What Becomes Possible When Your Next Step Can Be Imperfect?
What step that seems impossible is actually imperfectly possible?
Hello Courageous Thrivers,
“I am committed to being useless to harmful systems and useful to a safer world for all. Imperfectly. Day by day. Moment by moment.” - Janea Brown, author of Becoming Useless on Substack.
A couple of weeks ago I came across a carousel on Janea Brown’s Instagram #jnaydaily.
The title was “Shit I Stopped Doing After I Committed to a Safer World.” I hope you will go check it out yourself, because it’s definitely worth your time.
Every point she made was powerful, but one of the Stop-Start pairs tied so directly to what I wrote about a couple weeks ago that I wanted to share it here as a start to a conversation about how we CAN make changes that make a difference as consumers.
Janea shared over the past few years she:
Stopped - Saying “there is no ethical consumption under capitalism."
Instead - Says “There is no ethical consumption under capitalism [without each other, patience and practice].” But it is imperfectly possible.
Imperfectly possible. What a great example of a powerful both/and.
In a previous post, “The Morally Rightness of Grapes” I spoke about the times when what seems like a morally wrong choice from one perspective is, from another perspective, “right.” I started with an example from many years ago that involved a controversial decision to purchase some grapes.
You can check out that story here if you’re interested.
Connected to the claim that sometimes what seems like a morally wrong choice, can actually be right, is an acknowledgement of our human limitations and the reality of how difficult it is to make a completely pure ethical choice in a world built on systems of extractive racist capitalism, patriarchy and anti-blackness.
Sometimes it’s just not possible. That is true.
In fact, Prentis Hemphill, on their podcast Becoming the People, equate the willingness to to make a hard choice that is the best you can do at the time, even when doesn’t fully align with all of what you believe in, as a characteristic of leadership. I’m inclined to agree.
Rigid moral codes just aren’t flexible enough for the realities human life.
But/and/also just because it’s virtually impossible to be morally pure at all times, particularly in relation to in how we use our money and time, doesn’t mean we can’t make choices that are more aligned with our values and less supportive of the oppressive structures and systems that are causing so much harm and suffering.
But it does mean that doing so is HARD.
Because the systems we have in place make it easy (hello Amazon/Whole Foods/Audible and who knows what else Jeff Bezos owns) for us to support companies and humans who are stripping the Earth of resources, abusing humans and isolating us from each other.
The systems we have in place make living separately in separate houses with each small family unit carrying the full burden of their housing and childcare and food needs alone seem normal.
The systems we have in place make white dominant schools and white dominant spiritual communities and white dominant neighborhoods seem like a natural occurrence that can’t be helped, when in fact they were intentionally manufactured.
Thats why, as Janea points out, moving away from these systems and ways of being takes patience, practice and community to do so.
Patience and Practice
Both patience and practice are required because we are learning new skills. And as much as many of us would like to get all the right steps figured out in advance, it just doesn’t work that way. We try something. We see how it goes. We try something else.
Here’s a tiny example.
When I stopped shopping regularly on Amazon and at Target I had to create new ways of shopping for things like toothpastes, sponges, cleaning supplies, sheets and pretty much all the packaged foods my mother-in-law eats. We joined Costco, but it’s not nearby and they don’t sell the cereal, peanut butter or Boost drink she likes. Over a year in and we still haven’t figured out whether it’s worth the membership to shop there. But we’re practicing and iterating.
And twice I’ve used the free trial on Amazon prime to order a bunch of her favorites.
Patience is required in relation to both the hassles of learning new ways to get our needs met, and the pace of my ability to find new ways forward.
Community
The importance, and power, of community is fresh in my mind after a visit to Montgomery, Alabama last week to visit the Equal Justice Initiative Legacy Sites and the Rosa Parks Museum. I was reminded of how much community coordination was required in order to keep the bus boycotts going when so many Black people, especially Black women, depended on the buses to get to work. The sophisticated car pool systems that were developed by the Black community were so effective that eventually local officials resorted to outlawing carpools and insurance companies stopped renewing car insurance policies. And still the boycott continued. Though Rosa Parks became the face of that movement, she didn’t act alone.
Towards Becoming Useless
I love Janea’s goal of Becoming Useless to oppressive systems. How we spend our money is just one part of that, but it’s a very important part in a global system dominated by colonialism and racist capitalist patriarchy. Money talks in these systems.
It’s not easy, but it is “imperfectly possible” to be ethical consumers. And those small decisions add up over time. They are multiplied when we act together.
Just look at how bell hooks book Communion became a best seller years after her death!
There is something seriously wrong with what a lot of the largest companies are doing. If we want something different we will need to lean into some discomfort, and that’s if we’re lucky. Watching footage of police officers beating non-violent protesters during the march from Selma to Montgomery on Bloody Sunday in 1965, it doesn’t look that different from footage of six ICE officers attacking one non-violent immigrant.
We need to ask ourselves hard questions about what we’re ready to give up in order to create the kind of world we want to live in.
Practicing by making some inconvenient choices about where and how we spend our money, so that more of it goes to support collective thriving seems like a good place to start.