Shopping Carts Being Used to Test Self Governance?
The Ultimate Litmus Test?
I recently read this theory about the shopping cart being the ultimate litmus test for whether a person is capable of self-governance and thought I’d share it here.
It goes like this:-
“To return the shopping cart is an easy, convenient task and one which we all recognise as the correct, appropriate thing to do.
To return the shopping cart is objectively right. There are no situations other than the dire emergencies in which a person is not able to return their cart. Simultaneously, it is not illegal to abandon your shopping cart.
Therefore the shopping cart presents itself as the apex example of whether a person will do what is right without being forced to do it. No one will punish you for not returning the shopping cart, no one will fine you or kill you for not returning the shopping cart, you gain nothing by returning the shopping cart.
You must return the shopping cart out of the goodness of your own heart. You must return the shopping cart because it is correct’’
[Anonymous poster]
I love this, not just because abandoned shopping carts are a pet peeve, but the fact it is so simplistic and relies upon the basic principles of a person. A decision so remedial, influenced more by instinct than thought, perhaps even an unfiltered glimpse into their true social behaviour.
Maybe we can use this to categorise said behaviour-
- Person who returns cart correctly — Capable of self-governing.
- Person who returns the cart next to where it is supposed to go— Requires work.
- Person who does not return cart — Requires governance otherwise would be chaotic.
- Person who loads cart into a truck, to harvest for parts — Suitable for governance akin to a Mad Max film.
- Person who throws shopping cart off a bridge into a river — Much like the said water that has flowed under the bridge, downstream out to the ocean, gone, never to be seen again by your eyes, so too has all hope of any self-governance similarly disappeared from this person.
All joking aside, it did actually make me think about quite a few aspects relating to this, like; Are people aware of their actions? Do they realise their abandoned cart could roll about the parking lot into someone’s vehicle?
Are parking lots also, in general, some undiscovered anthropological tool for assessing peoples’ morality & values, for instance; The moral decision of leaving a note when someone hits a parked car?
Anyway, I digress. I hope this gave you as much entertainment and thought-provoking pleasure as it did to myself.
NB — This, of course, does not apply to anyone physically unable to do this task.
