I gather last week or so a Walmart worker claimed, perhaps falsely, to have been trampled by shoppers. Well, it really happened today, on Long Island.
In a story bylined by Joe Gould of the Daily News, “Witnesses said the surging throngs of shoppers knocked the man down. He fell and was stepped on. As he gasped for air, shoppers ran over and around him. ‘He was bum-rushed by two hundred people,’ said Jimmy Overby, 43, a co-worker. ‘They took the doors off the hinges. He was trampled and killed in front of me. They took me down too…I literally had to fight people off my back.'”
So sad. And a bit frightening.
And beyond the personal tragedy involved here I find myself ruminating on the nature of human relationships, of our economy, and how we need to engage.
Of course we’re all connected, inescapably, and a way human beings have maintained our connectedness, and furthered our survival, has been through our economic lives. We produce, we purchase, we consume. And in that cycle lives are sustained. Whether in San Francisco, on Long Island, in Mumbai, or on the dusty streets of Baghdad.
And nothing bad in that. Nor in the larger economies, I feel, of capital and its various manipulations.
Except, that the driving emotions for all this are grasping and aversion, perhaps better named greed and fear. Add in ignorance and you have all three of Buddhism’s demons. I find myself thinking how our relatedness in society pushes us to meet as things are, in a world driven by greed and fear. And knowing these dynamics have flips: generosity and clarity.
(It is also my contention the third Buddhist demon, ignorance is in fact the constellation of certanties…)
I think if people who have this intuition of generosity and clarity (and he flip of certainty, not knowing…) as being as essential as greed and fear (and being certain where we are and where we’re going) are willing to step up to the plate, to enter the marketplace, to act from that larger perspective, then we can mitigate that trampling, both literal, and metaphorical.
But it takes a conscious effort. To remember we are as capable of trampling another, as anyone else. And that we also are capable of a bigger view.
It takes some self-awareness on the part of many.
A dangerous proposition, to put our trust in people doing this.
Well, maybe this is the work of the spiritual community, pushing a bit. And a little more. Ah the prophetic voice. A hard task, but a necessary one…
After all, it is a bit hard to visualize an alternative universe to which those who wish to opt out, can…
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