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Hello I Am a Hypocrite badge
We’re all hypocrites. For the most part, it’s not our fault. We necessarily live in the systems we’re working to change. I’m writing this on a device made possible by conflict materials dug up by children in Congo. I’m sitting in an air-conditioned home that most likely requires dirty energy to operate. In a month, I will take a plane to see my mom overseas. Now, I don’t have a private jet, nor does my home run exclusively on fossil fuels, but let’s be honest, even renewables are not the utopian savior some make them out to be. If we’re all hypocrites, the questions are: Where do we land on this spectrum? and What can we do to change not only where we are but more so the breadth of the spectrum itself?
Some might say that the only purely non-hypocritical thing to do is to extract yourself from society, to evade both responsibility and engagement to favor a kind of Stoic existence where you just sit and peacefully wait to die. And sure, I could choose to live like Tom Hanks in Cast Away but then I would be just that—cast away. I wouldn’t be able to involve myself in either the fight against our oppressive system or, perhaps more importantly, the collective building of alternatives. And that’s a trade-off I’m not willing to make. There really isn’t anything noble about extracting oneself from the fight. It’s a privilege that most don’t have, and like many moves in capitalism’s mindfulness phase, it’s way more about personal gratification than communal well-being, justice, or liberation. It pretends that we all have the personal ability to choose to “live better” along the system’s own prescribed lines of progressivism while ignoring everything from class systems to political geography to settler colonialism.
In central West Virginia, for example, there are really only two “choices” for a lot of folks: work at a Walmart or Dollar General type store or work in fracking. The former basically doesn’t pay and the latter pays quite well. Speaking of Walmart, for all the good intentions of boycotts aimed at the atrocious corporation, where are folks supposed to buy food when the only option in a 30-mile radius is a Walmart? Same question for Amazon. If you’re struggling to make ends meet, which most Americans are, it’s easier and cheaper to get things from Amazon than to try to drive around to various stores in search of what you need. Those things likely won’t be on the shelves anyway. That is the system we now inhabit.
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Necessary Evils
In the realm of systemic mass surveillance, smartphones are hugely useful and for many a necessary evil in today’s work environment. We use things like Google Docs and Gmail, knowing full well that Google is complicit in genocide, union busting, mass surveillance, and more. We use Instagram, a platform owned by Meta (Facebook), to connect with each other and gather news, knowing full well that Instagram is likewise scrolling through us, flipping the pages of our lives to see where it can make an extra buck while shadowbanning and outright censoring frontline journalists and dissidents of the almighty U.S. empire. These insidious apps and devices have even become part of our language. After all, you don’t hear people saying, “Can you DuckDuckGo that?” It’s always, “Can you Google that?” People call any number of short-form digital messages “Tweets.” We’re essentially free advertising campaigns for pernicious companies who make billions off our monopolized mindsets. That’s a kind of dystopia even Orwell didn’t consider.
Some of this is avoidable, of course. If you don’t already have Signal, download it now and stop messaging on regular messaging platforms. Do not use WhatsApp, another Meta product that a lot of organizers still frustratingly use, putting themselves and their communities at great risk. You can use CryptPad instead of Google Docs. You can delete your Instagram account. You can download a VPN and extensions like Privacy Badger. You can use Jitsi meetings instead of Zoom. The Activist Handbook has more points and suggestions that aren’t only for activists, but really anyone who doesn’t want Uncle Sam peering over their shoulder and stalking them around the internet.
Whatever changes you do or don’t make will be based on several things, including accessibility to content and applications, and just not wanting to. I have Instagram, for instance. I use it both to follow and amplify journalists and outlets I respect and admire as well as to share my work, some whimsy, and joy with a digital community. I make sure to practice digital security on this and other social media platforms; for instance, never posting images of someone else without their consent, blurring faces at protests, etc. When it comes to surveillance, we can choose to be in the spotlight if we want to be, but we don’t have the right to drag other private individuals into it. An exception here is if a private individual steps into the spotlight themselves by, say, accosting someone on a subway, shouting racist abuse at a protest, and so on, then it is good to just light ‘em up like a can-can dancer at Radio City Music Hall.
In the case of “green living,” alternatives are purposefully more difficult to access, again due to systemic pressures skewing towards planned obsolescence and the almighty petrodollar. Still, there are certain things we can all do, like thrifting, building and contributing to community tool libraries and car shares, and not buying a new iPhone every damn time one comes out.
Easy and common-sense changes like these are both important and not the silver bullet we want them to be. Deleting your Instagram account won’t topple the NSA or Meta. Deciding never to fly in another plane is not going to save the world when a recent report by The Carbon Majors showed that 80 percent of global CO2 emissions come from just fifty-seven companies. We can’t reusable tote our way to a green utopian future when the US military alone pollutes as much as 140 countries combined. As a Hard Times satire headline reads “How To Do Your Part To Fight Climate Change So Major Corporations Don’t Have To.”
Now, we can argue that simply pulling a Bartleby and saying “I would prefer not to” to the ills of society is a powerful act in and of itself, but again, we have to balance this with the understanding that neither strictly personal choices nor fully removing ourselves from society are the answer. The preference not to engage in certain ways must be coupled with a critical lens on why we choose not to engage, and then engaging in what must be done to change the system that pushes people to chronically act against our own well-being and best interests.
We have to contextualize our personal choices within a larger framework and recognize that as we do what we can on a personal and community level, it is the larger systems that have to change. After all, it’s their fault we’re hypocrites in the first place. How many people really want to work in fracking and be knee-deep in unknown chemicals that’ll see them die from cancer at the age of forty? I’m sure people would much rather have a job … oh, I don’t know, planting trees? How many people want to live in food deserts where their only choice is to drive forty-five minutes to buy mealy tasteless tomatoes from Walmart as opposed to a local food forest co-op?
As author and academic Mohammed Bamyeh said recently on the Project Censored Show, “When reality becomes unacceptable, we have to go beyond.” From climate chaos to mass surveillance and from wanton censorship to genocide, our reality is violently unacceptable. From our places on the hypocrisy spectrum, we can wage battle against the architects of oppression. And in the meantime, we can give each other some grace for these necessary hypocrisies, and kindly point them out to those who might not be aware, while doing the best we can in the collective struggle for a better world.
Eleanor Goldfield is a creative radical, journalist and filmmaker. Mutual aid and community organizing are cornerstones of Eleanor’s work and personal life, informing both her journalistic and artistic projects. Her written and photojournalism has appeared in independent publications across the U.S. and internationally. She is one of the 2020 recipients of the “Women and Media Award” presented by the Women’s Institute for Freedom of the Press. Recently, she released her first solo EP, titled No Solo, after more than a decade fronting the political hard rock band Rooftop Revolutionaries.
Her recent documentary film, To the Trees, covers forest defense tactics in Northern California and our relationship to nature. Her first documentary, Hard Road of Hope, covers the radical history and present struggles in West Virginia and has been widely acclaimed.
Currently, Goldfield is the co-host and associate producer of the Project Censored Show, and co-host of the podcast Common Censored along with Lee Camp.
