WARNING: Gloomy metaphor ahead

II Kings 6:28 And the king said unto her, What

aileth thee? And she answered, This woman said

unto me, Give thy son, that we may eat him today,

and we will eat my son tomorrow.

29 So we boiled my son, and did eat him: and I

said unto her on the next day, Give thy son, that

we may eat him: and she hath hid her son.


This is the only passage that I can find with an

explicit record of the practice of cannibalism

during a seige. I'd guess that it wasn't a

popular practice, but you can come to your own

conclusion.


In the seige of Jerusalem, people ended up eating

their young, just to survive starvation. I see

it as a metaphor for what is happening right now

in the U.S., in the sense that workers in the

future are going to have to pay the bill for the

entitlements being handed out today. Every now

and then, it's a topic of discussion in a

political forum. The expenses being accrued

today, will have to be paid for by the workers of

the future. There seems to be a general idea

that things will work out, but the math does not

inspire confidence. The math shows that future

generations are going to have to shoulder a

larger burden of benefit payments than their

parents. Beyond the social program entitlements,

there is an historically large load of debt, both

private and public, that's going to fall into the

laps of future workers. Future benfits are being

gobbled up, and won't be available to those

who've earned them, in fair measure.


It's not a topic that I really want to spend alot

of time on. It's not just the gloomy metaphor,

it's the grim reality. There are demographic

trends driving the economic situation in this

country, besides the fact that as a manufacturing

economy, we are under seige. Jobs are steadily

being moved out of the country, but reports will

say that GDP is growing. Well, it all depends on

what you mean by 'GDP' and 'growing'. The grim

reality is that steadily increasing debt is not

the best form of prosperity, especially on one's

personal balance sheet.


What happens when a generation 'eats' its young?

I'd suggest that it points to a very bleak

future, or maybe, no future survivability at all.

And I think that gets to the core of the issue,

attention is focused only on the immediate

present and there is little consideration given

to the future. From the passage above, I'd

imagine that the rational was that the child is

going to die anyway, but we'll both die if I

don't eat him. The immediate crisis left little

consideration for the future. Once the young are

gone, there is no future.