Neither a Hunter Nor a Gatherer Be

My next leap in human evolution.

By Zach Hively

I have achieved what mad scientists and most of my ancestors could only dream of. Reached a plane of human existence that I never thought possible for mere middle-class mortals, let alone creatively self-employed creatives in creative fields where reporting income is its own creative art form.
I have had my groceries delivered.

​It happened, as so many evolutionary advances do, under intense duress: I was really, really short on time.

Time almost never works in my favor. By the time I wake up, and get out of bed, and enjoy my cups of coffee, and avoid contact with a single one of my neighbors and other people who keep leaving their homes to venture into public, the work day is practically clocking itself out. But I buckle down and get something done, even if that something is, hypothetically speaking, putting on real pants.

This day, though—this pivotal day was even shorter on time. It had Real Things that Needed to Be Done, or else there would be Dire Consequences. What these Dire Consequences were, exactly, is now lost to time. (One time that time worked in my favor.) They are not important.

What is important is that they were Dire Enough that I, being out of coffee beans, knew that I could not get to the grocery store without incurring them in all their direness. It was so bad that I was willing to pay someone else actual digital money to select my bananas for me. It was SO BAD that I was willing to do so even though this expense would not, in any way, be tax deductible. Not even creatively.

So I wrangled with the grocery store’s app. You might think this is time I could have spent shopping for my own damn self, or putting on a real shirt. But I did so in my own home office/studio space, so it counted as work.

A few hours later, I realized I had food on my front steps.

I did not have to interact with whoever—I presume it was a human, but it could have been a teleporter—brought my order to my door. I’m even pretty sure the chicken strips were mostly still frozen.

Human beings like me evolved as a species by being opportunistic. Also by being ruthless, murdersome apes. But also definitely partly by learning first to scavenge, then to do crop rotations, and now—in the greatest leap since delivery pizza—to skip any involvement in the food chain whatsoever.
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It’s the fulfillment of a great biblical prophecy: Neither a hunter nor a gatherer be. I have tasted this next step in our greater evolution, or at least my own personal one. Affording grocery delivery is what creative success now looks like to me. Or it will, once the app figures out how to pick a damn banana.