Surely
Black Friday has got to be the most enjoyable day of the year. That first shopping opportunity right after downing
the Thanksgiving meal is not only endlessly entertaining, but Black Friday also
furnishes some truly engrossing insights into the human soul. The nature of the species is never on more honest
display than when it is pushing a shopping cart.
The
best of humanity is never seen in feeding the hungry, but in yanking that last
pair designer sneakers off the shelf before another shopper might reach
them. The truest expression of human
resilience is not in healing the sick, but in kicking a crippled customer out
of the way so that you can reach the latest-model cell phone. You can always
find the mankind’s greatest efforts not in being first on the scene to help
survivors of a natural disaster, but in getting to a buy-one-get-one-free offer
before anyone else.
Human
beings will trample each other just to save a couple dollars on some plastic trinket. Pregnant woman will slap someone else’s kids
out of the way just to get the latest shrink-wrapped product. You can watch grown men starting fist-fights
over merchandise that has merely been discounted a couple percentage points.
No
shopper will ever let another person get ahead of them – that aggressive purchasing is mankind’s
true character. No consumer will ever
share the stuff in his shopping basket with any other Black Friday buyer. A
customer will grab an item for no other reason than to keep someone else from
getting it. And the bottom line is that
a human being really doesn’t need any of this mass-marketed crap anyway.
If
you want to see Homo sapiens in its
natural habit, just visit any Wal-Mart right after Thanksgiving. The law of the jungle while clutching a glossy
advertising flyer. Lex talionis with
a maxed-out credit card in the wallet.
If
you do not yet hate all mankind, a few hours in a warehouse store around the
Holidays would be enough to turn Mother Theresa into a snarling, snapping
misanthrope. Black Friday: people behaving like brutes and nasty-ass
merchandise … what’s not to love?