How About Them Eggs?
What hoarding eggs says about America, right now
Today, I made a very early run to Costco. I knew it was likely to be a little rough given that it’s the day before Super Bowl Sunday, but I was there when our local opened, and was hoping for the best.
I go to Costco with the mentality of conducting a targeted strike. On the way, I map out exactly what I need, where it’s located in the warehouse, and how I’m going to get in and out as quickly as possible. Occasionally, they move the protein powder or the almond milk, and that throws me off my game, but most of the time I’m in and out in thirty minutes.
Not today.
Why? Because I had to go into the cold room for milk, and the cold room was absolute chaos.
As I approached the cold room just a few minutes after opening, there was a veritable traffic jam of carts. As I got closer, I started noticing something: every cart near the cold room had at least two, two dozen packs of eggs.
Some had three.
As I maneuvered my way to the milk at the back of the cold room– for I, unlike the vast majority of my fellow Saturday morning shoppers, was not there for eggs– the room felt like it was just a few degrees below riot level conditions. People crowded around the pallet of eggs, some pushing past each other, where a sign above it read “LIMIT: THREE PER PERSON.” Obvious moms and dads were shoving back the cardboard separators between layers of eggs, and grabbing plastic egg containers like they were afraid they’d never see another egg again.
As I got my milk and moved on through Costco, I was gobsmacked by how many people had piled high three packs of two dozen eggs in their carts. I wanted to stop some folks and say “how do you plan to eat six dozen eggs before they go bad?” but thought better of it. I wasn’t in the mood to fight with strangers today.
As I waited in line to checkout, I found myself thinking about how “the price of eggs” became a justifier for not voting for Kamala Harris in the 2024 election, thanks to Donald Trump– how “the price of eggs” became a code, actually, for an unwillingness to vote for a Black woman— even as he promised that he would bring down the price of eggs “on day one.”
He hasn’t given anyone what he promised, but what else is new.
And now here we are, all scarcity and hoarding and wasting and shortage of eggs, as the price of eggs, and fundamentally the financial, physical and emotional cost of being American, skyrockets through the roof.
What does it say about a nation that hoards food that can’t be consumed, that refuses to only take what it needs but rather insists on denying others the most basic fundamentals for survival, that would rather watch what nourishes us go bad than share it with someone else?
It says a lot.
There are metaphors I could apply here.
Historically, in art, eggs are symbols of new life, fertility, rebirth and hope.
In Christianity, eggs symbolize the rebirth of Jesus, a rising from the dead.
In pagan cultures, eggs are a rite of Spring.
In Chinese culture, red-dyed eggs are used to celebrate the birth of a child, and symbolize prosperity and good fortune.
In Hindu mythology, all of the Universe was born from an egg containing the god Brahma, the creator.
This mad rush to hoard rebirth– not for you, just for me– this mad rush to waste hope– not for you, just for me– this mad rush to crush others to get to “prosperity” and to destroy creation while others bear the cost– not for you, just for me– well, it’s what billionaires trade in every day, isn’t it?
Welcome to the “it’s not just about the eggs, stupid” American economy.
It has always been the case that whole nations, and all of humanity, rise and fall together. No matter how much division is sown by those who want far more than what they need, the threads that connect us through food and climate and disease and water and so much more show us without fail that where one of us goes, so go us all.
Wildfires don’t care how much money you make. Neither do droughts or pandemics or hurricanes.
Yes, this egg shortage and concomitant hoarding may be about bird flu. But America has just left the World Health Organization, gutted the National Institutes of Health, paralyzed the Centers for Disease Control– as if ignoring the ways in which we are all connected through shared risk will magically cement division, or only harm those targeted groups that this administration believes aren’t worthy of survival.
It doesn’t work like that.
A long time ago, I spent years studying Hindu mysticism— Tantra of the Left (ha!), for those who are aware of the two versions; mine was the non-hyped-up non-over-sexualized other Tantra that is not Tantra of the Right (ha!)— originating from the South of India, specifically Tamil Nadu.
One concept I was introduced to during those studies was the concept of spanda– the idea that everything expands and contracts.
Your heart expands and contracts.
Your lungs expand and contract.
The cement paving our streets expands and contracts with temperature change.
Water does the same as it freezes and evaporates.
The universe, as best we know, began as an incredibly powerful contraction of energy and has been expanding in response ever since.
We begin as tiny cells– an egg, as it were, fertilized by other tiny cells– and we expand to consciousness and adulthood (if we’re lucky), and eventually, we return to tiny cells, and take on other forms (ashes to ashes, dust to dust).
Scarcity, on principle, is not in our nature.
Ongoing contraction is not sustainable without concomitant expansion.
Another principle I was introduced to in my studies was the principle of karma, which as defined by my Hindu philosophy teacher was a version of “every action has an equal and opposite reaction”— right on down to our cells.
One has to ask now, if one sees this moment through that lens: how long can we sustain contraction, destruction, tearing down and taking away, before an equal and opposite reaction rises up?
And the counterbalance to scarcity is abundance, prosperity, rebirth, hope, everyone having enough– all those things, after all, that eggs are supposed to represent.
It may take an extremely painful contraction– ah yes, like the final stages of birth– before we are able to recognize that expansion to provide for all of us is the only way that any of us will survive.
Good luck to those billionaires building bunkers in the hopes of escaping the future they’re creating daily with their choices.
Good luck to those billionaires wielding scythes of “governmental efficiency,” so that children starve and food is short and sickness abounds and everything goes to waste.
When you crack those eggs open, there’s no way to get them back in the shell.
When you crush the world, there is no such thing as winning.
When you force people to fear for their futures while you hoard everything until it goes rotten, eventually, there will be an equal and opposite reaction.
Which begs the question:
when there’s no eggs left to eat, do you eat the rich instead?
Particularly brilliant piece today, ECM. Thank you. I'd say eat the rich, but the thought positively turns me green. I'm pretty sure they taste like sh*t.
Before the election, I was at the grocery store getting a dozen eggs, and this woman made a comment like, “can you believe the price of eggs these days?“. At that point, I responded truthfully with, “they seem to be about the same price as always,“ which in fact they were. Maybe they had gone up a few cents, but it wasn’t noticeable. Of course that isn’t true now, but back in November it really wasn’t that noticeable at least not here in the Midwest. It was just a right-wing talking point.
What’s funny is now that they’re expensive, nobody’s blaming the president. Because it never was about that in the first place.