The Enlightenment

We live in a world dominated by shipments and packages. It seems everyone gets everything these days right on their doorstep: appliances, clothing, even food and beverages.

Certain companies, like Amazon, have sought to edge out competition by having one-day delivery. Click a button on a computer, and the next day, an item will turn up at your home!

This practice, to borrow a phrase, needs to be creatively disrupted.

The past decade has seen an unprecedented mass death in brick-and-mortar stores. Small businesses and massive chains alike have been culled, as delivery services have rendered them useless.

Malls are a blight on the landscape, but these stores have bounds more life than the bleak delivery warehouses that are replacing them. Ending one-day delivery will give small businesses a fighting chance to thrive.

One-day delivery is not particularly good for the environment. Service companies send out additional vans to meet their sharp deadlines, meaning more gas used and more wear and tear on roads.

You don’t like gas prices or taxes? Both would be lower without one-day delivery.

And finally, we need to stop with this always-on-edge, ahead-of-the-curve, faster-faster-faster mindset we have in America. What with instant communications, instant food, instant transactions, and instant everything, we are living in a world with too much information!

No wonder there’s such a high incidence of mental anguish in America. It’s because we can’t get a mental break! We are under assault by a constant barrage of information. We don’t remember what it’s like to be bored.

Everything is always moving forward, whether that be work, plans, school, or so forth. One-day delivery is just a part of this machine. There are no breaks or stops, and it’s getting worse now that Amazon is trying to roll out same-day delivery to keep things moving, chop chop!

This has to stop. I don’t know how to achieve it, but I think we need to move away from one-day delivery. Make it at least two days. Shift down the gears. Slow it down.

Take a deep breath, and enjoy the slow.