It is often advisable for businesses to remain apolitical. After all, why would one alienate part of one’s customer base? The argument can be elaborated further with the idea that a business venture is greater than its founders or leaders.

However, we are all part of society. We make society what it is with our choices. If most choices are to remain apolitical because it’s convenient, our society becomes apolitical and convenient. Such a vacuum is frequently filled by unsavoury characters and dangerous ideologies.

Neutrality is intelligent. Alas, we’re much more than simply intelligent beings.

Questionable intelligence

Everybody loves. Everybody hates. Few understand.

Strong opinions fly fast. Nuanced analysis falls flat.

It may be the way of the world. But we can still choose ours.

The way of the world

Society has a thirst for indignation. Any decision is susceptible to criticism. Any choice is debatable. Difficult calls are particularly vulnerable.

We'll be critical if a decision is made, if it isn’t, if it was made too quickly, or if it took too long. The 2020 pandemic was a prime example of this dynamic.

Making a choice is as much a decision as not making it. Hard decisions will have consequences that are nigh on impossible to predict. In hindsight, everything appears obvious. Before the fact, nothing is.

Perhaps trying to understand reality is wiser than exploring any indignation we may feel.

Too much indignation

A five-pence charge on a supermarket plastic bag changed everything. I saw it. I was part of it. An entire population changed from grabbing as many bags as they could to virtually not using them at all and always ensuring to have a tote counterpart handy.

Plastic has obsessed me for years. If I had a monster under the bed, it would be a blob of plastic that reaches out, trying to merge into me, its microplastic atoms binding to my organic ones. My usually indomitable optimism struggles to face up to the plastic challenge. It’s everywhere. It’s in everything. It’s hard to imagine a world without it.

As I took my empty toilet cleaner bottle to the refill shop, it struck me how easy it would be to end the nonsensical nightmare. If the government could afford it, we could lower the prices of refillable products: “You can pay full price for one-litre bottle, or get 50% discount if you bring your own and fill it up yourself down the refill aisle”. If the government were broke (likely), we could increase the prices instead (it’s not as though we don’t do that already): “Bottled toiletries are up 25% per cent, but you can pay old prices if you use the refill section”.

In under a decade, I suspect an outright ban on single-use plastics wouldn’t appal anybody—we would hardly feel it anyway. Who wants to pay more when avoiding it is so easy? That plastic monster isn’t as implacable as we might have thought.

Plastic monsters

How sad to believe that every interaction is a transaction in which there’s something to gain and lose. How depressing to consider circles of friends as networking opportunities. How horrid to think of people as players in a never-ending game.

As transactional politics falls upon us, the resistance will be made up of—at least partially—those who believe that friends are friends regardless of what is there—if anything—to gain. The resistance will be those of us committed to doing the right thing regardless of our interests—despite them if necessary. The resistance, in short, is there not to win but to live.

Transactional politics and the resistance

The only positive element of greed is its intrinsic failsafe. Indeed, any system based on avarice will invariably break. Greed-based rulers’ terms will eventually crumble. It’s a zero-sum game: there’s not enough for everyone. Everybody wanting everything expedites the inevitable debacle.

The problem for those of us more or less immune to greed—at least not particularly afflicted by it—is that we are as vulnerable to its consequences as everybody else.

Martian Thoughts

Questionable intelligence

The way of the world

Too much indignation

Plastic monsters

Transactional politics and the resistance

Greed issues