A Village Dilemma

You've probably not heard of us. We haven't been so crass as to turn our little peculiarity into a tourist attraction; though we certainly could have done. We are a mid-sized village, somewhat isolated on a large plain, and we have that typical European village layout where the life of the village centers on a length of 'high-street', and alongside our high-street stand two old and large trees which those who pass through would, I'm sure, scarcely notice, but which in fact each contain a cavity in the trunk within which there lives a man.  

When they were juniors perhaps the two men crawled into the trees, or perhaps at least one of them was put there by his parents, I am not sure, but what is certain is that by now the two men are far too large to squeeze out of the gaps that they previously crawled into, and out of which they now peer and converse with the villagers. A couple of people, perhaps it is family, bring them food every day; a few villagers stop by and talk. The question has arisen before, and it has raised itself again recently - do we cut them out of their two trees? 

Certainly the two men have no desire to move out; that's not the issue at all. There are selfish village things to consider, and there are also 'wider' matters to ponder. It may not be much but there is a 'cost' to the villagers of allowing these two to stay in place: someone is feeding them certainly, and no doubt there are other little entertainments brought to them; there will no doubt later-on be some medical problem that necessitates our chopping them out, and, of course, they have contributed nothing to paying the cost of whatever we decide to do for them. In a wider sense - yes they are sacrificing much by being stuck in their places, but also are they managing to avoid the contribution we generally expect of our people, they are managing to avoid work too. What do they do for us? Some say that one of the men is a little amusing, but certainly not much so; the other one is kind-natured. Then there are even wider matters to clear a way towards and to try to untangle: can we allow a man to constrain himself in this way, if it really is constraint, even though he has chosen and continues to choose to do so? We are troubled and no decision has yet been made.