The Bottle Cap Hunters

Some years back the kids in my neighborhood formed a “community” with an economy based on bottle caps. Each kid adopted a “job” of their own choosing, and for a good while playing “community” was all the rage. At some point, though, the interest died out, and after some time had passed I asked my younger son what happened with the community.

My son explained that one of the neighbor girls had gone to visit her grandmother, and while there discovered a huge supply of bottle caps, and so returned to the community as a “rich” girl. At that point the entire focus of all the community members turned toward finding more bottle caps. My son said that interest in playing community began to wane, and eventually died out, as nobody was doing their selected job anymore, but instead everyone was giving all of their effort to “looking for bottle caps upon the ground!”

His very words.

The way that this neighborhood community played out struck me as a microcosm for the current state of the world. Instead of doing our jobs, many of us have become completely absorbed in looking for bottle caps upon the ground. Indeed, any time I see magazines with titles like MONEY or FORTUNE I read those titles as, in substance, BOTTLE CAP HUNTER.