We like to feel better, at least I know I do. When the world feels like it is the proverbial handbasket headed to you know where, we seek out ways to ease the pain. And Lord knows since Felon 45 took up residence in the Oval (how in the name of all that is holy did we elect that cretin twice?) there has been a lot of pain. Most of the good work done by the US around the world being dismantled, corporations being given free rein to plunder and pollute, science being dismissed or dispensed with, the arts coming under attack, the most vulnerable of us ignored or brutalized and citizens murdered in the streets by the people entrusted to protect them. Did I forget anything? Undoubtedly, but I’d say that’s plenty. So, yeah, we need solace and relief. Self-care is great and I personally take a lot of solace in working with teenagers and thinking about Burning Man, two things that give me hope. Not to mention nesting in the love of my family and lots of good medication. I hope you have such things, too, but I am also here with words of caution about the less obvious ways we try to feel better, those that are about assuaging guilt and the illusion of agency. Can you do things that are performative to yourself? Hmm. If you’re sensing that my cynicism has broken free of its tethers and running amok, you are right, Strap in.
Let’s talk recycling. You know, that wonderful little piece of work we do so we can claim our bit of righteousness in saving the planet. You probably very carefully look for the little triangle thing, make sure it goes in the bin – maybe even multiple bins if you live in a particularly high-minded community and you have to look for the actual type of triangle thingie – and dutifully drag your bin to the curb for our kind and conscientious municipal service to haul away. Yep. I do. And, boy if you don’t you are just a terrible human being deserving of shame and reproach. Don’t you care about the planet? Climate change? Do your part! If I pitch a yogurt cup into a trash receptacle – gasp! – I get that little tug of regret and self-recrimination for being a shitty human who isn’t fit for good liberal society. It stings a little and is even weirder for doing so because I fucking know better! That triangle heeding, sorting and hauling means absolutely nothing – squat, zippo, nada, nil.
Even if I lived in one of the really careful, over the top eco-minded cities in America that actually tries to do it the way it needs to be done to work – in the neighborhood, no pun intended, of around 2% of cities nationwide – that yogurt cup would still only have about a nine per cent chance of being recycled. And I don’t live in one of the cities. It still costs my city a butt-ton of money to try even as it knows it isn’t actually having an appreciable effect. So why do they, and I for that matter, bother? Because if we didn’t we would be vilified for the worst of all social sins: not caring. I can’t confidently vouch for my city, but am willing to stand up and proudly declare, maybe even pounding my chest a little bit, that I do care. And I do. I don’t want the planet to burn down around our ears, or the next generation’s for that matter, honest. But I, like all of us, have fallen victim to one of the great psy-ops campaigns of all time. The one that convinced us that we were the problem and, worse, that it was in our power to change it. Yeah, right. Disney, Lassie, Uncle Sam, for fuck’s sake a weeping Native American have all been wielded like moral bludgeons to make it our patriotic, even human, duty to do our part, cause if we don’t we’re doomed. There are two problems: it isn’t our fault and we can’t fix it.
Yes, that was a tad facile – you got me. But not nearly as much as you think. Let’s stay with our yogurt cup. I already pointed out it’s no-use trip into the bin, but let’s back up. Nestle, depending on who you ask, produces between 1.3 and 1.7 million metric tons of plastic every year, 98% of it in one-use containers. Pepsi, 2.5. But Coke really does beat Pepsi in this lack-of-taste test at 4.1. Those metric tons (is it tonnes if you’re using metric?) translate to measurement-hampered Americans as 9.1 billion pounds. But it is our job to throw it all away or we’re the bad guys. I hope you see where I’m going. And plastic is an easy target, but all sorts of other stuff – cardboard, aluminum, paper, etc – is almost as bad and all gets under the same psy-ops to make it our fault. As long as we carry the burden, and feel bad if we don’t, we give a pass to the bastards that are to blame and could do something. But they spend more money dodging responsibility than problem solving. I’m not saying stop, both for the minuscule effect it has and so you feel better – or at least not guilty. I just wonder if the energy we spend for that minuscule effect could be gathered and focused into making those fuckers own up we might be better off. It isn’t a bad thing to do, just don’t expect change from it. There are other examples of this phenomenon.
Have you ever heard the phrase “conscious consumption”? This is the idea that if we all shop really carefully we can bring the retail monsters to their knees and make them change. This is presented in the “vote with your wallet” maxim. Or “boycotts” of stores or products. I’ll not deny that not buying from Amazon gives a certain smirky moment of satisfaction, the idea of sticking my thumb in Bezos’ eye making me think both that I am cool and righteous. Guess what? He doesn’t care. Amazon doesn’t care – no, not that way either – not even one little bit. I have no idea how many of us would have to stop buying from that smiling monolith – talk about smug! – for them to even consider blinking, but it is more than we will ever get to by going on social media and shouting “BOYCOTT AMAZON!”. We have a bad habit of giving ourselves way too much credit. We also confuse boycotts with organizing, or worse, think we replace the latter with the former. Can we visualize the amount or organization it would take to enact an effective boycott of Amazon? Boycotts exist downstream of organizing and the best organizers in the world don’t have that kind of juice. The most likely, indeed, oft-occuring outcome of non-organized boycotts is resentment and sniping amongst the people who are supposed to be allies. Remember the dirty looks I got for not “recycling” my yogurt cup. Imagine the vitriol in response to a reaction to the online shouting – if I were online in that way – of “Why bother?”. See, now they get a double endorphin boost of moral virtue for not buying at Amazon and superiority to me. What a rush! And Amazon still doesn’t give the tiniest little shit.
There is another form of boycotting-that-isn’t that surrounds so-called ethical food purchasing. I knew someone who was adamant about not eating chicken because of the horrors of industrial scale chicken farming: the cruelty to the chickens, the environmental impact, the employee abuses etc. All real, not denying that. (I do sometimes find myself on the unpopular side of the cruelty piece. Are free range chickens “happier” than caged chickens, really? Chickens are truly dumb and I am not always willing to believe they know the difference. It might be that I just kinda hate chickens, but all things considered the human abuses taking place in the industry probably need more of our attention.) Tyson and their ilk are evil fuckers and deserve to be stopped and punished. But individually not buying their chicken will not do that. The problem is not that we are buying Tyson’s chicken, but that we aren’t buying local chicken. Unless the entire country plans on no longer eating chicken, which seems unlikely, eliminating Tyson solves nothing. We need to replace it. Refusing to eat chicken based on moral grounds is the opposite of that. Tyson needs competition, not boycotting.
You can see the same thing playing out in pretty much every industrial scale food industry. Beef is beyond evil, on so many levels; corn is egregiously stupid, pork is an amazing parallel to poultry, etc, etc. But. This is all a result of a horrific combination of late-stage capitalism, unchecked greed, enshittification, regulatory capture, unfettered monopolization and the utter failure of government to act responsibly. We, as citizens, are culpable, yes. But every time we assuage our guilt with performative gestures of resistance and convince ourselves that we’re “doing something” we allow it to continue.
Now I am most definitely guilty of “self-performative” posturing, even as I rail against it. When I found out about Google’s history and practices – dumbing it down so people would need to make searches, thus enticing more advertisers despite their 90% market share, paying Apple $20B a year to stay out of the search engine business, blatant mining and sale of personal data, etc – I got on my high horse and stopped using Google, actually paying to use Kagi. (Which, by the way is a way better search engine, doesn’t data mine and keeps its AI practices in check. I highly recommend it.) But I still use Google home. So maybe this is just a case of getting pissed, even as I know Google doesn’ t care one whit one way or the other. I think I feel better? At least I am using a better tool and being satisfied about not using Google. But, yes, I am guilty, guilty, guilty. I no longer buy beef because the industry makes me want to scream, but I don’t support local grazers. I dumped Windows because Microsoft sucks (all hail Linux!) but am still laboring along with legacy programs. And it is very possible this not-so-little indignant screed is self-flagellation, pointing out the futility and stupidity of these types of actions to remind myself that I suck. I’m not judging or berating YOU, but US. And it is worth remembering that part of how we got here was by being manipulated by true masters of the art. The money and effort put into getting us to believe all this is staggering. It would be more surprising if we hadn’t fallen for it.
Rounding back a bit, what needs to be remembered is that organization is the only solution, and that boycotting is downstream of organization, and is a product of it, not a replacement for it. Look at the civil rights era. The bus boycotts and lunchroom activism may or may not have begun organically, but it eventually only forced structural change through the systematic, grinding, relentless organizing work of a remarkable group of people. Or Minneapolis. Yeah, people got fed up and started showing up. But don’t forget the organized and coordinated efforts of things like the ICE watchers, neighborhood coalitions and trackers. Without those structures those fed up people wouldn’t have known where to show up or what to do when they got there. So when those righteous instincts kick in – and holy shit do we need more of them to kick in! – try to take a look at how best to apply the energy and passion. We need actions that work towards systemic change, not as sops to our conscience and boosts to our self-satisfaction. Thanks for reading.