The things I do for grad school apps...

I literally sent this to the Manhattan School of Music as my essay response to the question: "what is one invention the world would be better off without and why?" Am I just nuts, or will they find it amusing?
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I remember in great detail the first time I saw this abomination to the traditionally solid work ethic of humanity; I arrived at my friend’s apartment, a great conductor and upstanding citizen, and eventually had to use the bathroom. After going about my business, I unassumingly walked up to the sink to wash my hands and, lo and behold: the soap dispenser spat foam on my hands. There was no oddly colored liquid with a disturbing texture and questionable scent. Instead, there was a mass of foam. The soap dispenser, as unpretentious as it had initially seemed, had lathered my soap for me and presented it to my palm, expecting me to be pleased that I wouldn’t have to endure the hardship of frothing my own soap.

When I exited the bathroom, I made my displeasure known to my friend in short order. I confronted him, a man of great integrity and awareness, about owning this distasteful product. He responded with laughter, saying that he found it amusing, and that his amusement somehow outweighed the implicit immorality of ownership. He even made the argument that the product is viable because some people have disabilities that may render them unable to lather their own soap. While this may be true, this disgrace would not be mass-marketed and pumped out by mighty corporations like Target or Wal-Mart if it was intended for this unfortunate niche market, nay a savvy soap-making mogul wouldn’t waste his time and money on something so trivial.

Allow me to back up for a minute. In previous years, as I entered adolescence and neared the realm of adulthood, I began to see all of the ways in which the world was losing its sense of values. I noticed how we were beginning to become more and more cut off from our fellow man – namely via cell phones and i-pods – and, as a complement to this development, increasingly lazy. Making a phone call takes effort and concentration – why not send a text? Going grocery shopping is so time-consuming and cumbersome, so lets order groceries online! Need the new Radiohead album? Thank God for the i-tunes store and Amazon.com! This epidemic of push-button convenience and anti-social behavior is doing naught but developing further, and at an exponential rate. I found myself blaming technology for this evolution, but then questioning whether technology was truly the culprit. It seemed to me a case of the chicken and the egg; which comes first may be interesting material to ponder and debate amongst friends, but it is ultimately irrelevant in this instance: the chicken is still laying these eggs of sloth and sociopathic tendencies.

One might wonder what something so harmless as self-foaming soap has to do with this esoteric ranting on social dysfunction, and rightly so. My fervent hatred for this product is largely symbolic. In that moment, as I stood there feeling dirty about washing my hands, I had the realization that no matter what I say or do or think, the direction that this world is headed will never change. We are geared for minimizing our physical activity and physical interactions in the name of productivity: a brave new world, if you will. When I walked up to that sink, I encountered a new level of disdain and hopelessness for humanity at large. The gentle foam that caressed my hands had washed away my hopes of humanity turning this machine around. Self-foaming soap was the ultimate blow in a losing battle. Thanks for playing.