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At my local grocery store I began to see parking stalls identified with signs that read "Family Parking", "Reserved for Parents of young children", "Senior Parking", "Expectant Mothers" and similar.
Although you found these signs sporadically when they first began appearing, they have become the norm.
I don't have issues with the signs themselves.
Targeting a specific demographic in the guise of a moral imperative is quite clever.
It makes complete sense why a grocery store chain would want to cater to and target families over the person living on their own; they produce significantly more revenue.
The same can be said of a woman about to give birth.
Baby food and diapers are expensive and garnering the loyalty of a pregnant woman makes good economic sense.
If the demographics of a given neighborhood warrant it, so does catering to seniors.
Marketing to these groups is good business, but that is all it is.
"Giant Grocery Conglomerate Inc.
" does not give a damn about making the lives of the mother of three easier unless it affects their bottom line.
This is a marketing campaign and is on par with seniors day, student discounts, coupons, and loyalty discount cards.
Setting aside special parking for special groups is designed to instill loyalty to a brand name.
This is not a diatribe on the evils of large corporations.
The fact that someone has come up with a way to market to these groups without offending any others is genius.
My issue with these proclamations is this: people follow them.
They read the signs, and assuming they do not fit into the indicated category or meet the required qualifications they look for somewhere else to park.
What troubles me is people just doing as they are told.
What troubles me is a simple sign, designed as part of a marketing effort, defining people's moral or ethical framework.
Writing down words is a simple thing, but their affect on our actions should be a more complex process than simply reading and accepting.
There should be some thought involved.
In this case my personal thought process is this: These signs imply an association with handicapped parking spaces, and imply the same moral drivers.
This is ridiculous.
Having a three year old and being confined to a wheelchair should not be compared.
While I am sure that dragging a small child and an infant along to do grocery shopping feels like a handicap, it is not.
It is a life choice made freely by many people.
Making that choice can not reasonably be equated with having a crippling spinal injury or an amputated limp.
Handicapped parking stalls are there to allow a sector of society, that has physical limitations, access to services and activities that they might otherwise be excluded from.
Putting measures in place within our society to accommodate handicapped people has been a long slow process.
The successful implementation of many of these measures, like special parking stalls, represents a struggle undertaken by many people and is now reflected in our laws and our moral inclination to respect those laws.
Equating this with having a child or turning 60 is silly.
Deciding to have a family does not make you handicapped, and does not come with any "front of the line" privileges.
Coming back to my original point, what concerns me about this is that people simply read a sign and do what it says.
The parking itself is a pretty small issue obviously, and in fact, tends to benefit me quite often, as it guarantees me parking in a crowded lot, because in case the above has not made it abundantly obvious, I park in these reserved spots, in fact I go out of my way to park in them.
So, it is not the parking that bothers me.
This is indicative of a behavior I see on a larger scale that I find scary.
The acceptance of any instruction, information, or point of view without any thought or analysis, without applying your own intellect to see if it is a point of view that you share, or even if it makes sense to you, is dangerous.
Certainly special parking for a specific group is pretty benign, but the process of blandly accepting instructions to do so is the same mental process that people go through when denying privileges to certain groups.
I do not think people give anymore thought to those parking signs than they did to "Whites Only" sings in diners, or implementing special identification for Jews in Germany.
You may think I am stretching the point here, but I truly believe that we have to teach ourselves to question everything or we risk much through blind acceptance.
There are no consequences associated with questioning a parking sign, but not many people would bother.
Compare that with the significant consequences of questioning the Nazi government as they implemented increasingly isolating rules to a segment of society.
Again, you may think I am exaggerating my point, that the two situations are not comparable.
People always think when the time comes, they would stand up, but, if you do not question the easy things, you will never question the big things.
Acceptance without thought becomes a way of life.
This is such a simple thing.
Something that should be easy to say no to.
I encourage you to do exactly that.
Not that it matters all that much, but it is good practice, so that when your boss, your newspaper, a lobbyist, your government puts up a sign that does matter, you will have some experience asking questions and demanding explantions from authority.
Or you could just do like you are told, which leaves some really good parking spots for me.
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