Loose Cargo

“We are stardust, we are golden …”

Joni Mitchell, Woodstock

Sorry, Joni, but let’s face it:  we are cargo.

A passenger is dragged violently off a plane to make room for late-arriving airline employees.  A mother is assaulted by a flight attendant confiscating her baby stroller.  A peaceful passenger is removed from a flight because, after a lengthy delay, he desperately needed to use the plane’s restroom. If we fly these days, we are squeezed into a space so small that our legs cramp and   been shrunken, and we’re fed tiny packages of nuts and pretzels.

But this isn’t a rant against the airline industry.  I’m an English major, and I tend to think metaphorically.  And these outrageous episodes make a great metaphor for what’s happened to us as people.

Those in the cockpit consider us cargo. Now cargo has value, of course. But it’s passive.  It must be stowed correctly, sorted by shape and weight, and carefully restrained.  And one package is pretty much interchangeable with another, unless it’s really valuable; then it deserves, and gets, special handling.  Sometimes it gets tossed around and damaged in transport; it’s all part of the process.  For efficiency, it’s cataloged, classified and crated, stored like with like. 

Kind of like us.  Politicians see us as separate voting blocs:  Urban middle class, Rural working class, African-American, Latino, Jewish or Roman Catholic or Evangelical, etc.  Marketers divide us into “lifestyle segments.” Our habits are assessed and analyzed, increasingly efficiently, and we’re crated into a convenient box until they need to open us up and use us.  And increasingly, we’re doing it to each other.

We’ve become Amazon when we should be Etsy, a mass commodity rather than a boutique craft.

Well, I for one, am tired of being considered a package.  And I suspect it’s the same with those who are part of Black Lives Matter and the Women’s Marches and even those who voted for Trump.  We deserve, and we should demand, to be treated with dignity and respect on this flight we’re all on.  We have much more in common than those who exploit us would have us think; we need to recognize and assert that.

“…and we’ve got to get ourselves back to the Garden.”