Soulmarkets
Where do modern humans go to find their soul? What's the physical space that's share by all that also doubles as a spiritual extension of the self? The churches and temples have been replaced with disillusionment and technological progress. The people who haunt these former spiritual mines are relegated to the forgotten and stupid. Regular attendance to these former seats of glory requires a commitment different from one which modern societies are aligned towards, of constant growth and efficiency. Where do we find our souls then?
Our salves are on the supermarket racks, all redesigned and in “new” formulas, the packaging made to contain all the artifice behind pastoral images of deliverance. In the supermarket, we're all one, our religion determined by our economic preferences.. the organic markets for the elite cultists and the everyday discounters for the masses. The priest is now the cashier scanning our inner desires and sending our payments of prayers to an invisible payment processor, who exists in forms unimaginable but before us it is a plastic chunk. “Pray to thee Mastercard, and let peace be upon us” or “Visahu Akbar”, we internally pray, our life's meaning disintegrated to a point of sale transaction. All transactions are little prayers, one in made in hope that we're not found as frauds or bankrupt. The lowest rungs of hell are populated by those who cannot pay, as anyone with a non-functioning credit card at a supermarket checkout line or hanging outside the supermarket doors with wrinkled paper cups and broken teeth can attest.
Where the damned go to beg is a good indicator of where the collective spirit of our soul lives. While the original spiritual centers become depopulated, there's increasing lines outside the busy commercial centers of the city. Our ideas of green fields, blue skies and cows with bells dangling from their necks, this Alpine idea of heaven is pasted on disposable milk cartons, the only touch with the teats of mother nature. Stories of indifference and exploitation constantly mirror our lives and yet after consuming them our real salvation is in the supermarket racks, finding the best deal, that favorite fruit or a extravagant box of sugar, hallucinating of making a difference while tethered to our irreversible desires. Long live the supermarket, for hell would be a world without one.