Picking tomatoes can be so hard.

Scott McTomatoesallthewaydown

The best tomatoes have already been chosen. How many people have picked up this very one, looked at it, squeezed it and put it back, covering it with their own brand of infectious diseases and nastiness. I had the same problem with the blackberries. Every pack had at least a little bit of mold inside. The last thing that I want to worry about is getting fresh produce at the grocery store after I’ve worked all fucking week.

I’m hardly making enough money to live in an apartment, pay for gas and make a dent in my student loans before the interest shovels another few pounds of dirt over my cheaply made coffin. My headstone will read “still trying to make enough money to justify college”. The wheel keeps squeaking on this stupid cart. I work all week and I’m not even rewarded with an easy shopping experience. It’s tedious, boring, redundant and redundant.

The tomatoes that I get will probably spoil before I can use them. I made a list of meals for the week, but I’d be lying to myself if I told you that I’m going to make them all. I’ll make exactly what I need to, no more and no less, and when I can’t do that, I’ll eat some Fruity Pebbles. Think of the journey that this tomato had to take for me to pick it up, buy it and inevitably throw it away. A farmer had to buy the seeds, plant and grow the tomatoes, wait for however long it takes for tomatoes to grow and then sell them to Giant Eagle. The whole process is probably no less than a month, and I’m going to buy it just to throw it away.

Does the farmer hate me? Do they just enjoy the simplicity of living a life off the land where they work eighteen hours in a day, but don’t listen to anyone but themselves, and that’s why they farm? Do they secretly resent people who eat their product without ever learning how to grow it themselves? I’m fucking useless in the grand scheme of things. I can’t even grow a tomato. If the world broke into anarchy and food stopped being subsidized, I’d be screwed. I can’t even pick a tomato off of the shelf, let alone survive off the land.

If the world broke down that much, who’s to say that I wouldn’t be the guy that grabbed a gun and stormed some poor farmer’s land and stole stuff while they slept. If it broke down that much, I’d be the good guy for doing that considering how many people would Clockwork Orange the farmer and his wife. I’d just be stealing food while other people would be raping and pillaging just for fun. I don’t think I could ever rape someone, even if the world changed that much, but I can’t say for sure. I don’t think I’m the kind of person that would gas a Jew, but Milgram has proven that to be unlikely. Maybe in a different world, I’d be a degenerate rapist, murderer and maybe even a cannibal. I’m sure I’d do it alone too. I don’t think I’d want to spread the wealth with anyone else. I wouldn’t be able to trust anyone in an anarchist world. I wouldn’t even trust myself.

With no order, the world would be a mess. Right? Well, society has formed from thousands of years of development, and we decided to make a hierarchal system of governing and existing. Is that due to a few people who have lost sight of the greater purpose and their consciousness and created a dictatorship, which was eventually leveled out by the people under it, or is that what people have either subconsciously or consciously chosen? Maybe the more active and conscientious people rise to the top while the complacent and lazy fall to the bottom of the hierarchal foundation. That doesn’t explain today’s world though because of how many hard-working people there are at the bottom end of the class structure that we have. They might only be there through systematic classism, but it could also be because humans can’t function in a way where equality and functionality work the same way.

That could be why communism didn’t work. It’s not that people aren’t capable of working for an equal reimbursement and purpose, but maybe humanity just can’t function without people who give orders and people who take orders. There always needs to be someone telling someone something, and those who are anti-authority are in a constant struggle to get to the top until they are met with odds that are so stacked against them that they stop trying to rise to the top or they make it to a place that they feel comfortable with because in their own mind, they’re in control.

Although gravity is the reason that if I pull a tomato from the bottom of the pyramid they all fall, maybe there is this kind of… weird societal gravity where it’s a constant race to the bottom unless you’re putting in more work than those next to you. If you think of how small we all are in the physical universe, then think of how we stand in a societal structure that feels like a multilevel marketing scheme where everyone was forced to join and can’t get out, then even the people on top are miniscule, but the ones on the bottom, with higher numbers and desire for success, are even smaller.