But, I think I’ve been doing a dumb thing. I’ve been focusing too much on people trying to express themselves in a way I personally find silly, without thinking about all kinds of other factors, one of which being the possibility that they might be buying things as gifts for someone else. Maybe the Grandpa on vacation or the mother on a work trip is just trying their best to bring something cool back to the teenager at home. And maybe the receiver of the thing might not even find it all that deep, and they may or may not care about having or wearing the thing that people get from the place that only a few people can get it, but they may very much appreciate the loving gesture of a family member who seems to be trying their best.

Basically, since we’re all quite visible fish in this aquarium, I’ve begun to rethink the hopeless feeling that Zizek left me with, in exchange for an acknowledgement that the thing that is destroying the planet is happening and will continue to happen, and people will continue to participate in it, a lot, for very pro-social, pro-human positive reasons of desiring self-expression and love and connection and acceptance, and that maybe we can just hack the impulse to buy those feelings and imagine a sort of utopian future of perfectconsumption, where every material was sustainably sourced, and every worker fairly paid, and all of the energy burned cleanly, and all the excesses of this very expensive-to-produce product for an admittedly small group of rich customers, were redistributed to the workers that made it and the community in which it was sold? And yes, we know, that the only people with enough of an expendable income to afford buying these things have it from the ghosts of Labor-Exploitation & Planet-Degradation past-and-present, but that’s what I’m asking! What do we do in the meantime? What do we do now?

Prior to the formation of some Global Economic Democracy and before the downfall of the Corporate-Overlords, what can we make or do that they will fund with all of their extra money, that could just make the transition a little less awful? Or, Am I proposing EXACTLY what Slavoj is warning against, and any attempt to thrive in the world-as-it-is would be to worsen our blindness to the systems we need to more quickly deconstruct?

Slavoj’s point is that, sure, you should give a band-aid to someone who is bleeding, but what if they never get the stitches they really need and the wound becomes infected, yada-yada reform-vs-revolution, blah-blah, “your donation is keeping the problem from being solved structurally, much further upstream,” blabbity-bloo-blah, “we shouldn’t give money to teachers to buy classroom supplies in some sort of strike-like demonstration that will prove to the government that it should be, and always should have been THEM, to fund the education of future generations,” blahbitty-bloo-blah-blay, “the practice of tipping service workers as income is unjust and reproduces the conditions that require the practice, also further reinforcing the market conditions in which the consumer is not going to choose to pay the price for a better restaurant without the government-subsidized unhealthy food and consumer-subsidized unfair labor that they are accustomed to,” and  blahblahblahblahblahBLAH  WE KNOW EVERYTHING, AND WE ARE PARALYZED, AND THAT IS ALSO KILLING US! And the bad people win, because they take action without thinking, and we feel left out, but smug, that we are thoughtful losers, and conscientious objectors, but to what?

(I’m saying we, but, I’m talking to myself for having some unclearly hypocritical and contradictory viewpoints, and I and all of myselves are the “we” here. And I’ve told myself that my fundamental discomfort with, and incompatibility to “perform” well in, the world-as-it-is was always one-hundred-percent a choice I’m choosing, rather than admitting to myself, that in many ways, I just couldn’t hack it. And if I could, more easily, do what “people” do, without being as much of a daydreaming tornado of emotional dysregulation, would I even care to be so “thoughtful” or would I just sleep soundly knowing that I have a fully funded emergency savings account, and be pretty much, “content”?)

ANYWAY, this particular vision of some Good Business is making me re-consider the way that I used to write off as Definitely Bad, “goodcapitalism” (yuck!) and “socialentrepeneurship” (eww!).

Sure, the future SUPREME-like exclusive expensive luxury brand items that I’m imagining are bought by rich people to be observed by others, but the observation, instead of just “I know what is cool” and “I had the money,” the consumer would get to express a lot more virtue-signally identity consumption values and preferences as well, which is still a weird thing to do, but as soon as you think of another way out of the aquarium, I’ll scrap all of this in a heartbeat.

Until then, instead of just hating my job in the mall, I’d rather keep daydreaming about the ways it would be fun to be in charge and to try to do it better, and then to not be in charge and let it run itself.

What do you think about these companies that seem to be trying to do something better than the status quo? Good? Not Ideal? Extorting your naively good intentions, or just living in the world as it is and doing some good with some profit? Can ownership and profit be good (Like, eventually, a long time from now, if every piece of the chain were improved up to higher standards? Is it worth trying to seek these kinds of businesses out and give them money? Worthwhile? All just marketing? I want to know what people think! Do “we” “like” B-Corps or no?