Uncertain times unleash Generation Greed
WE were the lucky ones, the generation who had never known bad times. Sure, there’d been the odd recession, the heartache of emigration or, worse, having to move back home. But when compared to our forebears, the people who’d lived through famines, wars and widespread destitution, we’d lived charmed, carefree lives.
Until now.
For the first time in our existence we have come face to face with our own mortality, with the mortality of our loved ones, and it’s not a pleasant feeling. Up to now, our fears had centred round what, in hindsight, seem trivial affairs; career progression, home ownership, personal development and fulfilment.
So perhaps we can be forgiven for reacting as we have, for descending into madness at the first sign of trouble. After all, we’ve never known such times, this is all very new to us.
The generation I refer to includes all those between the ages of 18-50; Baby Boomers, Generation Xers, Milennials, and a few Generation Yers thrown in for good measure. In short, the most able-bodied among us.
It was they who made the decision to converge en masse upon their local supermarket, to cram their trolleys with the most finite resources, to knowingly deprive others of said resources so that they, and they alone, would have not just enough, but more than enough.
It was they who laughably stocked up on toilet rolls, following the lead of other countries, behaving like sheep, like angry, flustered sheep with particularly dirty bottoms.
And it was they who contined their voracious pursuit of supplies right through the supermarket, looters in all but name. Never have I felt so fortunate to have a gluten intolerance, never so smug as I calmly perused the excessively-priced, but oh so abundant, selection of wheat-free loaves in my local store.
Behind me, the aisle housing the regular bread looked like it had been ransacked by a flock of rowdy pigeons, nothing remaining but crusts, crumbs and grubby handprints.
I’m not much into milk either, a one litre carton usually lasting me a week. Fresh fruit though, fresh vegetables, I buy those every day. Not on this day though, nor the one that followed. Confirming their status as king of all fruits, bananas were impossible to get anywhere, not even those little ones designed specifically for kids. Lemons were another commodotity, their nuclear levels of Vitamin C making them an essential item on any panic buyers’ list.
Where are those bananas now, those lemons? Silently rotting in a bowl on the kitchen table perhaps? Consigned to the bin, their original purpose, if every they had one, long forgotten?
Spuds though, they keep for a while. As do pasta and rice. And beans, and meat, cheese, don’t forget the cheese.
If you happened to arrive late to the scene last Wednesday evening, last Thursday, you were left facing up to the prospect of an evening meal of spaghetti hoops, vegan sausages and Haagen-Dazs ice-cream, a side order of tinned tuna completing the banquet.
Of course as soon as everyone got home, wiped the sweat from their brow with super-quilted bog roll and lathered their entire body in hand-sanitiser, the guilt set in. What about the old people? Those who can’t drive to the shop whenever they want? Those who, you know, might actually need some of the food you’ve crammed into every available crevice, mainly your own mouth.
God, if only we’d thought of that. If only we’d stopped for a second, assessed the content of our trollies, and decided we needed 18 bags of rice, not 20. Well, that wouldn’t have worked either. Because the person behind us would have nabbed the other two. This is who we are: a selfish collection of buffoons. A reactionary, hysterical crowd of idiots, one incapable of reasonable thought, of extending our boundaries of perception beyond our own miserable, needy existences. Generation greed.
True, we’re capable of kindness, of acts so tender you couldn’t help but marvel at us. But those acts are made more marvellous by their rarity. And when the apocalypse comes, whether that’s in a few months, a few years, or a few centuries, I fear for us, I really do.