Hello everyone.
Today was Black Friday. As a show of solidarity with my fellow team members, I chose to leave the pharmacy behind for a day. I felt like a samurai warrior preparing for battle as I dressed in the customary red and khaki, leaving my white lab coat behind. With gas-station coffee in hand, I entered the fray at 3am.
I had envisioned waves of ten or fifteen people at a time, jogging toward the electronics department where we were waiting to serve their needs in an orderly fashion. This was fiction. There were no waves. There was rather a morass of bodies. They crushed in on us. There were no concepts of line, order, or equality. There were only money, desire, greed, and the crush.
Afterward, I was reflecting on the experience via Facebook, and a friend offered his appraisal. "Capitalism at its worst," he said.
I disagree. This is beyond political ideology. This mad consumerism is about something more fundamental. Today was an exhibition of the absurd.
Today was Black Friday. As a show of solidarity with my fellow team members, I chose to leave the pharmacy behind for a day. I felt like a samurai warrior preparing for battle as I dressed in the customary red and khaki, leaving my white lab coat behind. With gas-station coffee in hand, I entered the fray at 3am.
I had envisioned waves of ten or fifteen people at a time, jogging toward the electronics department where we were waiting to serve their needs in an orderly fashion. This was fiction. There were no waves. There was rather a morass of bodies. They crushed in on us. There were no concepts of line, order, or equality. There were only money, desire, greed, and the crush.
Afterward, I was reflecting on the experience via Facebook, and a friend offered his appraisal. "Capitalism at its worst," he said.
I disagree. This is beyond political ideology. This mad consumerism is about something more fundamental. Today was an exhibition of the absurd.
Agree about the sales crush mentality, a profound perversion of our amygdala's genetic function.