The Daily: 12 July 2024

I’m feeling whiney. Do we have to keep going off to jobs that, for the vast majority of us, are actively harming us in an existentially threatening manner even while we are dealing with those existential threats? Do we have to endure yet another round of weather that shouldn’t be possible except for all these harmful jobs churning up the atmosphere? Do we have to give our last pennies to the wealthy to pay for all this existentially threatening, churning weather?

And then… Do we have to hold an election in which one of the vilest humans ever spawned is likely to be elected? Again… And this time with a Supreme Court blessing on whatever nastiness springs out of that foul mouth. Assassinate a political rival? Sure. Close the borders? Of course. Fill up the prisons with anyone he doesn’t like? Absolutely. Make the US a living hell?

Well, would we notice a change…

For much of the world, life is a living hell. For much of the US, it has been hell since its founding. For much of every life, even those of privileged wealth, there is relentless hell every day. This world is hell. We made it that way.

The thing about all this hell is that we are complicit. It’s not only that a large number of us have to vote an asshole into office. A large number of us also have to choose to support whatever fool thing he decides to do — because he doesn’t do anything. Others have to carry out these acts. It’s all of us — from politicians to the police to the person who feels justified in hating difference. Even tossing trash out the car window is a choice that creates and supports the hell of our lives. We are all tainted. We are all making the decisions, doing the work, and building the culture that is harming us.

But, you say, I would never cast that vote, I would never aim a gun at a child, I would never follow fascist orders, I would never throw trash out the window. Well… Do you know where your investments are being spent and what politics they are funding? Do you own property that you rent short term with great returns though there are many unhoused? And what do you do with those returns? Do you expect your wants to be fulfilled without question? Do you dismiss poverty, abuse, pandemics and violence as just something that happens to “those people”? Do you know “those people”? Have you ever sat down to eat dinner with them? Do you protest decisions that you know are harmful? Do you even stop making them? When was the last time you refrained from doing something because it would damage other lives? When was the last time you considered who gets hurt by your choices?

And for those who are still feeling smug, have you given up your privilege or used it specifically to dilute it and spread equitability? Do you still fly around the world to conferences or vacation time-shares? Do you still buy plastic? Do you still eat food that travels the continent in refrigeration just to grace your table? Do you eat food that takes more energy to produce than it provides to your body? Worse, do you then throw any of that in the trash can?

When was the last time you helped someone you do not know? And was that help personal and direct or just a check in the mail to some organization that might spend some of your dollars in doing actual care-work?

When was the last time you stopped and thought about your life? And then did you start right back in on doing all the things that harm the world and yourself? And why…

Why do you have time to read this… and why am I writing it…

All of this is collusion. All of it is supporting an asshole in the White House. All of it is harming all of us. And we keep doing it anyway… even when we know that it would all just stop. This whole culture of hell would break down almost immediately. The assholes would all shrivel in isolation. These chains we wear would evanesce. We could escape hell, if we just stopped creating it anew each day, if we just stopped making these decisions to pile it on deeper and higher, if we just stopped working so damn hard every day to degrade and destroy our lives.

And there would be so laughably few negative consequences. If we decide to forego the harm, there is very little good that will be brought down with it. For example, what is the result of forgoing daily use plastic? The loss of many toxic jobs, the loss of revenues for some toxic industries, the loss of convenience. But there is an immediate gain in health world-wide, a gain in jobs that produce low-tech things that replace the plastic, and a gain in resources and energy that were formerly spent on producing and transporting the plastic and processing all that toxic waste and… sending profits to petrochemical industry share-holders. You also get to eat better, spend less money, and live in a cleaner, more joyful, world with less disease, death and extinction. Is plastic wrap really preferable to that?

How about forgoing travel and many forms of mindless entertainment? Or limiting your spending to necessities? Or learning to do more of the small work that your body requires? By hand…

How about something truly revolutionary like taking the time to heal? Not going to work. Not doing things that require spending more money. Maybe not even buying over-the-counter medications to treat symptoms of fatigue and general malaise. Just go for gentle walks, eat mild and simple food, and sleep. Now, apply that to healing your community, your culture, your place.

Yes, there would be a good deal of reorganization necessary, but if we are making decisions to help each other, then reorganization will follow. A new and likely better order will grow organically from our new decisions, perhaps quite rapidly. If we are focused on feeding people rather than making money selling food, then more people get to eat. Immediately. If we collectively spend what resources we have to house people, then that is both an immediate increase in the number of people who are safely housed and a drastic reduction in the number of people who have to work for wages in this system, propping it up, a cut to the laboring force, a lessening of harmful labor done. If we take care of each other, then we don’t need to work for wages to take care of ourselves.

Just think of the resources and healthy working bodies we could free up if we only got rid of the insurance industry… or professional sports… or Amazon. And none of that would have the slightest negative effect on the production or distribution of the things we need in this world, while having a profound effect upon the health of our lives and the way we choose to live, on the images we see, on the goals we pursue. Imagine our world views if we are living in a world of friends and partners. Imagine how we think of people when we are openly interdependent rather than unacknowledged parasites. Imagine the cleansing of our thoughts and the freeing of our minds that would flow from merely eliminating the trauma that we carry from living so inexplicably divided, so terrifyingly violent, so un-well. How much more productive would we be in caring for each other than we are in amassing wealth for ourselves!

But no… we must elect an asshole. We must go do the work that is killing us. We must destroy our planet for the sake of a few dollars for stupid, myopic men.

We have to have plastic and football and just in time delivery… and no time for gentle healing walks.

We have to weather more storms and more trash thrown out the window. We have to swallow the effluvia of privileged lives, turn our cheeks, cast our eyes down, and break our aching backs to clean up their filth. We have to endure. When real life in all its vibrant delight is right there, just beyond our fingertips… tantalizingly close… if only we could…

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©Elizabeth Anker 2024