When it comes to food shopping, I’m a Trader Joe’s guy. Alongside neighborhood corner stores and our local Farmer’s Market. But I dipped into Whole Foods today because I needed something and it was convenient. Walked in feeling “Happy Holidays” and walked out feeling “Bah! Humbug!”
For now where none had been before were seven self-check out stations on the right side of the aisle and three live humans on the left side. There was something about those seven SELF SELF SELF SELF SELF SELF SELF SELF signs in a row that screamed, “We have given up on human connection. Enjoy all our clever machines.”
Consider. So many now do their shopping by waiting for the Amazon truck to pull up and leave the package. Get their food from Grub Hub. We suffered so much from being isolated in our homes during the pandemic and yet we now do so voluntarily. And make people like Jeff Bezos rich so he can take a ride in space and donate millions to the politicians primed to tear down democracy and wreak havoc left and right. All because it’s such an inconvenience to walk to the store or bike or bus or even drive.
If we do have to go out—God forbid!— to Whole Foods, why, we’ll just call up Waymo and sit in the backseat with nothing to say to the driverless car—or rather, no one to say it too. Then into the store and we don’t even have to extend a simple hello to the check-out person— there’s our self-check-out machine awaiting us in its glorious convenience.
Then it’s time to go home and have a Zoom call with our therapist at an exorbitant price to wonder why we’re feeling lonely. Surely it was some childhood trauma with our mother or father or perhaps some “disease” named in the Diagnostic Manual of Mental Disorders which can be handled with expensive pills which we can order online and have delivered. The thought that it might have something to do with how we live, the choices we make as to how to connect with people, the choices our culture makes for us as it makes money from our machine-addiction and makes everything “easy” and “convenient” with no pesky human interconnection needed.
And really, why bother to do anything so radical as think or feel or cook or play games? Our calculators do our math, AI will write our papers, Waymo cars will cart our inert bodies around, pre-package or pre-cooked food will do our cooking, our robot vacuum will do the cleaning, our Spotify algorhythm will choose our music, our endless streaming possibilities will tell us the stories we can’t be bothered to read or tell or invent, and we never (or rarely) have to talk to anyone who is not our Facebook friend. What a life! The Jetsons never had it so good!
I’m picturing the modern-day Nativity scene. The Wise People will arrive in their driverless car, go through Security, order from Grub-hub, take selfies of them with the cute baby and send them out on Instagram or Tik-Tok, crank up Maria Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas" song” and have a big dance party in the Manger with robotic animals provided by the Disney studio. Wouldn’t that be wonderful?
Okay. I'm done with my rant. Away with Bah Humbug! Tomorrow the grandchildren come and we will walk in the park to see the live yaks at the Academy of Sciences, cook together in our kitchen, light candles, talk around the dinner table, then gather around the piano to sing. Such human communion alone doesn’t solve everything, but it sure counts for a lot.
May it be so for you and yours!
PS And I'm happy to report that as of now, Trader Joes has NO self-check out! And I always enjoy a little chat with the folks at the register.
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