"Back in '95, Nansen's plan on his final northward journey was eventually, as the total load grew lighter, to kill sled dogs one by one and feed them to the rest. At first, he reported, the other dogs refused to eat dog-flesh, but slowly they came to accept it."
"Suppose it were to happen to us, in the civilized world. If 'another form of life' decided to use humans for similar purposes, and being out on a mission of comparable desperation, as its own resources dwindled, we human beasts would likewise be slaughtered one by one, and those still alive obliged to, in some sense, eat their flesh."
"Oh dear." The General's wife put down her utensils and gazed at her plate.
"Sir, that is disgusting."
"Not literally, then... but we do use one another, often mortally, with the same disablement of feeling, of conscience... each of us knowing that at some point it will be our own turn. Nowhere to run but into a hostile and lifeless waste."
"You refer to present world conditions under capitalism and the Trusts."
"There appears to be little difference. How else could we have come to it?"
"Evolution. Ape evolves to man, well, what's the next step - human to what? Some compound organism, the American Corporation, for instance, in which even the Supreme Court has recognized legal personhood - a new living species, one that can out-perform most anything an individual can do by himself, no matter how smart or powerful he is."
Thomas Pynchon, Against The Day (2006)
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