A friend in assisted living in Alaska told me, he brings in $2800 a month with soc sec, pension etc. They take $2600. Most of the people in the facility bring in about $1000. The facility bills medicaid @$16,000. If you have the money they will take $16,000, even though medicaid might only return $12,000.
This is one of the primary reasons I sold my house in the city and moved back into the house I grew up in, so my elderly folks can stay out of facilities that will bleed the family to death.
That’s the right move both morally and economically. By moving back in, you’re not only giving your parents better care than any institution would, you’re also keeping the family’s remaining wealth from being siphoned off by the rent-seekers who profit from slow death. In a sane society, this would be the norm: the family operating as a single economic and moral organism, pooling care and resources across generations. But that kind of thinking requires seeing one’s parents not as burdens to be managed but as part of the same continuum of being - the same lineage - whose survival depends on solidarity rather than outsourcing.
My mother died in January of this year in the United States. Age 93. My brother had lived with her for many years, also long before her very slow decline into dementia. As a family we were very fortunate he was able to provide virtually all her care, with an absolute minimum of remote assistance from whatever government programs etc. What that took out of him is a story for another day.
There's no teacher like personal experience. I deduced that had my mother not been fed a daily pile of medications for long years prior to her death, she very likely would have died, say, 5 to 7 years earlier. That I would have wished for her and for her loved ones. Someone please tell me what is desirable about artificially prolonging life to the point we are reduced to helpless husks without minds, without memories, without dignity.
Yes, no one can ever say when we will pass from this world, so just call it my observation. She had survived breast cancer, advancing heart disease, surgigal stent implants, diminished and ultimately no mobility, and more. I suppose the usual catalogue of things people suffer if they live that long.
The final years of my mother's life left me absolutely convinced that the business model of today's medical-industrial complex is to keep us as diseased as possible for as long as possible. Starting at younger and younger ages. Lifetimes of illness. Obvious aim being to maximize revenues -- pharma, surgeries, constant MD visits, assisted living, nursing homes, adult diapers, wheelchairs, aids, devices and and and. A dead patient is the end of a revenue source, but a beginning for the funeral homes and cemeteries -- an equally despicable sector.
This is painfully lucid, Prodigal, thank you for sharing. I think your experience cuts to the heart of the matter, where your mother’s story highlights that the system’s true aim is suspended dying, i.e. an indefinite monetization of decay. To “keep us as diseased as possible for as long as possible” is the logical end of a worldview that denies transcendence and treats life as a biochemical asset to be managed. Goldman Sachs said this explicitly: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/11/goldman-asks-is-curing-patients-a-sustainable-business-model.html?msockid=235e4e6b8bda69e815c85db68a346874
There’s no dignity in being kept alive beyond the reach of meaning. The older religious world at least recognized death as a threshold, not a technical error. What we have now is an economy that fears death but worships decomposition.
Thank you for the consistently powerful content. My pleasure to be back here. Wow -- that link. Talk about a revelation of the method. All out in the open in these times. Yeah, I defy any thinking person to ask themselves cui bono and tell me these macabre warehouses are for the common good. And we ain't gonna return to a time of decency, of a capacity for shame. This is where we are. Growing impatient waiting for the asteroid :)
Check out an essay on how doctors die. Doctors tend to look at what they do to patients in their final days and say no way for themselves. Many have no resuscitate instructions on them
You don't need a uniform society to have a uniform health care system that takes care of everyone.
It's not just Sweden or Norway... France and Spain have decent nursing homes covered by basic care.
Only in the USA and the third world, one goes broke for basic care- even before old age!
It would be cheaper in the USA to have the elderly person commit a crime and get incarcerated. At least prisons pay their workers better than these bullshit for profit senior centers that charge as much, if not more per person than prisons do.
The irony is that nationalized systems, like Canada’s or parts of Europe’s, have their own pathologies, different in form but similar in spirit. Once the care of the elderly becomes fully bureaucratized, the same dynamic of depersonalization sets in. It’s not that privatization alone is the problem; it’s that both models - corporate and state - treat the human being as an administrative object. The only real antidote is re-rooting care within the family and local community, where life and death aren’t abstract “services” but shared realities. A “uniform” system, whether private or public, can’t substitute for that moral structure.
I agree family and community are best. However, it's physically and economically impossible in many cases these days.
How can we have a moral structure where the feasibility of a single income home is impossible today? How can we do it when family doesn't live nearby since jobs make people move all over?
#EndStageCapitalism
BTW
Let's also get big pharma to pay for Alzheimer's and dementia!
They're to blame and the beta amyloid shit is clearly a distraction from the real cause, aluminum.
Can’t take it any more. You want a “uniform health care system that takes care of everyone”, when, if you look around, you’d know that the health care you’re pushing for is awful.
You’re showing cognitive dissonance. Jimmy Dore says the same thing. He wants universal health care in one program. And then says how bad the medical system is in another.
Doctors and nurses are saying to stay away from health care if you want be healthy.
It’s like fasting. Staying away from medical treatment is free.
I believe in a basic healthcare system that treats emergencies like accidents and breaking a bone. Why should I go broke with the medical bills when I need basic care?
And no, shopping around for the best price is impossible when you are taken in an emergency situation.
As for senior care...
You have cognitive dissonance here. Perhaps you haven't faced it yet though...
Perhaps you have money to send your parents to a home if they become senile.
Perhaps you will take care of them at home. Great if you can work from home or can afford a single income.
But how exactly can families that have full time jobs and little income do this?
What is your solution?
Obviously I avoid the medical system but again
HOW DO YOU TAKE CARE OF A SENIOR WITH ISSUES WHEN YOU HAVE A FULL TIME JOB?
Government is the reason for many of the sky high costs we have today. They keep the bond market too low. It’s why the investment companies are buying single family homes.
I fell and hit my shoulder. Could barely move my arm.
Didn’t have insurance. Called a physical therapist. He thought I had strained my rotator cuff. He gave me exercises.
I avoided a medical clinic or doctor because I didn’t want an MRI. Didn’t want to have to pay for one. And was already aware the costs vary wildly. It was like $750 to $2,500.
After a couple weeks, the PT said I needed to see a doctor. He gave me a choice between a couple. One did sports teams. The other was Russian who did his Mom’s knee implant.
I chose the Russian. I show up. He asks me:
1. Did you fall down 3 flights of stairs? No.
2. Did you have shoulder problems? No.
Dr. - you didn’t tear your rotator cuff.
He takes an X-ray. He sees that I broke the ball of my shoulder where the rotator cuff muscles attach.
He tells me to not use that arm. The break areas were still intact. A separation would require surgery and screws. Buy a bunch of generic acetaminophen. 4 of them equal a prescription. He tells me how much to take. I bought them but never took them.
I go back a few weeks later. He takes an xray. It’s good. He tells me to use it. And to have my PT friend (whom he knew) to give me some exercises.
My total cost was $250.
There’s no reason these kind of treatments couldn’t be universal.
I understand it’s not the “best”. But I’m not a professional athlete.
The federal government limits the number of doctors that can graduate med school in a year. It’s to keep costs high.
Yes they do limit things but it's also through the health groups like the AMA and APA.
Back in my 20s I was with a smartie pants Ivy League doctor going through residency.
She wanted to be an ENT doctor but for that she would have had to move to the Midwest because the residencies in the Northeast were so limited.
I told her that sounds like a scam, we have a shortage of ENT and other specialists here! Why not let more people into the field here?
She said that's how the corporations that run the hospitals determine residencies and they try and funnel their friends into the field before the actual talent.
It's that skeezy!
She ended up becoming a pediatrician last I've heard.
You misunderstood. Makes sense because of your cognitive dissonance. You’re not a clear thinker.
Most aren’t. That’s why the government gets away with their lies. Everything is said vaguely enough that each individual interprets it differently. And each individual thinks the promise was not met differently.
Most medical treatment is crap. My point was to avoid it.
Why go in to get pills that don’t help. They just cause more problems themselves, which leads to more pills.
That’s our medical system. And you think government funding somehow makes that good.
You think dogshit on a cone becomes an ice cream cone if it’s paid for by the government.
No. It’s still shit. That’s my point.
A decade ago, Dad had glioblastoma (brain cancer. It stays there. It doesn’t go elsewhere. He had no other cancer).
Because of its location against a motor control center, he had stroke like conditions in that he had difficulty with one side of his body.
He had surgery twice. Hospital fed him too much sugar.
Look up Dr. Thomas Seyfried and his thoughts on cancer. I didn’t know him 10 years ago. But I knew then, what he says now. How? I searched the internet.
Oncology is the most profitable area of a hospital. It’s cancer. It’s expensive treatment is chemotherapy.
Dad did both chemo and radiation.
I know to never take it. I know a survey was done of doctors. They were asked, if they were diagnosed with cancer, would they take chemo. Over
85% said “no”.
It so shocked the person doing the survey. They obviously know something they’re not telling their patients. Because practically all patients take it.
But you think the government paying for expensive lchemotherapy that doctors say they wouldn’t take, will lead to better results for your loved ones.
Mom was too weak to help him. So, I was the one who helped him to get to the toilet. Helped pull his pants down, etc.
Spent over 2 years doing it for Dad.
Dad later developed colon cancer, which was treated surgically. He got to the point where the colon could be reconnected.
We decided not to do the reconnection because it would mean having to get him to a toilet. It was much easier to empty his colostomy bag.
When Dad died a little while later, he had cancer everywhere. I blame the chemotherapy. It destroyed his immune system.
Glioblastoma is a death sentence. He outlived expectations. But I think the chemo killed him.
I then spent 8 years helping Mom, who was much easier. But I think her medical treatments were bad. She had one doctor prescribing incredible levels of salt because she was deficient and another doctor telling her to not consume salt because of her heart failure. She was retaining fluids.
I hope you read to here. Nowhere was money the issue. It’s the treatments that were bad.
This is something I think about a lot as I and my parents get older. They're getting up there in age and while I hope me and my siblings have a good many years before we have to confront this issue, we've already decided we would never send our parents to one of these facilities if we could help it. Fortunately, only one of our grandparents had to go to one - my grandmother lived with us for as long as we could allow it, but her Alzheimers eventually progressed to the point we had to commit her to a nursing home because we simply lacked the skills, equipment, and time to properly care for her. I could write a novel on the nightmarish nature of it, and how much worse the system is when you do research into it (there's an epidemic of staff abuse against the infirm at these facilities that is grossly under-discussed and willfully ignored).
Hi Yakubian, I'm glad to hear that you and your family will keep your parents out of these facilities if you can help it. Caring for the elderly is not an easy thing, especially depending on age and health condition (both theirs and your own), and that's not to say that these facilities should never be used, but I do think it should be closer to an option of last resort than something eagerly pursued as the default choice the way many do it now. And yes, I've read many horror stories of staff abuse against the infirm which seems wildly under-discussed.
The reality is far worse and gruesome at the end of life than most can imagine.
Someone gets bounced to an ICU, drastic measures are taken to preserve life. Patient spends days to weeks on a ventilator. Medical team is unable to wean the patient from the vent, so they get a tracheostomy. Wounds the size of your fist develop on their sacrum, unable to sit up, turned every 2 hours, incontinent, unable to communicate efficiently, placed on tube feeds, colonized with MRSA, trach needs constant suctioning from mucous output, muscles atrophy, alarms going off 24/7, delirium ensues. Fluorescent lights beaming all day.
If they survive, they’re sent to a long term acute care facility where the same story continues. Only to end back in the ICU a few months later. It is bleak.
This hallucinatory placing of death out of sight (and compulsive postponement) is the advanced stage of what Zygmunt Bauman describes in some of his main works. Starts as unreasonable, develops into downright madness.
Spot on. “Hallucinatory placing of death out of sight.” That is precisely what it is. We create this simulation in which the person is alive when they are functionally gone.
I should read some of Bauman’s work. I am largely unfamiliar. Any suggestions on good places to start?
It is "Mortality, Immortality, and Other Life Strategies" that helped me realize the collective psychological play about death that our age is playing.
I set Bauman as an important author (though not very top notch), so probably it would do no harm to anyone to also know his main works, which are others (to track the essential works of an author of very wide publishing, is the kind of situation where LLMs can serve); but I don't know if those deal with mortality, human cultural strategies to face it, or offer an ontological thought the reflection on mortality can be induced from, or neither.
I’m 62 and I plan on dying naturally. If I get cancer so be it. My husband is 65 and has dementia. He wants the to the same. We stay away from the medical community. Neither one of us wants to be kept alive to slowly lose our minds and die a shell of our former selves.
Glad I was able to be a part of your post brother. One thing I want to clarify about my comment, regarding the minimum wage employees, is that almost all of them were beyond good to my father. One man in particular, believe he was Filipino, took it upon himself to make sure my dad was taken care of properly, really believe that he had a karmic debt to repay to my father. Now, the director of the facility was a straight up demon who wore a mask of kindness, anyone who can profit off the misery of those who have Alzheimer's or dementia, IMO, is a demon. The entire industry of care homes needs to be dismantled/blown to high heaven, the search for profit has turned aging into a monstrous money sucking pit of despair that degrades everyone who is involved, most importantly those who are truly in need of help and compassion.
That's a good clarification, thanks Reverend. My family friend who was severely crippled by the COVID "vaccine" booster received truly excellent home care by a middle aged Filipino man whose care and efforts really extended his life far beyond what it would have otherwise been (which, in his condition, may have been a bad thing rather than quickly passing) -- these souls are kind and giving and their efforts are very much appreciated, I agree with you. The ruthless quest for profits in care homes has really dehumanized the industry as a whole...
Man, too many thoughts after this hard hitting essay. A few, if you don't mind.
1. It cannot be overstated how much the tyrannical lockdowns exasperated the problem of loneliness and pain for the elderly (I write from a Canadian context). What the gov did to these suffering people on top of their daily misery is unforgiveable.
2. Neo, as you correctly point out with regard to secular modernity's inability to deal with the inevitability of death, I'm reminded of something my aunt and uncle told me once in conversation. "We were never meant to experience death. That is why we cannot deal with it."
Their point was that (speaking from a Christian perspective again, sorry to the wonderful pagans who read Neo), when God made humans, we were never meant to die (I know he knew we would screw it up but leaving that aside for now). We are immortal creatures, and thus death is an equation we logically cannot solve.
Modernity's denial of hope for life after death, therefore, only increases the burden of suffering that death brings.
3. In this sense, it just shows how sad, but even more bizarre it is to see modern people cope with death in any sense. For example. In Canada, we have socialized medicine. But, as it is becoming clearer and clearer each day, the system is failing. The corruption is too much, and the system has become COMPLETELY overloaded by mass immigration fleeing their countries for our healthcare, and also the boomers now needing the services en masse. As a result, many CDNs are mad at the gov because they are waiting 2-3 years for needed surgery, cancer upticks are on the rise (thanks to the vaccines), not enough beds. But still, even as the CDNs are complaining about the poor quality of health care, they are adamant in their denial of the real issue. Ok, say you get the health care you desire. What then?
You are still going to be right back in the same position you are now even if the gov Medicare DOES help feebly extend your life, say 2-3 more years.
You’re postponing the inevitable: you cannot avoid death forever.
It is a chilling thought for most. This happened to a family I know recently. The 80 year old grandmother was in desperate need of surgery (after waiting several months past the due date). The family was livid (and rightfully so, the woman paid into the system for decades while Gurveet Singh from India gets immediate service before her. Anyways).
The conflict came in though that, even if she received the surgery, she was given another two years or so to live past 80 if she got the surgery. The mind blow to me was simply the way in which everyone in the situation seemed to think the old woman was owed to live as long as possible, or that she wasn't going to die soon anyways (she was 80).
Maybe I didn't explain that well but.
4. Last point of my ramble. Your article hit me because it shows the silliness and futility of life and death itself. The billions of people that came before on this planet died in some way or the other. And, given the corruption of life (sin) and the cyclical nature of death, it just shows how meaningless so much of it all is (Ecclesiastes speaks to this powerfully). As I get older (35) I find myself often thinking about the millions upon millions of white Christian men that died in WW1 and WW2. Propagandized into believing that their deaths 'meant something' (when in reality they were pawns to die for British empire, or a mass death ritual to destroy Christian Europe). They died in the most horrific forms imaginable in rat infested mud for a better life for future generations. In some small sense that is true, they gave their children about 80 years. But now the West is completely over run with runaway debt, inflation, and Muslims/migrants that do not give two shits about western culture, values, history; their sacrifice. If the veterans saw what became of Canada, Britain, France, even America, I doubt many of them would have signed up to die. I wish they didn't.
Anyways, I guess my concluding thought is that God can always give purpose to people, and give purpose to death, to any who seek to be used by him. We are all going to die anyways. May as well go with a bang. I personally, have asked numerous times that I either go as a martyr for Christ. Or, down in battle fighting government communist tyranny. I am sure I will get my wish.
"If you knew how quickly would forget about you after your death, you will not seek in your life to please anyone but God." - John Chrysotom, 387.
"Whoever believes in me will never die" - Jesus, the Christ, John 11:26.
Thanks for this, PJ, I share much of your sentiment. The lockdowns were indeed a kind of spiritual crime: isolation disguised as care, bureaucratic cruelty performed in the name of safety, forced ventilation and untested, experimental mRNA "vaccines". Modernity’s inability to face death honestly is, as you say, not merely cultural but metaphysical - it stems from a civilizational disbelief in transcendence.
Your aunt and uncle’s line - “We were never meant to experience death” - is striking, and I think true in a deep sense. Whether one frames it in Christian or pagan terms, the human being carries within him an intuition of immortality that modern materialism cannot extinguish. The result is precisely the denial and panic we now see everywhere: a civilization that can extend life indefinitely but no longer knows why it should.
You’re right, too, that the wars of the last century were a kind of mass sacrifice for a now-failed vision of progress, and that realization produces the vertigo of meaninglessness you describe. But the task now, as I see it, is to attempt to recover a metaphysics of death that restores sacred purpose without returning to the old political idols. Whether one names that Christ, Logos, or something else, the direction is the same: toward a life and death made meaningful again through participation in the eternal.
Of my two grandpas, the first passed in a budget care facility much as you describe. The other passed in his home, surrounded by his family. Both were great dads who really did the best for their kids.
The difference? The first passed his successful equipment rental business to a son while still living. As a stoic and alpha type dude, he earned the ire of my mom and the women in the family. They didn't visit him in the care facility, it was just me and my dad.
The second kept his assets in a trust. My mom and aunt did their best to keep him happy while he was living. Lots of family visits and my mom would send my dad to take care of his place every 1-2 weeks.
While I'm happy that the 2nd grandpa was able to leave this place in the way of his choosing, the experience has certainly added to my cynicism in regards to boomers in general and women in particular.
As someone who is currently caring for two elderly parents while raising a young family, my biggest takeaway has been that the Boomers will not change and we shouldn't expect them to. They are materialists who expect quid-pro-quo and we should meet them on those terms.
We now live in a beautiful house in the country. I could afford the house but my credit sucks after years of avoiding debt. My retired father has great credit, but almost no savings and didn't have a place to live. Those were terms he understood and the arrangement is mutually beneficial.
I will also say that they have both softened being around grandchildren so much. Despite having squandered all their savings, now that they see the joy of cute little toddlers and babies every day, they're committed to socking away what they can from Social Security. Yes, the hour is late and it's a tremendously irresponsible way to do so, but it's better than nothing.
My grandparents went out almost exactly as you described. It was a horrible experience and I resolved not to let it happen again, I'm sorry you had to go through that ugliness.
Really appreciating your pivot from geopolitical analysis to personal and societal reflection. It’s always been an undercurrent of your work, but now smells like a flower coming to bloom.
Thanks for the comment, Reinhardt. Reaching the blackpill of geopolitics was a painful but necessary stage for me - to see how deep the rot went before I could meaningfully reorient. That disillusionment cleared space to focus on the metaphysical roots, since the political and cultural pathologies are only symptoms. It’s good to ground reflections in lived reality while at the same time holding that real change may only occur when the underlying metaphysics shifts...I’ll keep oscillating between those registers because the outer and inner worlds ultimately can’t be disentangled.
First, the cost of these facilities, while significant, is not as bad as it sounds. Yes, the sticker price is high. But that sticker price includes a lot of things that everyone has to pay for regardless. Housing (whether rent or taxes/maintenance). Food. Utilities. Etc. Paying the nursing home is certainly a more expensive way of paying for those things than living at home, true. But it's not as if people weren't going to be spending any of that money if they stayed in their own homes. It's not the difference between $5,000/month at a nursing home and $0. It's the difference between $5,000/month at a nursing home and $2,000-4,000/month at home. An elderly person that struggles to afford living in a nursing home was probably going to struggle to afford living on their own anyway.
Second, a lot of elderly people are going to find that living with their children simply isn't an option. The number of elderly people radically estranged from their children, or at least not willing to allow their parents to move in with them, is likely a lot higher than it would have been in previous generations. We don't have any numbers on that, but the Vibe on intergenerational relations is not great. Many elderly people will likely find that their children are not in a financial position to afford their parents moving in with them, even if they were otherwise willing to allow it. The opposite--children moving in with their parents--as suggested by another commenter, is far more likely. Many Millennials and younger generations can't afford to buy houses at all, let alone houses large enough to accommodate an extra adult or two. And, of course, some elderly people don't have children at all. Far more than in previous generations.
Third, whether it's nursing care or outright medical treatment, the U.S. has spent far, far more than was ever going to be sustainable on end-of-life care. Something like half to two-thirds of all medical expenses are spent on the last six to twelve months of life. Keeping someone on life support in the ICU is wickedly expensive, and it almost always happens in the period immediately before someone's death. Hospice is a lot cheaper than no-holds-barred treatment, but even that can cost an awful lot.
The only way of spending less money on health care is to "consume" less health care. That means opting for less aggressive treatments than are theoretically available. It means relying on older, less effective, but far cheaper treatments than having the default be the cutting edge. It means multiple patients to a room (i.e., the way Europe has always done things). It means not spending half a million dollars (or more!) on surgery that might give someone an extra six months of life. At root, it means withholding or denying care that people might otherwise want. Call it "rationing care," if you will. As long as someone other than the patient or their family is paying, there's no way of aligning those incentives.
Thanks for the thoughtful points, Ryan. You’re right that much of the cost differential between nursing homes and staying at home is somewhat illusory once you account for housing and food - though I’d still say that the institutional markup is less about care and more about rent-seeking within a captured, bureaucratic system.
On your second point, I agree completely: intergenerational estrangement will be decisive. It’s not only economic but spiritual - a symptom of the social atomization and mutual distrust produced by our broader metaphysic. I suspect we’ll increasingly see the inverse pattern you describe: adult children moving into the homes of aging parents, not out of filial duty but economic necessity. It’s a strange inversion: the family reconstituting itself not through love, but through shared precarity.
And I think you’re right about the medical side, too: the U.S. end-of-life model is unsustainable. But the problem isn’t just cost. It’s that we treat dying as a technical failure to be managed rather than a sacred transition to be accompanied. The system spends billions trying to postpone the inevitable because its metaphysics forbids transcendence. Until that changes, “rationing care” will just be a polite euphemism for managed decay.
It's not just rent-seeking, though there certainly is a lot of that. Particularly at the mid- to low-end. Anywhere that takes Medicaid, basically.
But not so much at the high end, though. The kind of places that don't really want to take Medicaid, and that put potential residents through extensive financial vetting. There, it's more the Boomers (and their parents!) deciding to spend their money on themselves rather than conserve an inheritance for their descendants. They could choose to live with their children (Presumably, anyway; the richer you are, the more likely your family is to be normal.) And even if they choose not to, or that isn't an option, they could always choose to spend less.
The price differential between a five- or ten-year stay at a very expensive community and any number of cheaper options can easily represent anywhere from $500k to several million dollars. These are assets that could have been passed on or otherwise used for the benefit of one's descendants. Instead, it goes to for-profit retirement communities and their shareholders.
A surprising number of people can "afford" that, if by "afford" you mean "Will probably not entirely run out of money before they die." There are very few people with nest eggs large enough to pay for that kind of lifestyle on passive income alone. Not really enough to be a factor worth discussing. Anyway, those people are rich enough that they can bloody well fend for themselves. But there are an awful lot of Boomers (and their surviving parents) with a high-six to low-seven figure net worth. Boomers who first bought houses in the 1970s or early 1980s and rode the last four decades of asset inflation all the way to the top. Many of them are going to choose to spend that money on marginally-beneficial medical treatment and/or luxurious retirement amenities instead of providing for their children.
And yes, much of this is because we've stopped believing in the invisible world. You and I conceive of that world differently, but not in a way that makes a difference here.
" It’s a strange inversion: the family reconstituting itself not through love, but through shared precarity."
Well, who would think that in the "developing" world families are held together by love. That's in our ideals. Shared precariousness is what works here on Earth, when and if it does.
So this is slightly off topic but just something I noticed related to the apparent goal of intercepting the boomer wealth transfer to their descendants. I haven't bothered to switch my browser's home page off of the default windows msn site, so I keep getting this feed of "news" stories which are virtually all the same type of reddit style "and then everyone clapped" parables about elderly people cutting their spouse/children/grandchildren out of their retirement account or will over some slight.
It's always written in a "Dear Editor" style and the editor response will always be a "yeah you go girl, moving your husband's IRA into a secret account and leaving him to die in a cardboard box on the sidewalk so you can spend the money on African rent boys is the best thing you can do for yourself!" Or alternately, "Yeah you go girl, your son making fun of your porcelain duck collection is absolutely grounds for cutting him out of your will, children should respect their elders!" It's obviously propaganda towards getting the money out of the Boomers and away from their families since not a single article mentions the value of building generational wealth, but it's shockingly coordinated. Either that or cruise lines and casinos are paying Microsoft to publish their fake stories to encourage elderly reckless spending and drum up business.
Thank you for this excellent (and sobering) article. I am taking care of my widowed frail 84 year old mother in our family home. My younger sister moved away several years ago, mostly I suspect, to escape having to help. But she managed to talk my mom into sending her 80% of my parent's money before I finally realized (to my horror) to what was going on. I was very trusting before and never dreamed she was capable of such evil. But her and her husband don't like working. Talk about the very bitterest of lessons. Not only does my sister never help but she stole funds we will probably need for my mom's care. I am now in charge of the now limited funds remaining and I am hoping we can keep the family home and not lose it to Medicaid. I had a handicapped older brother who I thought I would be caring for also but sadly, he passed away over 4 years ago. I never expected or planned on inheriting anything because I always thought my brother would need anything left after my parents. I am lucky that my husband & I have lived frugally and worked all these years - we are okay. Enough that I was able to leave my job a year ago as my mom is requiring more care. I am sad though that so many extended family members never call or visit. I even contact them and let them know how great it would be for her to have visits once in a while. I know people are busy but surely they could come once every 6 months? I pray I can keep my mom in her own house as I know how awful most care homes are.
Thank you for sharing that, Jill. I can only imagine how heavy that situation must feel, especially with the added betrayal and isolation layered onto the basic hardship of caregiving. There’s a quiet heroism in what you’re doing, even if few people recognize it. The decision to keep your mother in her home, despite all the obstacles, restores something sacred that our society has largely forgotten: the duty of care as an act of love and remembrance.
What you describe - the disappearance of family solidarity, the silence of relatives, the casual cruelty of those who should know better - is a symptom of a deeper civilizational illness. But the fact that you continue to care, even after all that, is what keeps the human order intact amid that decay. I hope you’re able to find small moments of peace and meaning in the midst of it.
You are so kind and thoughtful. Thank you so much for your comment. You are right that there is a deep illness in our culture here in US and other places. We need to support and care for all members of society- the elites are busy using the time tested "divide & conquer" method that has indeed served them very well. We must resist.
Much of the US healthcare system is like this, not just elder care systems. Reminds me of a scene in some Stephen King novel where living dogs were hung up and somehow used as handy-dandy batteries.
You can imagine the distress of the medicos, pharmaceutical and health insurance companies are undergoing now, given Trump's proposed cut-off of illegal immigrants from tax-payer funded health care: there goes a sizeable portion of the paypig supply they've come to depend on.
Nice essay, but slightly depressing in terms of where we are as a civilization, although I think you're pretty much correct. I think you're right about the diagnosis, culturally and spiritually, we avoid the subject of death, instead of integrating it into a cycle of existence (life + death).
None of the pensioners (but also middle age people like me) here in Italy have any awareness of the completely unsustainable welfare policies of the Italian state. They're all in la-la land (I kid you not, people in Italy repeat the phrase "acquired rights", as if previous generous benefits they're now receiving, created with wrong math, are justified and can't be taken away). Anyway I mention this because of what you wrote about Rome: people here are stuck in recency bias, and my gut feeling is when the sovereign debts crisis hits, the vast majority will follow what they're told as their pensions will be used as the carrot. To be honest it's depressing, but this materialist addiction trumps morality and truth and liberty.
Death is a thorny issue. Recently someone sent me a link to an NGO here in Italy with volunteers who visit terminally ill in the final part of their lives. I'm guessing this includes people who have been abandoned by their families. For over a year I've been volunteering as a first responder and I can definitely attest to regularly seeing older people grasping at life in pitiful conditions (ex. Bedridden, 24hr care, etc). When I commented on your note it was soon after seeing two elderly people in my building who had recently passed. In one case the apartment was sold within a week and in the second I regularly visit the widow and he tell me stuff I feel embarrassed to know (everyone wants his deceased wife's savings). I was shocked about the apartment being sold so quickly, but got told it's actually quite normal. Everyone I've met on ambulance duty is unanimous in their opinion that when the time comes they want to find a way to have an accident. My only issue here is it needs to be spiritually aligned (the Eskimo way sounds interesting).
My dad passed away from illness and I was with him. I look back at the six months of helping him battle cancer as maybe one of the most significant things I've done in my life.
Also worth mentioning are the conspiracy theories surrounding Covid and the vaccines on the subject of trimming the elderly population, which given the subject of your essay, wouldn't surprise me if there were something there.
Thanks for the comment, Stefano, and for sharing those experiences. What you describe captures something I still find uncanny no matter how often I see it: how seamlessly most people drift along with the current without ever stopping to ask what’s really happening or why. The “NPC” meme became popular as a kind of online joke, but it points to something deeply metaphysical - a collective trance, a surrender of interiority.
It’s astonishing how easily people accept obviously unsustainable systems, or the hollow rituals of death-denial, as if they were laws of nature. Even when one narrative cracks they simply adjust to the new absurdity. That reflexive compliance, the refusal to look into the abyss, is one of the great spiritual pathologies of our age, or perhaps of human nature in general.
Caring for your father and volunteering as a first responder are counterexamples, forcing one back into contact with the real where the abstractions and collective scripts fall away. What you’re doing is a kind of quiet metaphysical rebellion, remembering what life and death mean while most others sleepwalk through the simulation.
The only thing astonishing me about human conformism (and suppression of own critical abilities, and even basic awareness of reality, whenever that would imperil the conforming or sow dissonance in their mind) is that there are people among who isn't like the rest who are astonished.
Your comment on NPCs reminds me of my first responder colleagues. The other day I was thinking about some good advice I was given when I was going to school several decades ago, about the purpose of education (learn how to think). I'm sure we agree that most school and university education today as its presently structured is useless. But just as your illuminating notes and essays on a wide variety of topics highlight, this doesn't mean there aren't things worth learning from those who previously have expanded our collective knowledge, but what's missing, as you (rightly) point out, is the interior journey, the struggle of becoming, the metaphysical realm, of grappling with the material (and each of us in our own way) and making it real. And perhaps like all muscles, if left unused, it withers to a point a person is no longer aware of its existence.
Perhaps this is the condition of an NPC, reflexively unawares, unable to imagine. Some of my colleagues leave me wondering if they've ever read a book outside of school. I'm often at loggerheads with them and over the years I've come to appreciate I get along better with people who have depth of character. I cannot rationally explain it and it's across the sexes (once a university professor remarked to me: quality recognizes quality; but it's like why person x and not y, and IQ or intelligence is only a part of the story, perhaps not even that important beyond a certain level). It's really scary to see the meme of "shit in, shit out" in action, especially the younger generations (z and y). The one positive is quite a few in this milieu engage in surface level religious ceremonies, so, in some respects they go through the motions of interaction with deeper questions. And there are a few people with character and depth, so I'm not saying it's everyone,, etc.
A friend in assisted living in Alaska told me, he brings in $2800 a month with soc sec, pension etc. They take $2600. Most of the people in the facility bring in about $1000. The facility bills medicaid @$16,000. If you have the money they will take $16,000, even though medicaid might only return $12,000.
This is one of the primary reasons I sold my house in the city and moved back into the house I grew up in, so my elderly folks can stay out of facilities that will bleed the family to death.
That’s the right move both morally and economically. By moving back in, you’re not only giving your parents better care than any institution would, you’re also keeping the family’s remaining wealth from being siphoned off by the rent-seekers who profit from slow death. In a sane society, this would be the norm: the family operating as a single economic and moral organism, pooling care and resources across generations. But that kind of thinking requires seeing one’s parents not as burdens to be managed but as part of the same continuum of being - the same lineage - whose survival depends on solidarity rather than outsourcing.
Well said. My parents are much healthier than they would be if I had not been here the last three years. So am I.
you are a very good son.
My mother died in January of this year in the United States. Age 93. My brother had lived with her for many years, also long before her very slow decline into dementia. As a family we were very fortunate he was able to provide virtually all her care, with an absolute minimum of remote assistance from whatever government programs etc. What that took out of him is a story for another day.
There's no teacher like personal experience. I deduced that had my mother not been fed a daily pile of medications for long years prior to her death, she very likely would have died, say, 5 to 7 years earlier. That I would have wished for her and for her loved ones. Someone please tell me what is desirable about artificially prolonging life to the point we are reduced to helpless husks without minds, without memories, without dignity.
Yes, no one can ever say when we will pass from this world, so just call it my observation. She had survived breast cancer, advancing heart disease, surgigal stent implants, diminished and ultimately no mobility, and more. I suppose the usual catalogue of things people suffer if they live that long.
The final years of my mother's life left me absolutely convinced that the business model of today's medical-industrial complex is to keep us as diseased as possible for as long as possible. Starting at younger and younger ages. Lifetimes of illness. Obvious aim being to maximize revenues -- pharma, surgeries, constant MD visits, assisted living, nursing homes, adult diapers, wheelchairs, aids, devices and and and. A dead patient is the end of a revenue source, but a beginning for the funeral homes and cemeteries -- an equally despicable sector.
This is painfully lucid, Prodigal, thank you for sharing. I think your experience cuts to the heart of the matter, where your mother’s story highlights that the system’s true aim is suspended dying, i.e. an indefinite monetization of decay. To “keep us as diseased as possible for as long as possible” is the logical end of a worldview that denies transcendence and treats life as a biochemical asset to be managed. Goldman Sachs said this explicitly: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/11/goldman-asks-is-curing-patients-a-sustainable-business-model.html?msockid=235e4e6b8bda69e815c85db68a346874
There’s no dignity in being kept alive beyond the reach of meaning. The older religious world at least recognized death as a threshold, not a technical error. What we have now is an economy that fears death but worships decomposition.
Thank you for the consistently powerful content. My pleasure to be back here. Wow -- that link. Talk about a revelation of the method. All out in the open in these times. Yeah, I defy any thinking person to ask themselves cui bono and tell me these macabre warehouses are for the common good. And we ain't gonna return to a time of decency, of a capacity for shame. This is where we are. Growing impatient waiting for the asteroid :)
Check out an essay on how doctors die. Doctors tend to look at what they do to patients in their final days and say no way for themselves. Many have no resuscitate instructions on them
https://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/how-doctors-die/
You don't need a uniform society to have a uniform health care system that takes care of everyone.
It's not just Sweden or Norway... France and Spain have decent nursing homes covered by basic care.
Only in the USA and the third world, one goes broke for basic care- even before old age!
It would be cheaper in the USA to have the elderly person commit a crime and get incarcerated. At least prisons pay their workers better than these bullshit for profit senior centers that charge as much, if not more per person than prisons do.
The irony is that nationalized systems, like Canada’s or parts of Europe’s, have their own pathologies, different in form but similar in spirit. Once the care of the elderly becomes fully bureaucratized, the same dynamic of depersonalization sets in. It’s not that privatization alone is the problem; it’s that both models - corporate and state - treat the human being as an administrative object. The only real antidote is re-rooting care within the family and local community, where life and death aren’t abstract “services” but shared realities. A “uniform” system, whether private or public, can’t substitute for that moral structure.
I agree family and community are best. However, it's physically and economically impossible in many cases these days.
How can we have a moral structure where the feasibility of a single income home is impossible today? How can we do it when family doesn't live nearby since jobs make people move all over?
#EndStageCapitalism
BTW
Let's also get big pharma to pay for Alzheimer's and dementia!
They're to blame and the beta amyloid shit is clearly a distraction from the real cause, aluminum.
https://drchristopherexley.substack.com/p/metals-in-brain-tissue-in-alzheimers
Can’t take it any more. You want a “uniform health care system that takes care of everyone”, when, if you look around, you’d know that the health care you’re pushing for is awful.
You’re showing cognitive dissonance. Jimmy Dore says the same thing. He wants universal health care in one program. And then says how bad the medical system is in another.
Doctors and nurses are saying to stay away from health care if you want be healthy.
It’s like fasting. Staying away from medical treatment is free.
I believe in a basic healthcare system that treats emergencies like accidents and breaking a bone. Why should I go broke with the medical bills when I need basic care?
And no, shopping around for the best price is impossible when you are taken in an emergency situation.
As for senior care...
You have cognitive dissonance here. Perhaps you haven't faced it yet though...
Perhaps you have money to send your parents to a home if they become senile.
Perhaps you will take care of them at home. Great if you can work from home or can afford a single income.
But how exactly can families that have full time jobs and little income do this?
What is your solution?
Obviously I avoid the medical system but again
HOW DO YOU TAKE CARE OF A SENIOR WITH ISSUES WHEN YOU HAVE A FULL TIME JOB?
Government is the reason for many of the sky high costs we have today. They keep the bond market too low. It’s why the investment companies are buying single family homes.
I fell and hit my shoulder. Could barely move my arm.
Didn’t have insurance. Called a physical therapist. He thought I had strained my rotator cuff. He gave me exercises.
I avoided a medical clinic or doctor because I didn’t want an MRI. Didn’t want to have to pay for one. And was already aware the costs vary wildly. It was like $750 to $2,500.
After a couple weeks, the PT said I needed to see a doctor. He gave me a choice between a couple. One did sports teams. The other was Russian who did his Mom’s knee implant.
I chose the Russian. I show up. He asks me:
1. Did you fall down 3 flights of stairs? No.
2. Did you have shoulder problems? No.
Dr. - you didn’t tear your rotator cuff.
He takes an X-ray. He sees that I broke the ball of my shoulder where the rotator cuff muscles attach.
He tells me to not use that arm. The break areas were still intact. A separation would require surgery and screws. Buy a bunch of generic acetaminophen. 4 of them equal a prescription. He tells me how much to take. I bought them but never took them.
I go back a few weeks later. He takes an xray. It’s good. He tells me to use it. And to have my PT friend (whom he knew) to give me some exercises.
My total cost was $250.
There’s no reason these kind of treatments couldn’t be universal.
I understand it’s not the “best”. But I’m not a professional athlete.
The federal government limits the number of doctors that can graduate med school in a year. It’s to keep costs high.
Yes they do limit things but it's also through the health groups like the AMA and APA.
Back in my 20s I was with a smartie pants Ivy League doctor going through residency.
She wanted to be an ENT doctor but for that she would have had to move to the Midwest because the residencies in the Northeast were so limited.
I told her that sounds like a scam, we have a shortage of ENT and other specialists here! Why not let more people into the field here?
She said that's how the corporations that run the hospitals determine residencies and they try and funnel their friends into the field before the actual talent.
It's that skeezy!
She ended up becoming a pediatrician last I've heard.
You misunderstood. Makes sense because of your cognitive dissonance. You’re not a clear thinker.
Most aren’t. That’s why the government gets away with their lies. Everything is said vaguely enough that each individual interprets it differently. And each individual thinks the promise was not met differently.
Most medical treatment is crap. My point was to avoid it.
Why go in to get pills that don’t help. They just cause more problems themselves, which leads to more pills.
That’s our medical system. And you think government funding somehow makes that good.
You think dogshit on a cone becomes an ice cream cone if it’s paid for by the government.
No. It’s still shit. That’s my point.
A decade ago, Dad had glioblastoma (brain cancer. It stays there. It doesn’t go elsewhere. He had no other cancer).
Because of its location against a motor control center, he had stroke like conditions in that he had difficulty with one side of his body.
He had surgery twice. Hospital fed him too much sugar.
Look up Dr. Thomas Seyfried and his thoughts on cancer. I didn’t know him 10 years ago. But I knew then, what he says now. How? I searched the internet.
Oncology is the most profitable area of a hospital. It’s cancer. It’s expensive treatment is chemotherapy.
Dad did both chemo and radiation.
I know to never take it. I know a survey was done of doctors. They were asked, if they were diagnosed with cancer, would they take chemo. Over
85% said “no”.
It so shocked the person doing the survey. They obviously know something they’re not telling their patients. Because practically all patients take it.
But you think the government paying for expensive lchemotherapy that doctors say they wouldn’t take, will lead to better results for your loved ones.
Mom was too weak to help him. So, I was the one who helped him to get to the toilet. Helped pull his pants down, etc.
Spent over 2 years doing it for Dad.
Dad later developed colon cancer, which was treated surgically. He got to the point where the colon could be reconnected.
We decided not to do the reconnection because it would mean having to get him to a toilet. It was much easier to empty his colostomy bag.
When Dad died a little while later, he had cancer everywhere. I blame the chemotherapy. It destroyed his immune system.
Glioblastoma is a death sentence. He outlived expectations. But I think the chemo killed him.
I then spent 8 years helping Mom, who was much easier. But I think her medical treatments were bad. She had one doctor prescribing incredible levels of salt because she was deficient and another doctor telling her to not consume salt because of her heart failure. She was retaining fluids.
I hope you read to here. Nowhere was money the issue. It’s the treatments that were bad.
Government funding doesn’t change the treatments.
Universal Medicine is a scam.
This is something I think about a lot as I and my parents get older. They're getting up there in age and while I hope me and my siblings have a good many years before we have to confront this issue, we've already decided we would never send our parents to one of these facilities if we could help it. Fortunately, only one of our grandparents had to go to one - my grandmother lived with us for as long as we could allow it, but her Alzheimers eventually progressed to the point we had to commit her to a nursing home because we simply lacked the skills, equipment, and time to properly care for her. I could write a novel on the nightmarish nature of it, and how much worse the system is when you do research into it (there's an epidemic of staff abuse against the infirm at these facilities that is grossly under-discussed and willfully ignored).
Hi Yakubian, I'm glad to hear that you and your family will keep your parents out of these facilities if you can help it. Caring for the elderly is not an easy thing, especially depending on age and health condition (both theirs and your own), and that's not to say that these facilities should never be used, but I do think it should be closer to an option of last resort than something eagerly pursued as the default choice the way many do it now. And yes, I've read many horror stories of staff abuse against the infirm which seems wildly under-discussed.
One has to keep in mind "staff's" average IQ...
The reality is far worse and gruesome at the end of life than most can imagine.
Someone gets bounced to an ICU, drastic measures are taken to preserve life. Patient spends days to weeks on a ventilator. Medical team is unable to wean the patient from the vent, so they get a tracheostomy. Wounds the size of your fist develop on their sacrum, unable to sit up, turned every 2 hours, incontinent, unable to communicate efficiently, placed on tube feeds, colonized with MRSA, trach needs constant suctioning from mucous output, muscles atrophy, alarms going off 24/7, delirium ensues. Fluorescent lights beaming all day.
If they survive, they’re sent to a long term acute care facility where the same story continues. Only to end back in the ICU a few months later. It is bleak.
This hallucinatory placing of death out of sight (and compulsive postponement) is the advanced stage of what Zygmunt Bauman describes in some of his main works. Starts as unreasonable, develops into downright madness.
Spot on. “Hallucinatory placing of death out of sight.” That is precisely what it is. We create this simulation in which the person is alive when they are functionally gone.
I should read some of Bauman’s work. I am largely unfamiliar. Any suggestions on good places to start?
It is "Mortality, Immortality, and Other Life Strategies" that helped me realize the collective psychological play about death that our age is playing.
I set Bauman as an important author (though not very top notch), so probably it would do no harm to anyone to also know his main works, which are others (to track the essential works of an author of very wide publishing, is the kind of situation where LLMs can serve); but I don't know if those deal with mortality, human cultural strategies to face it, or offer an ontological thought the reflection on mortality can be induced from, or neither.
I’m 62 and I plan on dying naturally. If I get cancer so be it. My husband is 65 and has dementia. He wants the to the same. We stay away from the medical community. Neither one of us wants to be kept alive to slowly lose our minds and die a shell of our former selves.
Pretty much the same here at 77+. If it should be necessary, I WILL help things along.
How do you plan to do that? Wanting to do same.
Glad I was able to be a part of your post brother. One thing I want to clarify about my comment, regarding the minimum wage employees, is that almost all of them were beyond good to my father. One man in particular, believe he was Filipino, took it upon himself to make sure my dad was taken care of properly, really believe that he had a karmic debt to repay to my father. Now, the director of the facility was a straight up demon who wore a mask of kindness, anyone who can profit off the misery of those who have Alzheimer's or dementia, IMO, is a demon. The entire industry of care homes needs to be dismantled/blown to high heaven, the search for profit has turned aging into a monstrous money sucking pit of despair that degrades everyone who is involved, most importantly those who are truly in need of help and compassion.
That's a good clarification, thanks Reverend. My family friend who was severely crippled by the COVID "vaccine" booster received truly excellent home care by a middle aged Filipino man whose care and efforts really extended his life far beyond what it would have otherwise been (which, in his condition, may have been a bad thing rather than quickly passing) -- these souls are kind and giving and their efforts are very much appreciated, I agree with you. The ruthless quest for profits in care homes has really dehumanized the industry as a whole...
Man, too many thoughts after this hard hitting essay. A few, if you don't mind.
1. It cannot be overstated how much the tyrannical lockdowns exasperated the problem of loneliness and pain for the elderly (I write from a Canadian context). What the gov did to these suffering people on top of their daily misery is unforgiveable.
2. Neo, as you correctly point out with regard to secular modernity's inability to deal with the inevitability of death, I'm reminded of something my aunt and uncle told me once in conversation. "We were never meant to experience death. That is why we cannot deal with it."
Their point was that (speaking from a Christian perspective again, sorry to the wonderful pagans who read Neo), when God made humans, we were never meant to die (I know he knew we would screw it up but leaving that aside for now). We are immortal creatures, and thus death is an equation we logically cannot solve.
Modernity's denial of hope for life after death, therefore, only increases the burden of suffering that death brings.
3. In this sense, it just shows how sad, but even more bizarre it is to see modern people cope with death in any sense. For example. In Canada, we have socialized medicine. But, as it is becoming clearer and clearer each day, the system is failing. The corruption is too much, and the system has become COMPLETELY overloaded by mass immigration fleeing their countries for our healthcare, and also the boomers now needing the services en masse. As a result, many CDNs are mad at the gov because they are waiting 2-3 years for needed surgery, cancer upticks are on the rise (thanks to the vaccines), not enough beds. But still, even as the CDNs are complaining about the poor quality of health care, they are adamant in their denial of the real issue. Ok, say you get the health care you desire. What then?
You are still going to be right back in the same position you are now even if the gov Medicare DOES help feebly extend your life, say 2-3 more years.
You’re postponing the inevitable: you cannot avoid death forever.
It is a chilling thought for most. This happened to a family I know recently. The 80 year old grandmother was in desperate need of surgery (after waiting several months past the due date). The family was livid (and rightfully so, the woman paid into the system for decades while Gurveet Singh from India gets immediate service before her. Anyways).
The conflict came in though that, even if she received the surgery, she was given another two years or so to live past 80 if she got the surgery. The mind blow to me was simply the way in which everyone in the situation seemed to think the old woman was owed to live as long as possible, or that she wasn't going to die soon anyways (she was 80).
Maybe I didn't explain that well but.
4. Last point of my ramble. Your article hit me because it shows the silliness and futility of life and death itself. The billions of people that came before on this planet died in some way or the other. And, given the corruption of life (sin) and the cyclical nature of death, it just shows how meaningless so much of it all is (Ecclesiastes speaks to this powerfully). As I get older (35) I find myself often thinking about the millions upon millions of white Christian men that died in WW1 and WW2. Propagandized into believing that their deaths 'meant something' (when in reality they were pawns to die for British empire, or a mass death ritual to destroy Christian Europe). They died in the most horrific forms imaginable in rat infested mud for a better life for future generations. In some small sense that is true, they gave their children about 80 years. But now the West is completely over run with runaway debt, inflation, and Muslims/migrants that do not give two shits about western culture, values, history; their sacrifice. If the veterans saw what became of Canada, Britain, France, even America, I doubt many of them would have signed up to die. I wish they didn't.
Anyways, I guess my concluding thought is that God can always give purpose to people, and give purpose to death, to any who seek to be used by him. We are all going to die anyways. May as well go with a bang. I personally, have asked numerous times that I either go as a martyr for Christ. Or, down in battle fighting government communist tyranny. I am sure I will get my wish.
"If you knew how quickly would forget about you after your death, you will not seek in your life to please anyone but God." - John Chrysotom, 387.
"Whoever believes in me will never die" - Jesus, the Christ, John 11:26.
Thanks for this, PJ, I share much of your sentiment. The lockdowns were indeed a kind of spiritual crime: isolation disguised as care, bureaucratic cruelty performed in the name of safety, forced ventilation and untested, experimental mRNA "vaccines". Modernity’s inability to face death honestly is, as you say, not merely cultural but metaphysical - it stems from a civilizational disbelief in transcendence.
Your aunt and uncle’s line - “We were never meant to experience death” - is striking, and I think true in a deep sense. Whether one frames it in Christian or pagan terms, the human being carries within him an intuition of immortality that modern materialism cannot extinguish. The result is precisely the denial and panic we now see everywhere: a civilization that can extend life indefinitely but no longer knows why it should.
You’re right, too, that the wars of the last century were a kind of mass sacrifice for a now-failed vision of progress, and that realization produces the vertigo of meaninglessness you describe. But the task now, as I see it, is to attempt to recover a metaphysics of death that restores sacred purpose without returning to the old political idols. Whether one names that Christ, Logos, or something else, the direction is the same: toward a life and death made meaningful again through participation in the eternal.
Damn, Neo. You word everything so eloquently. And perfectly. Much, much appreciated. God bless you man, take care for now (until the next article!)
"speaking from a Christian perspective again, sorry to the wonderful pagans who read Neo"
Lol.
Why apologize? There’s room for every thing.
Of my two grandpas, the first passed in a budget care facility much as you describe. The other passed in his home, surrounded by his family. Both were great dads who really did the best for their kids.
The difference? The first passed his successful equipment rental business to a son while still living. As a stoic and alpha type dude, he earned the ire of my mom and the women in the family. They didn't visit him in the care facility, it was just me and my dad.
The second kept his assets in a trust. My mom and aunt did their best to keep him happy while he was living. Lots of family visits and my mom would send my dad to take care of his place every 1-2 weeks.
While I'm happy that the 2nd grandpa was able to leave this place in the way of his choosing, the experience has certainly added to my cynicism in regards to boomers in general and women in particular.
As someone who is currently caring for two elderly parents while raising a young family, my biggest takeaway has been that the Boomers will not change and we shouldn't expect them to. They are materialists who expect quid-pro-quo and we should meet them on those terms.
We now live in a beautiful house in the country. I could afford the house but my credit sucks after years of avoiding debt. My retired father has great credit, but almost no savings and didn't have a place to live. Those were terms he understood and the arrangement is mutually beneficial.
I will also say that they have both softened being around grandchildren so much. Despite having squandered all their savings, now that they see the joy of cute little toddlers and babies every day, they're committed to socking away what they can from Social Security. Yes, the hour is late and it's a tremendously irresponsible way to do so, but it's better than nothing.
My grandparents went out almost exactly as you described. It was a horrible experience and I resolved not to let it happen again, I'm sorry you had to go through that ugliness.
Really appreciating your pivot from geopolitical analysis to personal and societal reflection. It’s always been an undercurrent of your work, but now smells like a flower coming to bloom.
Thanks for the comment, Reinhardt. Reaching the blackpill of geopolitics was a painful but necessary stage for me - to see how deep the rot went before I could meaningfully reorient. That disillusionment cleared space to focus on the metaphysical roots, since the political and cultural pathologies are only symptoms. It’s good to ground reflections in lived reality while at the same time holding that real change may only occur when the underlying metaphysics shifts...I’ll keep oscillating between those registers because the outer and inner worlds ultimately can’t be disentangled.
Couple of thoughts.
First, the cost of these facilities, while significant, is not as bad as it sounds. Yes, the sticker price is high. But that sticker price includes a lot of things that everyone has to pay for regardless. Housing (whether rent or taxes/maintenance). Food. Utilities. Etc. Paying the nursing home is certainly a more expensive way of paying for those things than living at home, true. But it's not as if people weren't going to be spending any of that money if they stayed in their own homes. It's not the difference between $5,000/month at a nursing home and $0. It's the difference between $5,000/month at a nursing home and $2,000-4,000/month at home. An elderly person that struggles to afford living in a nursing home was probably going to struggle to afford living on their own anyway.
Second, a lot of elderly people are going to find that living with their children simply isn't an option. The number of elderly people radically estranged from their children, or at least not willing to allow their parents to move in with them, is likely a lot higher than it would have been in previous generations. We don't have any numbers on that, but the Vibe on intergenerational relations is not great. Many elderly people will likely find that their children are not in a financial position to afford their parents moving in with them, even if they were otherwise willing to allow it. The opposite--children moving in with their parents--as suggested by another commenter, is far more likely. Many Millennials and younger generations can't afford to buy houses at all, let alone houses large enough to accommodate an extra adult or two. And, of course, some elderly people don't have children at all. Far more than in previous generations.
Third, whether it's nursing care or outright medical treatment, the U.S. has spent far, far more than was ever going to be sustainable on end-of-life care. Something like half to two-thirds of all medical expenses are spent on the last six to twelve months of life. Keeping someone on life support in the ICU is wickedly expensive, and it almost always happens in the period immediately before someone's death. Hospice is a lot cheaper than no-holds-barred treatment, but even that can cost an awful lot.
The only way of spending less money on health care is to "consume" less health care. That means opting for less aggressive treatments than are theoretically available. It means relying on older, less effective, but far cheaper treatments than having the default be the cutting edge. It means multiple patients to a room (i.e., the way Europe has always done things). It means not spending half a million dollars (or more!) on surgery that might give someone an extra six months of life. At root, it means withholding or denying care that people might otherwise want. Call it "rationing care," if you will. As long as someone other than the patient or their family is paying, there's no way of aligning those incentives.
Thanks for the thoughtful points, Ryan. You’re right that much of the cost differential between nursing homes and staying at home is somewhat illusory once you account for housing and food - though I’d still say that the institutional markup is less about care and more about rent-seeking within a captured, bureaucratic system.
On your second point, I agree completely: intergenerational estrangement will be decisive. It’s not only economic but spiritual - a symptom of the social atomization and mutual distrust produced by our broader metaphysic. I suspect we’ll increasingly see the inverse pattern you describe: adult children moving into the homes of aging parents, not out of filial duty but economic necessity. It’s a strange inversion: the family reconstituting itself not through love, but through shared precarity.
And I think you’re right about the medical side, too: the U.S. end-of-life model is unsustainable. But the problem isn’t just cost. It’s that we treat dying as a technical failure to be managed rather than a sacred transition to be accompanied. The system spends billions trying to postpone the inevitable because its metaphysics forbids transcendence. Until that changes, “rationing care” will just be a polite euphemism for managed decay.
It's not just rent-seeking, though there certainly is a lot of that. Particularly at the mid- to low-end. Anywhere that takes Medicaid, basically.
But not so much at the high end, though. The kind of places that don't really want to take Medicaid, and that put potential residents through extensive financial vetting. There, it's more the Boomers (and their parents!) deciding to spend their money on themselves rather than conserve an inheritance for their descendants. They could choose to live with their children (Presumably, anyway; the richer you are, the more likely your family is to be normal.) And even if they choose not to, or that isn't an option, they could always choose to spend less.
The price differential between a five- or ten-year stay at a very expensive community and any number of cheaper options can easily represent anywhere from $500k to several million dollars. These are assets that could have been passed on or otherwise used for the benefit of one's descendants. Instead, it goes to for-profit retirement communities and their shareholders.
A surprising number of people can "afford" that, if by "afford" you mean "Will probably not entirely run out of money before they die." There are very few people with nest eggs large enough to pay for that kind of lifestyle on passive income alone. Not really enough to be a factor worth discussing. Anyway, those people are rich enough that they can bloody well fend for themselves. But there are an awful lot of Boomers (and their surviving parents) with a high-six to low-seven figure net worth. Boomers who first bought houses in the 1970s or early 1980s and rode the last four decades of asset inflation all the way to the top. Many of them are going to choose to spend that money on marginally-beneficial medical treatment and/or luxurious retirement amenities instead of providing for their children.
And yes, much of this is because we've stopped believing in the invisible world. You and I conceive of that world differently, but not in a way that makes a difference here.
" It’s a strange inversion: the family reconstituting itself not through love, but through shared precarity."
Well, who would think that in the "developing" world families are held together by love. That's in our ideals. Shared precariousness is what works here on Earth, when and if it does.
If this is what is waiting for us than Valhalla seems like a better option.
So this is slightly off topic but just something I noticed related to the apparent goal of intercepting the boomer wealth transfer to their descendants. I haven't bothered to switch my browser's home page off of the default windows msn site, so I keep getting this feed of "news" stories which are virtually all the same type of reddit style "and then everyone clapped" parables about elderly people cutting their spouse/children/grandchildren out of their retirement account or will over some slight.
It's always written in a "Dear Editor" style and the editor response will always be a "yeah you go girl, moving your husband's IRA into a secret account and leaving him to die in a cardboard box on the sidewalk so you can spend the money on African rent boys is the best thing you can do for yourself!" Or alternately, "Yeah you go girl, your son making fun of your porcelain duck collection is absolutely grounds for cutting him out of your will, children should respect their elders!" It's obviously propaganda towards getting the money out of the Boomers and away from their families since not a single article mentions the value of building generational wealth, but it's shockingly coordinated. Either that or cruise lines and casinos are paying Microsoft to publish their fake stories to encourage elderly reckless spending and drum up business.
Thank you for this excellent (and sobering) article. I am taking care of my widowed frail 84 year old mother in our family home. My younger sister moved away several years ago, mostly I suspect, to escape having to help. But she managed to talk my mom into sending her 80% of my parent's money before I finally realized (to my horror) to what was going on. I was very trusting before and never dreamed she was capable of such evil. But her and her husband don't like working. Talk about the very bitterest of lessons. Not only does my sister never help but she stole funds we will probably need for my mom's care. I am now in charge of the now limited funds remaining and I am hoping we can keep the family home and not lose it to Medicaid. I had a handicapped older brother who I thought I would be caring for also but sadly, he passed away over 4 years ago. I never expected or planned on inheriting anything because I always thought my brother would need anything left after my parents. I am lucky that my husband & I have lived frugally and worked all these years - we are okay. Enough that I was able to leave my job a year ago as my mom is requiring more care. I am sad though that so many extended family members never call or visit. I even contact them and let them know how great it would be for her to have visits once in a while. I know people are busy but surely they could come once every 6 months? I pray I can keep my mom in her own house as I know how awful most care homes are.
Thank you for sharing that, Jill. I can only imagine how heavy that situation must feel, especially with the added betrayal and isolation layered onto the basic hardship of caregiving. There’s a quiet heroism in what you’re doing, even if few people recognize it. The decision to keep your mother in her home, despite all the obstacles, restores something sacred that our society has largely forgotten: the duty of care as an act of love and remembrance.
What you describe - the disappearance of family solidarity, the silence of relatives, the casual cruelty of those who should know better - is a symptom of a deeper civilizational illness. But the fact that you continue to care, even after all that, is what keeps the human order intact amid that decay. I hope you’re able to find small moments of peace and meaning in the midst of it.
You are so kind and thoughtful. Thank you so much for your comment. You are right that there is a deep illness in our culture here in US and other places. We need to support and care for all members of society- the elites are busy using the time tested "divide & conquer" method that has indeed served them very well. We must resist.
I'm glad you wrote about this. I've worked in such facilities in the past. Very creepy how administration treated their patients more like paypigs.
Much of the US healthcare system is like this, not just elder care systems. Reminds me of a scene in some Stephen King novel where living dogs were hung up and somehow used as handy-dandy batteries.
You can imagine the distress of the medicos, pharmaceutical and health insurance companies are undergoing now, given Trump's proposed cut-off of illegal immigrants from tax-payer funded health care: there goes a sizeable portion of the paypig supply they've come to depend on.
Nice essay, but slightly depressing in terms of where we are as a civilization, although I think you're pretty much correct. I think you're right about the diagnosis, culturally and spiritually, we avoid the subject of death, instead of integrating it into a cycle of existence (life + death).
None of the pensioners (but also middle age people like me) here in Italy have any awareness of the completely unsustainable welfare policies of the Italian state. They're all in la-la land (I kid you not, people in Italy repeat the phrase "acquired rights", as if previous generous benefits they're now receiving, created with wrong math, are justified and can't be taken away). Anyway I mention this because of what you wrote about Rome: people here are stuck in recency bias, and my gut feeling is when the sovereign debts crisis hits, the vast majority will follow what they're told as their pensions will be used as the carrot. To be honest it's depressing, but this materialist addiction trumps morality and truth and liberty.
Death is a thorny issue. Recently someone sent me a link to an NGO here in Italy with volunteers who visit terminally ill in the final part of their lives. I'm guessing this includes people who have been abandoned by their families. For over a year I've been volunteering as a first responder and I can definitely attest to regularly seeing older people grasping at life in pitiful conditions (ex. Bedridden, 24hr care, etc). When I commented on your note it was soon after seeing two elderly people in my building who had recently passed. In one case the apartment was sold within a week and in the second I regularly visit the widow and he tell me stuff I feel embarrassed to know (everyone wants his deceased wife's savings). I was shocked about the apartment being sold so quickly, but got told it's actually quite normal. Everyone I've met on ambulance duty is unanimous in their opinion that when the time comes they want to find a way to have an accident. My only issue here is it needs to be spiritually aligned (the Eskimo way sounds interesting).
My dad passed away from illness and I was with him. I look back at the six months of helping him battle cancer as maybe one of the most significant things I've done in my life.
Also worth mentioning are the conspiracy theories surrounding Covid and the vaccines on the subject of trimming the elderly population, which given the subject of your essay, wouldn't surprise me if there were something there.
Thanks for the comment, Stefano, and for sharing those experiences. What you describe captures something I still find uncanny no matter how often I see it: how seamlessly most people drift along with the current without ever stopping to ask what’s really happening or why. The “NPC” meme became popular as a kind of online joke, but it points to something deeply metaphysical - a collective trance, a surrender of interiority.
It’s astonishing how easily people accept obviously unsustainable systems, or the hollow rituals of death-denial, as if they were laws of nature. Even when one narrative cracks they simply adjust to the new absurdity. That reflexive compliance, the refusal to look into the abyss, is one of the great spiritual pathologies of our age, or perhaps of human nature in general.
Caring for your father and volunteering as a first responder are counterexamples, forcing one back into contact with the real where the abstractions and collective scripts fall away. What you’re doing is a kind of quiet metaphysical rebellion, remembering what life and death mean while most others sleepwalk through the simulation.
We/They.
Are.
A.
Social.
Species.
The only thing astonishing me about human conformism (and suppression of own critical abilities, and even basic awareness of reality, whenever that would imperil the conforming or sow dissonance in their mind) is that there are people among who isn't like the rest who are astonished.
Thanks.
Your comment on NPCs reminds me of my first responder colleagues. The other day I was thinking about some good advice I was given when I was going to school several decades ago, about the purpose of education (learn how to think). I'm sure we agree that most school and university education today as its presently structured is useless. But just as your illuminating notes and essays on a wide variety of topics highlight, this doesn't mean there aren't things worth learning from those who previously have expanded our collective knowledge, but what's missing, as you (rightly) point out, is the interior journey, the struggle of becoming, the metaphysical realm, of grappling with the material (and each of us in our own way) and making it real. And perhaps like all muscles, if left unused, it withers to a point a person is no longer aware of its existence.
Perhaps this is the condition of an NPC, reflexively unawares, unable to imagine. Some of my colleagues leave me wondering if they've ever read a book outside of school. I'm often at loggerheads with them and over the years I've come to appreciate I get along better with people who have depth of character. I cannot rationally explain it and it's across the sexes (once a university professor remarked to me: quality recognizes quality; but it's like why person x and not y, and IQ or intelligence is only a part of the story, perhaps not even that important beyond a certain level). It's really scary to see the meme of "shit in, shit out" in action, especially the younger generations (z and y). The one positive is quite a few in this milieu engage in surface level religious ceremonies, so, in some respects they go through the motions of interaction with deeper questions. And there are a few people with character and depth, so I'm not saying it's everyone,, etc.