Marc Estrin

FRANZ KAFKA DOES THANKSGIVING

November 5, 2005

He eats the droppings from his own table; thus he manages to stuff himself fuller than the others for a time, but meanwhile he forgets how to eat from the table, and so in time even the droppings cease to fall.

What can we make of this tiny tale? For one thing, “he” is greedy enough to be crawling around, picking up droppings, and stuffing them back into his mouth. He is rich enough for excess, and sloppy enough to be spewing it around. Sounds a bit like America, profligate with her resources, her goods, her arms, her ideology, showering the rest of the planet with the consequences of such “richness”.

Kafka’s parable says this can’t go on. We cease to understand the bounties on our table. We no longer say “Much obliged.” Obliged for what? Obliged to whom? We’re the one who needs to be thanked—by the Third World for “market reform”; by the poor the world over for the loans which enable them to keep paying loans; for our arms to prop up their corrupt, American-approved governments; for their opportunity to deal with our wastes, and clean up after our parties.

But the reckoning will come: if Kafka says so, then the reckoning will come. For all the lust for short-term gain, there are signs aplenty that the planet and its people will protest, and rise up against impossible systems of injustice.

For this at least, let us give thanks.