill out paperwork for Social Security was the same as putting old people on an ice floe: If you can survive it, you're ready to be an elder.

But The New York Times recently reported remarks made by Yusuke Narita, an assistant professor of economics at Yale University who, as the Times put it, "has taken on the question of how to deal with the burdens of Japan’s rapidly aging society."

Narita, age 37, suggested in a 2021 interview that mass suicide and Seppuku— an act of ritual disembowelment—might be the ticket in terms of handling folks who draw on public resources to support them in their old age, rely on hefty pensions, or simply keep watching too many re-runs of Law and Order.

After reading the piece in the NYT I've decided to take the completion of the paperwork offered by Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security over the blade. Not so fast with the idea of cliff-jumping from assisted-living balconies, pal. Not so fast with the poisoned chalice of low-sodium V-8 or the one-way ticket to EuthanasiaLand, where you have to be THIS old to get on the last ride.

Dying with dignity is one thing. Having somebody under 40 tell me I am sufficiently dignified and therefore might seriously consider the nuanced act of dying in a convenient fashion is something else.

Narita's Ph.D. is from MIT and his scholarly work is on artificial intelligence, data mining, and data-driven algorithms. The Yale Department of Economics has, naturally, Narita's CV up on its site; the CV lists a wide range of interests, including comments on school choice, allocation of resources, and a paper titled "The Curse of Democracy."

It's good for younger scholars and academics—and younger people generally— to be involved in the discussion of matters of social, cultural, political, and emotional significance, especially when it comes to the experience of aging. It's just so cute when those who are under 40 years of age discuss encroaching mortality with more seasoned adults.

Civilization itself, I say as a well-seasoned adult ( notes of garlic and cilantro dominating), depends on not sending the vulnerable out to sea, whether literally or metaphorically.

Sigmund Freud (notes of cigar and brandy dominating) suggested as much when he wrote "Anyone who has tasted the miseries of poverty in his own youth and has experienced the indifference and arrogance of the well-to-do, should be safe from the suspicion of having no understanding or good will towards endeavors to fight against the inequality of wealth among men and all that it leads to. To be sure, if an attempt is made to base this fight upon an abstract demand, in the name of justice, for equality for all men, there is a very obvious objection to be made--that nature, by endowing individuals with extremely unequal physical attributes and mental capacities, has introduced injustices against which there is no remedy." That's from Civilization and Its Discontents.

To urge that some die, or die early, or take their own lives, or surrender their time or their breath because unknown others might make better use of these resources (time, life, breath—and by implication money, privilege, position, and general bandwidth) is to make a mockery of the concept of justice.

Sniffing around the edge of death's bowl and hinting that others might want to drink from it in order to make the world better is the antithesis of civilization.