Quietly, Carefully, Consistently
I was sad and disturbed to read the allegations about Neil Gaiman. I wrote a post some time back about his commencement address advice on creating art, choosing your livelihood and “faking it ’til you make it.” I went back to reread, see if I wrote anything I should retract, or if maybe I should even delete the whole thing.
I fixed some typos and other errors and read a good article to remind me what exactly cancel culture is. Unsurprisingly, it means different things to different people, and most people have an element of truth to whatever their interpretations of the term are. I decided to leave the post because life is messy and understanding it isn’t easy. Don’t read that to mean I’m about to say that inexcusable things are excusable.
People and issues are rarely as simple as they are made to seem with the amount of time and consideration that others are willing or able to give them. “It’s complicated.” describes nearly everything under the sun, tangible or not. Rare, non-existent really, is the person who has time or interest to understand and consider everything worth knowing. Some lack the motivation to understand the things they could.
To be extremely clear on this point, one doesn’t have to delve deeply to know that sexual assault is wrong. It’s not acceptable, no excuses. And, the same thing doesn’t keep happening over time with multiple victims by mistake or misunderstanding. While I’m being clear, I’m not going to pretend I know what happened. I’m not close to that situation or those people. It looks bad. Mega businesses don’t just cancel popular seasons of programming, or reduce them to a single “finish it up” episode while going on without their original creators over a mere hint of guilt. I hope justice is done and healing happens for all involved.
How do You Deal With It?
One of the things I’ve struggled with, for nearly my whole life, is what a mixed bag people are. Some of the best things and some of the worst things reside in the same human. Sometimes they even use their best parts to attract you to their worst parts.
Do people negate their good parts when they commit terrible acts? How do the rest of us deal with it? How do we know how to behave when an act is egregious? Do we reject the good ideas they had? It certainly makes it harder to get a grip on things when the person causing harm was advocating for making a difference to others. That was supposed to be a good difference, right? When that person chooses repeatedly to make the wrong kind of difference, it feels like betrayal, and not just to the victims.
We’re taught to reject behavior, not people, but at some point, that becomes a superhuman feat. I want to be this warm accepting entity that doesn’t impose my will on anyone. I also like for people to behave. I have an almost black and white view of what is right and what is wrong. It butts right up against my accepting, inclusive other side. Hurting people is wrong. It robs them of something. When I bring up robbery, I’m referring theft in the sense that Khaled Hosseini wrote in The Kite Runner.
“there is only one sin, only one. And that is theft. Every other sin is a variation of theft. When you kill a man, you steal a life… you steal his wife’s right to a husband, rob his children of a father. When you tell a lie, you steal someone’s right to the truth. When you cheat, you steal the right to fairness… there is no act more wretched than stealing.”
That’s why sexual assault is so wretched. It is the act of taking, in the most intimately personal way, in ways that affect a victim’s sense of self worth, in ways that haunt them. It creates future harms that cascade over time while victims try to deal with it and often hurt others before they heal.
When the personal ethics of a business owner become significant enough to make the news, that matters. What if a creative, or the head of a company said to anyone “I’m rich and powerful. People give me what I want. I want you to…” about anything, but, particularly a sex act, would you want to continue to support the things that made that person rich and powerful? It’s particularly hard to understand if the person who did that was someone who said “Create art. It might make a difference to someone.”
Canceled or Natural Consequences?
We tend to feel helpless when one person harms another, part of the reason some people get the schadenfreude power rush from “taking down” a powerful person or entity. The rush can be so high that cancelers may want to do it again and again, leading to unclear judgement and the negative, less genuine side of “canceling.” Others shut down and check out because they don’t know what they can do.
We aren’t powerless though, and we don’t have to live in the extremes. We can operate on a daily basis to support better things and not to support worse things. If we’re steady, things get better. If quietly, carefully, consistently, we choose the right things to support, giving our support to those things makes all the difference.
For me, and most people, this mostly takes place in the consumer market. There are all kinds of ethical issues to look at when buying a product (or idea). Most of the decisions where I exercise my ethics are related to human and environmental justice. For instance, I finally made it a habit to carry a water bottle so I contribute less waste from single use plastics and avoid sugary drinks or substitutes. I switched to waterless laundry detergent sheets for a number of benefits, and I’ve recently changed to recycled toilet paper that’s not wrapped in plastic and the company I buy from donates 50% of all profits to increased sanitation in developing economies.
The time honored measure of an action is to ask what would happen if everyone made the choice you are thinking of making? What would be the consequence? What if everyone littered? If everyone rolled coal? If everyone supported businesses that don’t pay a living wage or that dump their waste in rivers that supply your drinking or farm irrigation water? If everyone supported real estate tycoons who buy up properties and control the markets with crippling rents? Or, supported businesses that don’t pay their contractors?
That’s where our power lies, in choosing the actions that have fewer negative consequences for others and more good effects.
The truth is we all buy from companies that we wouldn’t choose if information was more transparent. But, if we didn’t even try, litter, pollution, homelessness, sickness, bankruptcies, habitat loss, theft of all kinds and more would be onerous beyond our imaginations.
Reacting without overreacting gives us the world we live in. It’s a collective choice, not one that can be separate. Supporting a company that pollutes drinking water pollutes everyone’s water. Supporting a company with leaders who abuse power is aiding and abetting once you know it’s happening. Our world is the sum of our decisions as part of the whole. Supporting ethical transparent companies, making better substitutions, making better habits, withdrawing support from businesses and other entities that do harm. It all matters.
What world do you want for yourself and the people you care about?
Hope you find a way to make a difference this week. Have a glorious day and we’ll see you on the trail.
