Toilet paper hoarding? This is classic psychological…anal…behavior. Meaning, Covid-19 has all of us searching for some semblance of sanity and a way to restore order—cleanliness and purity. We want to feel that our world is neat, organized and perfectly arranged again. We don’t want to deal with the messiness of washing our ass!! Ugh!! We can’t take it!!
Seriously folks! Panic buying is irrational. It’s psychological. In our solipsistic-materialistic culture, panic buying is completely out of control. Yet, from what I’ve been reading about Italy, which was hit hard by the pandemic, the shelves are still mostly stocked.
Panic buying is a competitive, narcissistic entitlement driven by fragile egos.
The thinking is, “I have to get more than you, to prove that I’m still special … to feel safe, to feel secure.” It doesn’t matter that we can never eat it. It just matters that we have it. Then we’ll know that we’re the special one.
This fits in with the logic of our rugged, individualistic, capitalist culture—a culture built on status envy, which in turn relies on us depriving ourselves of our own inherent worth. Translation: I buy things which are essentially a status symbol to prove how much better I am than you because nobody is allowed to have intrinsic worth—and thus, I am forever in desperate, bitter competition simply to feel that I matter.
Ouch! It’s awful and it pains me to even write this.
It’s easy to see how, when we are born into such a culture—where we feel like we are always battling folks just to feel secure and worthy—we end up panic buying our way out of catastrophe.
Boom! That’s sad. What else is there to do in such a rugged individualistic-competitive, “me-first” culture? Why should we leave anything on the shelf for anyone else when what we’ve always been to each other is— a rival, an opponent, an enemy, an adversary. When yesterday, we may have competed with someone for a job, income, healthcare, retirement. And today we are competing for toilet paper and dry pasta. Neither of these things is enjoyable. But as I said earlier, what matters is only that we have more than anyone else.
Realistically speaking, we have to restore order and safety and purity to our morally broken world. Panic buying is a kind of infantile-regressive narcissistic mania for security and order amidst a catastrophe. Narcissistic in the sense that we have to outdo each other in order to feel good about ourselves, which we are desperate to feel.
Here’s the deal: Panic buying only helps one party in society—the profiteers. They exploit our feelings of vulnerability, fear, and insecurity and jack up the prices—a cycle that’s already begun in a lot of places. I heard that someone is selling tiny bottles of hand sanitizer for $10 per bottle.
Do we want to grow up a little and leave something on the shelves for the mother, grandfather, nurse working a long shift? Can we behave with just a modicum of responsibility, maturity and gratitude during a global pandemic…and if we can’t, then who are we, really?
Dear lovely human beings, don’t panic buy. Instead let’s understand ourselves a little bit. Laugh at ourselves. If the world was really ending, my friend, the last thing we’d be worried about is…wiping our ass to a stench-less glow. Or whether or not we are going to have pasta for dinner again next week … or bread and butter and jelly.
We’d be eating one last ice-cream sundae, that last double-bacon cheeseburger burger, that last 12oz steak, that last turtle cheesecake. We’d be giving that last embrace. That last kiss. Saying that last I love you. And remembering, for just a moment, how beautiful, strange, and improbable this thing called life has been.
Stay safe.
In peace, love and light,
Paula
