Mass Imperfection
God and I were having one of those rambling conversations that ultimately lead to me complaining about something. Then, just a moment too late to stop myself, I said something that I knew was going to lead to God telling me that “the grass is always greener on the other side.”
But I was wrong.
Instead she told me that every blade of grass is the right shade for someone. And just as there are a few shades of green that account for most grasses, there are also often a few generalizations that can cover most people.
So while I was pointing out that man seems drawn to whatever is harder to get, I was missing an important part of the equation. I pointed out that when everything was made by hand, the epitome of desirability was the ability to produce goods so alike that they were indistinguishable, but that now that mass production is the norm, folks flock to sites like Etsy so that they can pay a premium for goods with the genuine imperfections that come from handcrafting. But God set me straight, she rightfully pointed out that the same people that clammer for homemade goods are not the ones that go nuts for injection molded trinkets, on the whole.
Then, even before I could say, “well some of them are,” she pointed out that some people want certain goods to have a homemade feel but other goods to have the smooth perfection of mass production, and that some people like having essentially the same goods both in handmade form and in laser-precise editions, and that these two variants are just two more shades of green.
She even told me that if I thought about it hard enough, I could probably even come up with fifty shades of green. I told her I wasn’t masochistic enough to try.
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