Boxes: A Social Commentary

By Michael Barrett

What do you do with what you want to store away?

Put it in boxes, of course

When you have too much stuff, keep your boxes in bigger storage boxes

Store people away by convincing them to live in boxes

Travel in separate boxes

Work on a box

In a boxed work environment

In a big box built to store companies

In a boxed city

Put education in boxes

Teach with boxes

Learn from boxes

Prove your intelligence with boxes

Prove your expertise with boxes

It starts as soon as you’re born

Put your racial identity in a box

Box your religious views

Box your sex

Regiment political participation with boxes

Talk about solving problems around a box

Pay with boxes

Write with boxes

Communicate with boxes

Passively entertain yourself with a box

Passively entertain the masses with boxes

Regiment mass spirituality with boxes

Seize peoples’ energy with boxes

Farm in boxes

Put food in boxes

Cook in boxes

Shop in a big box

Shop with a smaller box

Better yet, box stores in a box mall

After you have lived your life to the fullest, you get put in a box.

“We’re always putting things in boxes. All thoughts, all words are labels on boxes; therefore we feel we have to get everything boxed, and so we put ourselves in boxes. Everything is put in boxes, but actually everything else in nature doesn’t go that way.” -Alan Watts

“Wherever human beings have been around you see rectangles and straight lines, because we’re always trying to straighten things out, and so that’s the very mark of our presence.”-Alan Watts

“You can’t fight it, it’s the system. You build everything according to these shapes because they are easy to store away in a place that is a box In the first place.” –Alan Watts

What comes to mind when you hear this name?

Death Valley

Photo: Bob Canfield

Photo: Nicole Inclan

“Earthrise” -1968

Physical ConceptualIn

divi

dual

Soci

etal

StereotypesPrejudice

DiscriminationOppression

IsolationRegimentation

Institutional Power

Boxes

Paradigm Metaphors • Industrial – Utility– Linearity– Conformity– Standardization

• Organic– Vitality – Creativity – Diversity– Customization

-Metaphors by Sir Ken Robinson

Photo: Nicole Inclan