An exercise to the reader: say a genie snapped his fingers and forced you to live in 1850 with your choice of two conditions:

1. As an abolitionist fighting apparently insurmountable odds with little chance of success (say you didn’t know the Thirteenth Amendment was coming) or
2. As a plantation owner with material comfort and convenience, but knowing you’d feel as The Ruling Race quoted people, feeling guilt and shame but mostly suppressing and denying it.

Try rationalizing flying, bottled water, and disposable diapers with not living option 2. You can’t. sorry to break it to you, but the sooner you get the water splashed in your face, the sooner you can act like a human with compassion. Sadly, Nearly everyone today chooses option 2.

If you rationalize and justify polluting and depleting with self-serving lies like what you do doesn’t matter, that only governments and corporations can make a difference on the scale we need, or that anything you do inconveniences you a lot but barely changes the world so what’s the point then you’ve chosen against option 1.

How much do you think slave owners believed they were doing good, helping people they whipped, lynched, raped, and separated from their families?

How much do people today believe we are helping people we send our poisonous waste to, killing by the tens of millions?

• ← The alternative to what we call progress isn’t what you think
• First outdoor holiday of the year, filling Washington Square Park, my back yard, with garbage →