erewhon, everywhere

I'd heard about the ostentatious grocery store Erewhon before the book of the same name. Which is odd because the book was first published in 1872, while the upscale grocery chain was founded in 1966 as a health foods store and producer. I suppose the notoriety of a $22 technicolor smoothie plays better than a 150 year old book in the age of social media.

According to the author Samuel Butler, whose narrator stumbles across the lost civilization of Erewhon while trekking stubbornly through nearly-impassable mountain landscapes, the Erewhonians were of unparalleled beauty and vitality. At first glance, the utopia of Erewhon appears to be a place of widespread happiness and health with few exceptions. The only concerns about the unfamiliar interloper (who lives to tell the tale) seem to be whether or not he has arrived in good health, and his scandalous possession of a pocket watch. More on the timepiece in part two.

In Erewhon, if one falls ill or lacks adequate good health generally, strict rules and cultural conventions can prescribe punishments like prison, hard labour, and even at one time, death. Commit fraud, adultery or murder? Erewhonian society believes such wayward citizens can be rehabilitated, or "straightened". But catch a cold one time too many, and it's off to the mines.

Butler intended for his story to be one that satirized the quirks of Victorian society. He could not have anticipated that it would remain a darkly accurate critique of modern societies while also spawning the name for what would become a chain of 13 stores in the Los Angeles area catering to performative-wellness-obsessed celebrities and influencers.

A constant pressure to appear to be full of health and beauty as defined by the norms of the day is nothing new. Just ask the Victorians. However, in the age of social media we are now all on a stage and compelled to present ourselves as optimized "brands", everyone achieving the aspirational and with something to sell.

Wellness as an industry has successfully brainwashed generations of consumers into believing the lie that being healthy and beautiful is a matter of morality. If you do not conform, you're failing the most basic task of being human, and you are a bad person. But not to worry, you can buy products of all varieties that promise to improve your lot in the pursuit of looking like the AI-generated models of perfection now filling the pages of magazines. At the very least you can spend money trying to look like that movie star with her Erewhon shopping bags full of $40 sea moss gel.

Of course conflating the concepts of health and attractiveness (or fuckability, as the kids call it) with a moral existence could be considered a symptom of collective insanity, but here we are. In the book, Erewhon is similarly trapped by this absurd expectation that mortal bodies never perform at anything less than their best. Citizens go to great lengths to conceal their illnesses and injuries, because the consequences are disproportionately cruel and your neighbour is likely to turn you in to the authorities if they hear you so much as sneeze. Even childbirth is regarded as a great misfortune and receives the relatively mild punishment of a good shunning.

Here in the real world we have concocted an even more effective and addictive method for keeping people afraid that their appearance and bodily functions are in constant need of improvement. We participate in self-surveillance by sharing highlight reels of our ordinary lives online for others to consume, putting forward only the most appealing, curated moments and calling it authenticity. We are collectively unkind to those born unable to meet today's beauty standards, and take a narrow view of the value of anyone infirm or disabled; our shallow, ableist society finds the friction of anything imperfect to be a moral failing and will proudly say so in the comments, just so long as we don't have to use our real names.

How many times has a well-meaning acquaintance lectured me about the benefits of intermittent fasting, or how a particular brand of rosehip oil is the secret ingredient for perfect skin. Or how if I would just work at perfecting my morning routine, I might become a happier, more productive member of society?

As it turns out, those who feel they know best which wellness trends are worth following are usually the same people who hold that belief only because someone else convinced them it was so. The cult of personal optimization is adept at making individuals believe that they are deciding for themselves which route of consumption will grant them better health or a more efficient route to enlightenment. Meanwhile, they line-up with a gaggle of other consumers to get their hands on the latest tonic that they saw promoted by an influencer on social media. To put a finer point on it, the original store and expanding empire of Erewhon has in its DNA all the hallmarks of an actual cult.

The appearance of wellness is also considered an indication of wealth, and we all love feeling superior to others on occasion, even if it is mostly a matter of contrived performance and fake benchmarks. Does having more money make anyone better than anyone else? Of course not. But our capitalist society harbours this sentiment in every aspirational purchase we make. In Butler's Erewhon this idea is taken quite literally, as those with the most wealth are regarded as having nearly impeccable moral standing, so long as their health never fails them. But hey, with greater resources come greater opportunities to conceal and correct any illness. Or in the case of our current reality, wealth can hire the best plastic surgeons and buy that single $20 strawberry flown in from Japan.

How am I confident that this unending need to feel superior is an uncomfortably universal desire? The success of reality tv certainly isn't a reflection of some innate human humility. We watch to make ourselves feel better about our choices and bask in the accomplishment of engaging in relatively benign behaviour, when compared to publicly performed housewife spats and bikini-clad love triangle implosions.

Others have said it better than I can here, how Erewhon the store is less grocer and more museum. An altar at which consumers can prove their worth and beauty by basking in the presence of perfect produce, and then post about it to social media.

Performing wellness is not a new idea and the strategies employed by those of us afflicted with fallible human bodies have barely evolved in the 150 years since Erewhon was written. We have created new spaces in which to proclaim our health and shill the products and lifestyles that will make us some money off of the worries of others, just click the affiliate link for a special discount, right after you like and subscribe.

Unfortunately for the Erewhonians, and for us, the ultimate, inevitable failure in the pursuit of wellness and personal optimization is death. This final betrayal by our bodies is a just another problem yet to be solved, according to the endless stream of "biohacking" advice passed off as informative articles and well-meaning online content. In the fictional nation of Erewhon, it was lamented that there could be no appropriate punishment for this final act of being unwell, as the perpetrator would indeed, already be dead.

Amusingly, this possibility of posthumous performance is something that even Samuel Butler got very near to describing 150 years ago, in an Erewhon chapter about the uncontrolled proliferation of statues honouring the deceased. These figures clogged up Erewhonian streets and town squares, becoming such a nuisance that an effort was made to force the fad out of fashion. Kind of like the noise (and now slop) now clogging up the internet.

Do I have an overstuffed shelf of cosmetic potions in my medicine cabinet? Do I wear a device that tells me if I'm not getting enough steps or sleep? When I was on social media, did I post only the most flattering "proof" of my fabulous, exciting, oh-so-interesting lifestyle? Of course. I'm human like everyone else.

In Erewhon, the narrator repeatedly observes how the norms and customs of that society were never questioned. People engaged in performative activities like "musical banking" and never appearing to be unwell. Even when asked by an inquisitive outsider, they could not explain their own behaviour.

My hope in considering the larger context for some of my own choices is to detach from the idea that there is some moral superiority or greater value in my participation. I am fully aware that the pursuit of physical perfection and an optimized healthy lifestyle is, in the end, purely performance. Yep, the face cream is largely a lie, but when I look in the mirror while applying it for the umpteenth time, I am consciously thinking about my motivations for doing so.

Back in the land of Erewhon, there is the matter of Butler's "Darwin among the machines" chapters, a surprisingly relatable examination of how mechanical objects such as stopwatches became illegal in that fictional nation. If only Butler had also imagined the so-called rise of AI. To be continued...