Weekly Thoughts 4/13/24

I cleaned my apartment yesterday, and it’s really nice. I know I like it when my apartment is clean, but I haven’t learned to translate that into, “I should clean it regularly for myself.” There’s always a way to find something better to do.

That’s all for that, not much to say. My main topic is a piece of advice my mom said a lot as I was growing up: Just because you can doesn’t mean you should. I’m sure most people have heard it or some variation on the theme. It’s, like, really good advice, and recently I’ve been thinking about various ways to see issues through that lens. It has the obvious meaning, when you say it to a child, of, “Don’t do that,” with added encouragement to think through your actions rather than simply being scolded.

I’ve also been thinking about it in bigger, societal terms. So many of our problems and inequalities in society lead back to late stage capitalism. A few people at the top who already have a lot of money and control entire portions of the economy use their power and influence to bend everything in favor of them and their rich friends amassing more and more of money, leaving nothing for us. Vanity and greed, backed by the illusion of an ideology that, if you get at its roots, isn’t actually supportive of what they’re doing. Capitalism does function with greed, to get people to compete on who can make the most money, but the greed isn’t the point; it’s the competition. I don’t have to be super familiar with John Smith’s writing to say there’s a vision of capitalism where, just like you hear all the pundits and ideologues say, businesses compete fairly with each other by making better products and services, and grow and succeed as individual businesses. Somehow, I don’t think the idyllic capitalism they lie about us having is supposed to be about plutocrats buying out, locking out, and destroying their competition so they can underpay for everything and pump out worse and worse products and services that force people to continue buying and spending far more every year. Right? Just because you can doesn’t mean you should; another way, power corrupts. Our system has no safeguards to ensure competition and quality, and instead enshrines a legal obligation to make as much money as possible, protecting profit above the human rights of everyday citizens. This inevitably leads to greed corrupting everything, even if you imagine it all starting with one bad actor that forces everyone to monopolize defensively. We still greatly value and respect the image of the rugged small business owner who makes a great product and takes pride in what we do. That person, with a sense of honor and virtue, should be rewarded for their efforts, because they’re the kind of person who does what they think is right instead of what they can get away with.

A similar argument can be made about politics, as well. There are plenty of problems with the Democratic party, filled as it is with corrupt finks who make empty promises and do nothing in the face of injustice. That said, they’re also not nearly as ideologically unified their opposition would have you believe, and it’s the party that contains people who genuinely want to do good for the world and work for it. I just thought of a way to describe how the Republicans operate. Basically, everything they do is projection. “Those Democrats are evil, they’re a bunch of socialist ideologues who want to take all your rights away so they can warp the system and stay in power forever so they can pocket money from corporations. That’s why you should vote for me, a Republican who blindly accepts and supports the conservative ideology and will do everything I can to reshape society, the courts, government, and laws to make the world how I think it should be, rather than what it is, including taking away as many of your human rights as needed and effectively rigging elections, so I can stay in power and help my rich business friends, who are paying me handsomely for this.” Like, both their pitch and a surprisingly effective counter to it is, “I’m rubber and you’re glue.” All the lies and myths and conspiracy theories that we have to wade through and waste time muddling about distract from the fundamental arguments we need to make; for example, as long as people prattle about security and the sanctity of borders and a spite-based view of fairness to “those who came here the right way,” we won’t have the actual conversation about how allowing immigration to happen is simply the moral thing to do, and that gatekeeping our nationality and resources is racist and immoral. It’s a conversation that Republicans can’t win, because we only accept naked, open racism when it’s at least paired with a seemingly principled argument about law. They’d rather we don’t talk about it, and instead use all their resources to distract so they can remake society as they see fit, with brute force and lies. Just because they can doesn’t mean they should. They’re working to remake a society that we all have to live in to fit an unpopular, exclusionary vision because the powerful few would like it that way. The whole point of democratic governance is to work together to find a better future, not to ensure your side wins every time, that your laws get passed no matter what.

On a more personal level, there’s the saying that everyone is the main character in their story. It’s usually used to mean that people think of themselves as the hero, that what they do is right and everyone else is there to support their story. I’m not sure that’s entirely true, because I don’t think most people have so much ego as to think the world is set decoration for them, specifically. More importantly, as a culture, we don’t encourage people to act as the heroes of their own story. Everything is about convenience and fulfilling immediate desires, and there’s a deep cynicism about the nature of humanity. The hero of a story would remember that just because they can doesn’t mean they should. In fact, that’s the basis of most stories. A person is taken to an unfamiliar space and forced to make choices and change in some way to get what they want or need and return to a comfortable life. The hero of a story may start out as a person who thinks that they should do anything necessary to fulfill their desires, despite consequences, morality, and their effect on others, but they don’t typically end there. One could argue that one of the key roles of stories is to give people a framework to consider how their actions align with their values. If you’re really the hero of your own story, then you should view situations as challenges that force change and growth, and make decisions based on what you think is right. We all think the character who takes a stand on honor and principle is cool, right? We can be that person, and in trying, we can find better ways to express ourselves and live our values proudly.

In thinking about this, it also occurs to me that I have been using this advice wrong. I’ve talked before about feeling stifled, that I don’t know how to talk to people. It often revolves around not knowing what others want to talk about and discounting the possibility that they’d be interested in what I’m thinking. I don’t want to be a bother, and I’m afraid of hurting people by saying the wrong things. In fairness, I have said dumb things that have hurt people or generally turned them off while making conversation. Instead of trusting myself to figure out what happened and why so I can avoid that in the future, I took it as further proof that people would hate me if they got to know me. I looked at those comments and thought, “Just because you can doesn’t mean you should.” That’s not supposed to convince me to shut down and keep quiet. The dumb things I’ve said, I know why they’re dumb and I’ve put thought into how to better express myself, how to reevaluate my feelings and thoughts based on what I actually value. If I want to talk to someone about frogs, because I just got a set of frog toys that are sitting on books across my bookshelf, then that’s ok. It won’t take long to see if the person I’m talking to is bored, and I’d like to be known as someone who likes and knows a lot about animals. There’s a lot I can do, and thus should.