At our mature ages, we commonly have become passive observers of the parading scene. Rarely do we proactively affect fundamental aspects of our culture. For instance, most of us will have thousands of dollars spent by others encasing us in elegant boxes before being placed in the earth eventually just to decompose.

Thousands of others will die because our available organs are so expensively wasted out of some sort of vain need to preserve our lifeless bodies as long as possible. I suspect few share my perspective; however, I have long thought it a wise and, dare I say Christian, concept for us to nationally institutionalize the harvesting of all our organs to insure that others may have longer lives and fulfill aborted destinies.

All the money saved on the caskets and all the pomp and circumstance of our internment could instead be donated to medical schools seeking further solutions to terminal illnesses. All the professional undertakers, could become doctors to help fill the 150,000 annual shortfall of American physicians.

And all the preachers – saying so many pious words over people like you and me, who are surely far less exalted in real life than the final words upon our deaths will propose – they could create and run brokerages making sure the organs were fairly distributed among rich and poor.

I think it should be done on a non-profit basis. But, if some should insist it be a for-profit business, I would accept that variation. After all, saving lives rather than continuing simply to expensively indulge ourselves after our demise, might be worth the effort. Who knows how many Einsteins and Beethovens and Jonas Salks have died for lack of organs resting in silk lined coffins?

I’m a serious conservative, you see: I’ve donated my body to a medical university. I hope an Einstein gets my organs once the doctor students have finished their anatomy class. Or at least someone poor who could use a leg up in our contentiously competitive world.