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My roommate got me thinking about shopping carts this week. He brought to my attention a theory that I had somehow missed: the shopping cart is the ultimate indicator of an individual’s propensity for self-governance.
Outlined here:
Alittle tongue in cheek philosophy from the depths of the web.
It made me chuckle, then it made me reflect. Probably why it’s an effective meme. I’m no paragon of virtue, and I’ve certainly marooned my fair share of carts to the vast deserts of Walmart parking lots. But it is an interesting consideration of an individual’s propensity for empathy.
Perhaps I’m over-philosophizing, but it’s a fun thought to play with. In a completely low stakes environment where there is very literally no repercussion for your bad behavior, do you act in the way that most consider to be just?
Sure, there’s a number of excuses: “Oh, well, Walmart pays peons to gather them. That’s their job.”, or “I’m in a rush, I can’t do that right now.” Yet, at its core, this scenario begs the question of whether or not you are actively engaging your empathetic function to consider the human impact of your bad behavior. You might say “Screw Walmart” on its face, but where the rubber meets the road is some poor, acne-covered high schooler in summer heat with yet another inconvenience added to his or her day. It’s not the faceless corporation that will retrieve the cart, but an unfortunate worker eking out minimum wage.
I consider this philosophical conundrum in the vein of whether or not your date treats waitstaff well at a restaurant. It’s generally accepted, at least within my social circles and especially with anyone who’s been on the serving end of the service industry, that treating your waiter poorly is such a significant red flag for someone to exhibit. I don’t mean tipping poorly (a faux pas in itself) so much as intentionally disrespecting the person serving your meal, which requires a direct, face-to-face disregard for humanity. In contrast, what intrigues me about the shopping cart scenario is the inherent sense of anonymity and absence of any real consequence.
Stranding a shopping cart is simply a tragedy of the commons (with a little free rider problem in the mix).
Then I go full send with it, extending this idea out to broader human follies. Each Sunday I’m at Walmart getting my little groceries for my silly little meal prep, I see how many forsaken carts abound and think how absolutely, utterly, royally screwed we are for bigger problems like the environment. At the lowest stakes table, which requires the tiniest modicum of sacrifice, we can’t even return a tin basket with wheels if it means walking 15 extra feet from our car. The odds that human coordination can comprehend and solve massively long-term, incomprehensibly complex tragedy of the common type problems on a global scale seems like such a depressingly remote possibility that I’m squarely back in the “Elon, get us to Mars ASAP. This sucker’s gonna burn to the ground.” camp.
Though I suppose there’s even a couple lessons even in that. Is this merely a cultural phenomenon or an incentive problem? Were I to live in Germany or Japan, both known for orderly cleanliness, would I encounter this same problem? Perhaps not. Or perhaps it’s merely a matter of incentives.
Take Aldi, for example. The clever German retailer solved this problem with a simple incentive overlay- locking up a quarter to get your cart, freed upon return. I couldn’t put any data to it, but my anecdotal Aldi experiences certainly included more orderly cart corrals (and perpetually forgetting to bring a quarter). An interesting solution with obvious parallels to carbon credits in regard to my environmental angst above.
This is Water
The crux of this meme is a question of empathy, and the average person’s capacity to consciously practice it. I found that this idea dovetails nicely with another piece of content I consume quarterly: David Foster Wallace’s commencement speech “This Is Water”.
For the uninformed, the speech begins with the joke from which it draws its title:
There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says “Morning, boys. How’s the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes “What the hell is water?”
Wallace then goes on to weave a simple joke into a masterful exhortation for the value of university education, and what it actually means to “learn to think” that so many of us are told as college students. He essentially argues that what “learning to think” really means is instilling the self awareness and critical thinking to break free of the monotony of self-centered daily adulthood to consider others. Simply, it’s the awareness to empathize beyond ourselves. It’s taking the time to escape your default programming, to recognize the “water” all around you. Said more eloquently:
As I’m sure you guys know by now, it is extremely difficult to stay alert and attentive, instead of getting hypnotised by the constant monologue inside your own head (may be happening right now). Twenty years after my own graduation, I have come gradually to understand that the liberal arts cliché about teaching you how to think is actually shorthand for a much deeper, more serious idea: learning how to think really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think. It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience. Because if you cannot exercise this kind of choice in adult life, you will be totally hosed…
And I submit that this is what the real, no bullshit value of your liberal arts education is supposed to be about: how to keep from going through your comfortable, prosperous, respectable adult life dead, unconscious, a slave to your head and to your natural default setting of being uniquely, completely, imperially alone day in and day out…
Following this, Wallace provides his own example of a frustrating grocery store experience, illustrating how important thoughtful self-awareness is in impacting our experience of the tedium of everyday adulthood.
It would frankly be a disservice for me to summarize the piece for you more than I’ve already butchered it, but suffice to say that I’d highly urge you to check it out this weekend. The link contains both Soundcloud audio and the transcript of the speech, perfect for easy consumption. It’s a masterful argument for practicing your own self awareness and flexing the empathetic muscles that we so frequently let atrophy.
Be well.
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