If only the planet had a neighbor with a cure

Pond scum is a common analogy for the lowest classes of Americans. Perhaps it's best taken as part of a broader symbol - human society as a pool teeming with life. There's the scum at the bottom, the tadpoles feeding on it, the lily pads floating on the surface, the flowers grasping desperately skyward, and so many other layers.

You wait in line at the supermarket. It's nine at night, and you're a lone warrior, collecting an array of drinks to refresh the supply at a gathering. Your gathering. You arranged it, and you did the leg work, and therefore the mindshare taking place is your property. There is one express lane open, it being so late at night, and you mingle amongst bachelors in its cue.

A couple has dammed it, though, with their girth and their slow minds and their glut of products that clearly violates the twelve-item limit. Why doesn't anyone enforce these things? Why are these pustules allowed to breach the terms of the honor system? As if they have any honor anyway.

They buy cat food, and diapers, and Hot Pockets, and beer. They have a packet of food stamps and coupons with which to obtain all of this material at an immaterial cost to them. Meanwhile, your personal mindshare, which you spent so much time and money meticulously organizing, is fluttering away back home. The bachelors stare and mutter. The blockage is aware of what it is doing, but it doesn't care. How dare this pond scum break the rules in such a vile manner?

This system works better than you might perceive with your feeble, selfish mind. There is no pond scum, there is only a disease, but not a disease upon you or upon society, but a disease upon the Earth. We are the natural order, but in the same sense of a pox.