I had a little meltdown this morning while checking my inboxes (truthfully this happens more often than is probably healthy). First there was Joanna Weiss’s piece on “The Supermarket Superstardom of Marty the Robot” in Boston Magazine. This googly-eyed machine, initially intended as a spill-sweeper-upper, has become a celebrity in its own right (I refuse to say “his”), with social media accounts and plushies and special appearances at Fenway Park. 

Then my husband forwarded me a thing about a hydroponics company growing greens inside Swedish supermarkets as an “eco-innovation” that’s supposed to solve all kinds of problems. I’m not opposed to hydroponics by any stretch, especially when used in places where there’s not reliable access to water or land or fresh foods. Check out the amazing 1for3 project in the West Bank as an example of hydroponic growing in a situation of incredible adversity. 

But in a Swedish supermarket? I just thought, “Great—more farming without land, without soil, without farmers who have relationships with land and soil and place. More shiny AI, more pricey leafy greens, more techno-utopianism of the kind that’s been promising to fix the industrial food system for well over a century now.”

Hence the meltdown.

It’s okay, I’m mostly over it now, and back at work writing reports for this week’s co-op board meeting. But it’s yet another moment when all of my efforts feel very small and the supermarket feels very big. I’m trying to think of ways to convince just a few more of our co-op shoppers to buy fish on a regular basis so we can continue our partnership with a wonderful Boston-based distributor offering an alternative to the giant fishing industry. Meanwhile, people are wetting themselves about a robot that makes shopping seem like less of a chore and more like fun. The supermarket goes on catering to our most childish impulses—we want what we want, when we want it, with a shiny toy and a way to save the planet without really changing anything about how we live our lives. Adulting is such a hard sell next to that.