Profligacy

Wall-E (2008)

Fat and docile, big and dumb
They look so stupid, they aren't much fun
Cows aren't fun

They eat to grow, grow to die
Die to be et at the hamburger fry
Cows well done
--Cows With Guns, Dana Lyons

Do not lay up for yourselves treasures
on earth, where moth and rust consume
and where thieves break in and steal
--Matthew 6:19

Actually this is just a place for my stuff, ya know?
--George Carlin

What exactly are you trying to say?
What exactly am I trying to say?
You's a bunch of fuckin' elephants
--In Bruges (2008)
________________

You've heard it, and perhaps even been guilty of it: "The blasted computer's so slow today;" "They were all out of the rice crisp multigrains at Costco; I had to buy the regular;" "One of the globes was broken -- I'll have to go back to the store," and on it goes.

Most of us do not live in the daily recognition of our good fortune. Our overly consumeristic natures are revealed in the Pixar animation "Wall-E," but the film is more than a diatribe. It shows what we have lost as we have gained, in a dark vision of a humanity hurtling towards -- nothing.

Wall-E [Waste Allocation Load Lifter-Earth Class] is a decrepit robot sentenced to a lifetime of garbage collection and compaction on a post-apocalyptic earthscape. Even in his limited function, however, he manages to find wonderment among the rubbish, and collects trifles like Rubik's Cubes that strike his fancy. He also watches the musical "Hello, Dolly!," transfixed by the songs of hopeful love.

In his meager lifestyle he has grown to appreciate the simple things, seeing possibility in a junk heap, and has even humanized himself in terms of his yearning toward love -- an exalted emotion we fancy reserved exclusively for the higher primates. He survives by scavenging and self-repairing.

The deracinated humans, on the other hand, have lost their capacity to appreciate material goods, their environment or the companionship of others. They have committed several deadly sins (among these are sloth, gluttony and greed.) Humans consume and destroy, never realizing their bounty.

They are amorphously fat and ridiculously stupid grotesqueries traveling through space in their Barcaloungers on a giant cruise ship spacecraft these 700 years, which many do not even know has a gym and a pool aboard. One wonders what purpose these humans could possibly serve, and the movie asks us to suspend our disbelief on such matters as food and water sourcing.

It is unclear if they are searching for another planet to colonize, farm and exploit for resources, but it is a good bet they will replicate their wastrel ways once there, wherever there is. It is the bleakest vision of a gerontological future in which caregiving will be the main employer. These humans embody George Costanza's beer fridge-in-the-recliner lifestyle, and are sustained by a myriad of assistants.

Buy N Large (BnL) is the company that owns everything and it is a double entendre: the people are by and large hopeless, and if you buy, you'll enlarge. Times are economically bad now, yet many of us are like the Barcalounger travelers, oblivious to a future without accommodation to our needs.

My mother recently shared a story of Officer Tand, the kindly crossing guard at my grade school whom she befriended many years ago, and who had lived through the Depression. He was a bit like Wall-E in that his treasure was collecting bits of rock and shells and gluing them to backboards which he would then decorate with paint. Where others might have seen a chipped stone, Officer Tand saw the makings of a grasshopper, after some cleverly applied pipe cleaners and the like.

He invited us to his house once, where he had cases displaying his creations. He also took joy in giving them away, and I was the recipient of a few.

As she tells his story:

"They were recent immigrants and had nothing at living in NYC, so he and two other families who were evicted rolled up a carpet and carried it across the bridge to New Jersey. They had a wee bit of clothing, some pots, blankets and made a makeshift place to live. So these three families made and lean-to, barely covering themselves. They would make a weak fire in the area just outside and had one large pot into which they would put water and they would all go out like animals looking for anything to eat, e.g. wild radishes, anything at all from a field or garden. There was very little in the pot, mostly water, but they lived (barely.)

Most people today don't know this life, but this was the U.S. less than 75 years ago. "A Week of Hunger" in the WaPo today reported most food stamp recipients deplete their allocation by week three. Larry Brown Harvard School of Public Health estimates it would cost $10-12 billion per year to "virtually end hunger in our nation," a plague which costs society at least $90 billion a year in lost revenue and health and societal costs.

How many days of war funding could eradicate hunger in the U.S.? As the economy pulls more people from the isolated comfort of their recliners, we may put more care into such issues.