Bye Bye Bricks & Mortar

[mallorys_camera]

Apparently my analysis of America's retail sector gleaned from spending last week at the mall was spot on:

http://www.cnbc.com/id/101293199

Y'all know that somewhat sentimental but eerily prophetic E.M. Forster short story The Machine Stops? No? Well, you should:

http://archive.ncsa.illinois.edu/prajlich/forster.html

Comments

[old-cutter-john.livejournal.com]

Until recently, I had a fair amount of sympathy for the folks trying to make a living in brick-and-mortar stores. Now I figure they just gotta go; after all, Internet sales are the way of the future. The tipping point for me was the arrest of those three high-school basketball players waiting for the school bus in Rochester. Why that, and not the high-profile stories out of Macy's and Barney's in New York City? I guess those cases played a substantial role too, but it took one more. Maybe it's that the victims in Rochester were totally innocent bystanders, caught between authority figures making contradictory demands on them. In any case, retailers and their cops can all go to hell.

The Machine Stops has figured heavily in my spiritual journey. Don't I realize that the attitude I expressed in the last sentence of the preceding paragraph brings us closer to the world of the machine and its stoppage? Sure I do! But it's all God's will: My opinion of retailers doesn't matter, and my opinion of the world of the machine doesn't matter. Retail is going extinct, and humankind is aggregating into a larger organism, a cybernetic analog of a coral, which is apt to die in very large pieces. A fascinating horror story unfolding in the mind of God.

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

Interesting that you use the coral reef analogy. That's my favorite analogy too. (Thank you katestine) I see myself as a little fleck of magenta on a peach-colored reef. So many problemos arise from my lack of protective mimicry! But in the final analysis, what does it fucking matter?

The Machine Stops has always struck me as a really sentimental,indulgent story, and really atypical of Forster whom I always think of as a crisp, disciplined, unsentimental writer. But it has stayed with me for many, many years. So I guess in an odd way, it's important in my karmic pilgrimage as well.

Another story -- if you don't already know it -- equally important to me is this one:

http://www.online-literature.com/wellshg/5/

Felicitations of the season to you and _wind_spirit_

[nihilistic-kid.livejournal.com]

Nobody goes to the mall anymore; it's always too crowded.

[alumiere.livejournal.com]

I hadn't read that or I'd forgotten it, and I was pleasantly creeped out. Thank you.

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

I'm getting old and literal-minded: I had to stop myself from writing a three paragraph screed on how, no, the malls aren't really crowded.

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

You should also read The Door in the Wall then:

http://www.online-literature.com/wellshg/5/

[old-cutter-john.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the story! It inspires me to mourn the loss from our language of so many forms that Mr. Wells used; though I suppose if I were transported back to his time, it would be difficult to do without the forms that I use now but that hadn't yet been invented yet, and people would give me the hairy eyeball. Rightly or wrongly, I recognize it (the story, that is) as the inspiration for A Stop at Willoughby (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Stop_at_Willoughby), a Twilight Zone episode that I saw when it was first broadcast in 1960. The Door in the Wall, of course, is much more heavily focused on the process of selling out. At this point on my spiritual path, the story is irrelevant to me: first, because I'm living as I ought; and second, because my belief in reincarnation permeates my everyday reality. It's a very strange head space, and I'd only recommend it to the sort of person who's going to pass this way regardless.

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

Oh! Interesting catch with A Stop at Willoughby. Yes, I believe you're right: The Wells story is its obvious inspiration.

Interesting to me too, as a story-teller, that the TZ writers decided to strip the childhood context from the original story. I guess they knew the limits of their 22-minutes-plus-commercials venue, huh? :-)

I don't know that I agree with you that The Door in the Wall focuses on "selling out" though. At least, on what I would call "selling out."

Very young kids have excellent truth detectors in the cosmic sense. I sometimes do the experiment of casting my thoughts out on trains or sitting in waiting rooms. Invariably, it's the kids that feel it, that turn around and make eye contact. Very rare that adults feel it. (No, I don't gibber to myself or otherwise cue Twilight Zone theme music when I do it.)

I think the story is more about how adults deliberately exchange truth for what the Buddhists and Hindus call maya. :-)