How Long, O Simple Ones, Will You Love Being Simple?

It has been difficult for me to settle on how I feel about the "Self-Checkout" lanes that I see at Shop Rite, Wal*Mart, Home Depot, and the like. The poet in me weeps into his beard at the sight of shoppers rejoicing over one more way to eliminate interaction with a fellow human being. My poetical side always presents the deeper, more moving arguments, but my rational, practical self reminds me that poets are not known for their accomplishments, and even less for steady employment. It is usually in a state of deep emotional anguish that I scan my few items and curse under my breath at the screen when the sensors "think" that I've not placed one of them in the bag. I would feel guilty enough to avoid eye contact with the human cashiers as I leave, but most of the zit-faced cashiers at our Shop Rite are too busy talking with their neighbour to notice me even when I'm in their aisle.

There is another new item in Shop Rite about which I have no trouble forming an opinion: the "Checkout Aisle TV's." Do you have them at your grocery store? I won't even ask you to comment with your thoughts on them because I know that you must hate them. How can you not?

The "Checkout Aisle TV's" (CAT's) are positioned above the rack of TV Guides and Soap Opera Weekly's that line the conveyor belt approaching the register. They would perhaps be no more than an illuminated version of the tabloids and women's magazines that stand as sentries at each checkout aisle--just another reason to keep one's eyes pointed toward the straight and narrow--but they play sound! These CAT's play a loop of meaningless, hit-and-run-style advertisements in full volume that cannot be tuned out. I suppose that there are those who are delighted that the store has given them "something to keep their mind occupied" while they wait in line, but I don't like those kinds of people, and it would be for their good if these CAT's never existed.

To condense my rant into one sentence, I hate "Checkout Aisle TV's" because they represent one more way in which Everyman is prevented from being alone with his thoughts. Like the character Guy Montag trying to memorize a Bible verse while the subway radio "vomited" upon him the jingle for Denham's Dental Detergent in Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, I feel as if I am being driven mad at the intrusion of the CAT's into my mindspace. What dark humor is required to laugh at the thought that if Wisdom were to be found in my grocery store, she would now literally need to "raise her voice in the marketplace (Proverbs 1.20)!"

In Fahrenheit 451, the character that first helps Guy to understand why he feels disconnected from his culture is a girl, Clarisse McClellan. Clarisse is regarded a threat to her classmates and, ultimately, society because of her "antisocial tendencies." She walks as a pedestrian instead of racing in jet cars, she spends nights outside alone instead of in the parlor surrounded by a three-walled television over which one could not hold a conversation. Guy's character was shocked and invigorated to listen to her simple observations about the Man in the Moon (because he had never looked), the smell of old leaves ("like cinnamon," she said), or the morning dew (which he was ashamed to have never noticed).

The characters in the books that I read to which I am most readily drawn are the antisocial ones, the ones that are marked as unusual by the amount of time that they spend alone. [Let me note that Boo Radley is certainly an exception to the above statement]

Clarisse is a great example in Fahrenheit 451, and the Savage character in Aldous Huxley's Brave New World is another, albeit a more tragic, example. The Savage is brought from his reservation to live in Civilization where man is conditioned from conception to exist without free will, negative emotion, or independent thought. The clash is immediate and unable to be overcome. He finds himself before one of the Controllers before his exile, where is made privy to the reasons why man is kept under such control. An excerpt is below:

The Savage interrupted him. "But isn't it natural to feel there's a God?"

"You might as well ask if it's natural to do up one's trousers with zippers," said the Controller sarcastically. "You remind me of another of those old fellows called Bradley. He defined philosophy as the finding of bad reason for what one believes by instinct. As if one believed anything by instinct! One believes things because one has been conditioned to believe them...People believe in God because they've been conditioned to believe in God."

"But all the same," insisted the Savage, "it is natural to believe in God when you're alone--quite alone, in the night, thinking about death."

"But people are never alone now," said the Controller. "We make them hate solitude; and we arrange their lives so that it's almost impossible for them to ever have it."

The above line pierced my heart as I read Brave New World recently (for the first time). What little time we as a generation spend alone, not just alone in Creation under a bowl of stars or next to a tree older than our grandfather, but merely alone with our own thoughts. One cannot use Romans 1 to teach that men would become disciples of Jesus Christ if only they went camping more often--we know that a claim of our Saviour's life, death, and resurrection to cover one's sin is the only means by which one may be saved. But how many men are kept from even considering the state of their lives or the state of their souls by the din of the maddening crowd around them!

I will not put on airs to present myself as a man of thoughts more profound or meaningful than my neighbor, but I can say that I do consider time alone a precious commodity. What's more, I feel violated when moments primed for contemplation are stolen by some stooge in a chef's hat peddling his wares as I wait in line at the grocery store. The "Self-Checkout" line may be a bleak commentary on our culture as it keeps us suckling at the breast of Convenience...but at least it only speaks when spoken to.