Being a person living in 21st century America requires us to try to forge some sort of conscious system of beliefs regarding aspects of our hyper-capitalist culture. That might mean developing a set of values regarding how and where we spend money, how we interact online, and so forth. Frankly, I think traditional morality is overwhelmed by the complexity global capitalism, and leads us to practice a selective and mostly arbitrary form of morality. We simply don’t know what we don’t know. For example, the boycott of Target for having pre-emptively given up its DEI programs as a way of not drawing the ire of the New Regime ends up fingering Target because the media drew our attention to their earlier pro-DEI programs and so we know about them. But how many of the corporations that we continue to buy from never had DEI programs in the first place? To me, it seems arbitrary. YMMV.
For me, the place I’m going to start is positive decentralization. “Positive” in the sense that I am going to focus on supporting things that helps the process of decentralization, rather than focusing on condemning things that do the opposite. So I support the development and distribution of solar panels to individuals and communities because, as Bill McKibben has persuasively argued in Here Comes the Sun, the sun is available to everyone, is the ultimate decentralized power source, and the generation of solar electricity by individuals makes wars over oil in the Middle East less necessary.
My career was devoted to teaching theater, and promoting the decentralization of the American theater away from NYC and away from large institutions and instead toward small, artist-owned theaters scattered across America. My book Building a Sustainable Theater provides a starting point for people interested in creating such theaters. Similarly, I endorse the Indie Film movement and the idea of artist-owned distribution platforms operating outside of the streaming services that are fast becoming monopolies. I also believe in self-publishing, and in writing on our own websites and blogs rather than the major platforms like Substack and Medium.
I’m also interested in Jeremy Rifkin’s “internet of things” that he described in The Zero Marginal Cost Society: The Internet of Things, the Collaborative Commons, and the Eclipse of Capitalism. I also believe in people growing some of their own food, and supporting local farmers, even if I have to buy most of my groceries at a chain grocery store. In other words, I’m all about incrementalism and the empowerment that comesfrom individuals making small changes to the way they live. I’m not going off-grid, I’m not boycotting Amazon, but I am making small changes that I can take without permission and without undertaking efforts beyond my abilities.
I will keep my money in community banks and credit unions, and explore techniques for investing locally as described by Michael H. Shuman in _Put Your Money Where Your Life Is: How to Invest Locally Using Self-Directed IRAs and Solo 401(k)s.
I will try, as much as possible, to avoid buying used books and CDs. Why? Isn’t that ecologically more sustainable? Yes, but anytime I buy a used book from, say, Better World Books, the author receives nothing from that transaction. I want to support living writers and musicians. That does not mean that I won’t get books from the library. But isn’t that the same thing as buying a used book, you ask? Yes, in the sense that, like the original buyer of a book that is now available at Better World Books, the author received a royalty payment at the time that the library purchased the book; however, they will not receive a payment each time that book is checked out from the library. However, most of the books I tend to get at the library are no longer in print, so I am not depriving the author of royalties. Similarly, if an author is no longer living, all bets are off: my support is for the living creator, not the children or estate of a deceased artist, or the publisher who owns the copyright. I don’t believe in inheritance beyond a certain point.
What I’m trying to say is that, by focusing on decentralization as a guiding principle, I can more easily make informed judgments on my purchasing and policy decisions, rather than arbitrary, inconsistent, and mostly symbolic “protests.” So, AI: I’m not against AI, but I am against the centralization of AI in a few massive companies. Frankly, I think AI ought to be a publicly-owned utility, and, like the citizens of Alaska who receive a portion of oil company profits, AI money ought to be distributed to everyone through a UBI payment ala [Scott Santens])www.scottsantens.com/the-angin…).
You get the picture.