All We, Like Sheep
We Follow, We Stray
Not long ago, I received an invitation from the Center for Faith and Justice, to a No Amazon for Advent campaign. In the interest of reclaiming a Christian holiday “meant for reflection, generosity, and hope” from the maws of commercial meaning-makers, they urged a boycott of such corporations.
Reflecting on the anti-Amazon idea, what kept coming to mind was the passage from Handel’s Messiah (and before that, from the Book of Isaiah 53, verse 6):
“All we, like sheep, have gone astray…”
The season which finds us most frequently appreciative of Handel’s masterpiece is here, so it might have begun echoing for me anyway. And I’m more or less on board with the boycotters, having already substantially unwound myself from reliance on “easy” delivery or “Prime” convenience.
But I lament that as a culture and populace, we so often receive the wake-up call after we’re already in trouble.
We’re in over our heads with a consumer machine, with too-powerful corporations absent moral conscience, with a world that frequently feels like it’s spinning out of control. It’s not a new story, nor a new circumstance.
All we, like sheep, we made it so.
We are here because we followed an attractive, Pied Piper path to a predictable pain.
We are here because it’s easier to react than reflect, to follow than think for ourselves.
Though Boeing, Microsoft, and Starbucks came before, many perceive Amazon to dominate Seattle, the city where I’ve lived most of my adult life. As a corporation, It has significantly impacted local life, generating wealth and population growth, eating up real estate, consuming energy and causing change. It has produced certain conveniences and disrupted others. Yes, it’s a behemoth with enormous influence, for good and for ill - here, and pretty much everywhere.
Today Amazon is more symbol than corporate entity in its influence. Once a shiny new thing, it is now a well-established dependence. Over time, the Amazon project has played to our desires to evolve, to grow, to cut corners. It has also become an enormous reminder that we are more wired to react than to self-determine.
All we, like sheep…
As Americans, we grow up in the fact of capitalist growth expectations. It is assumed that we’ll consume, acclimate to the influence of “job creators” and innovators (or disrupters, as with many recent corporate re-imaginings). In supposed trade for a resource-rich existence, commercialization, growth, and wealth impact us all. We never questioned whether we wanted or needed it. It showed up and we said, “why not?”
But with each passing stage of my life, I have considered that my individual response doesn’t always have to be “okay, fine.”
It is clearly neither okay, nor fine when kids miss social and developmental skills because their lives have become screen dependent; when people “don’t have time” to manage basic needs unless they can do it online; when we’ve cut corners to trade boarded-up storefronts for vibrant business districts; when speed and efficiency are valued over the continuing availability of meaningful work (I see you A.I. Pied Piper).
When someone adopts the new and shiny, others follow. Now, it’s expected, even when we know it’s bad for us.
My neighbors talk about commitment to the environment, but delivery drivers pull up with piles of bags and boxes for their doorsteps every day. How do they rationalize the waste in all that increasingly plastic packaging? Or the energy and fumes of the delivery vans? Did convenience just get too…convenient?
I lament the way we follow without thought, without consideration for consequences.
Sixty years ago, A Charlie Brown Christmas first aired, making the same arguments as the No Amazon for Advent petition.
All we, like sheep, decade after decade. Ongoing, unending wake-up calls aren’t enough to stop us. We sell out our values before we’ve even defined them.
Our roads may seem easier, but our burdens are not lightening. I lament.
