The Floor Hasn't Been Swept in Years

Ants are remarkable creatures. In a homogenous culture, they march. They grab. They carry. In a laborious and methodical journey, ants carry food and materials back to their home. I’ve never seen an ant observe. I’ve never seen an ant relax. I’ve never seen an ant stop, except in a jerky and paranoid scavenging dance. They certainly do not have human capacities. But ants are unique. Ants are selfless in their gathering. And ants can carry up to fifty times their own body weight.

Humans need carts.

I can’t hear anything. This store is like a low synthesized hum, with scattered beeps and glitches. The scuffling of feet and the muffled sounds of heavy steps create a discordant rhythm with the thuds and wheezes of the product palate unloading process. This is a busy place. The amount of noise becomes so excessively monotonous, it all ceases to become important at all. Surround sound systems blare indoctrinating encouragement, and the waves weave their way into the chaotic spin of business. I can hear music, but there is no music here.

The voices of the shoppers are barely audible, and when they are, they’re certainly not talking to their companions. If there is a voice aired, it bounces off satellites, landing in the ear of another cell phone user – closer than you might think. Or perhaps the remarks of a human mouth are corrective, telling a child not to touch this or to put that back or to shut up. Not because they care, because they’re responsible for the child, because their reputation is on the line. Other than these sorts of endearing familial interactions, there is no interaction, no recognition, not even a wave, a nod, or a glance that implies a sense of consumerist camaraderie. While bringing everyone together, this store creates no bonds. No accountability, no challenge, and no limit. It’s a lot easier to indulge when you shop alone.

This store is filled with the muscular frustrated man, scowling at a list filled with things he doesn’t need given to him by the wife he doesn’t love while yanking the hands of his whiny children that learn by example. This store is filled with the tired looking cart-leaner, scratching her mullet-covered scalp while reading the back of the latest dandruff shampoo, absorbing every bit of deceptive misinformation with her weary eyes. This store is filled with the disillusioned elderly male, trifocal lenses letting in the congregation of every product and every service he will ever need while deflecting the dark secrets behind the dream of Western individualism. This store is filled with the ten-year-old princess, walking a safe social distance from her mother as she is enthused by the aisles and aisles of seemingly limitless but incredibly restrictive fashion possibilities, turning her into a fantasy she didn’t even know she had.

And the carts. The mechanized carts. Overflowing with thighs, the small abused machines attempt to ferry their cargo from aisle to aisle, while the fat eyes of the rider are gorged. The step to dependence on a scooter must be a big one, and certainly not one taken lightly. These sitting shoppers meander their way about the store, gathering in the poison that chaired them in the first place. If there was a machine to load their machine, these chunky-armed sitters would be on top of it in an instant – literally. As slowly as a scooter can go, these helpless mechanistic turtles look about to faint. One begins to have sympathy for robotics. And yet the metal slaves continue, abused by their temporary owners. In this race, the jockeys are the largest people in the building.

This store temporarily houses thousands of individuals, searching for thousands of different combinations of chemicals with which to express themselves. The quality that makes us human is the ability to choose which pair of jeans we buy, which scent we adopt, or which brand of cheese crackers we decide defines us. Choices are what make us human, but real choices are beginning to cease in a sea of surprisingly similar products. Funneling in and funneling out, the parades of consumers add the grease from their fried chicken to the slippery slope of sameness.

The cornerstone of Western Civilization lies through automatic doors. The downfall of Western Civilization lies through automatic doors.