Martyrs Won't Save The World

People will.

Grandfailure

Sometimes, we get caught up in this story.

Actually, it happens a lot.

Here’s how it goes:

Saving the world takes enormous amounts of work. You have to sacrifice all of your time and energy. You have to give up your nights and weekends. You can’t ever do anything fun. You can’t make a living wage. If you enjoy any kind of comfort whatsoever, then you’re not serious. If you’re not a martyr for your cause, then it makes you a hypocrite or a doomer.

How counterproductive is that?

We hear this story all the time, especially from the ones who do absolutely nothing to make the world a better place. They walk up to protesting nurses and teachers or climate activists, and they ask us what we’re doing to help. They find ways to trivialize the contributions we’ve already made, and then they demand we list out what else we’re doing. Did we go around the city giving flowers to stray kittens? Did we play chess with WWII veterans and post about it on Facebook? Did we stay up all night making care packages for missionaries in Eastern Europe? Did we give every last cent to the latest victims of Toxic Spill X? Did we hug a stranger? Did we tell a sad girl on the sidewalk to smile?

No?

Then we should shut up.

Here’s the truth: In this world, there’s always something more to do. There’s no end to the causes you can take up. That means there’s no end to the guilt trips someone can lay on you for drawing attention to the larger attitudes that keep causing these problems. It’s socially acceptable to kill yourself trying to help. It’s not socially acceptable to criticize billionaires or middle-class values, even if that’s a necessary part of making the world a better place.

I’ve noticed something…

You know the type of person who always asks what you’re doing to help? They aren’t doing anything. When they’re done shaming you, they go off and play video games for eight hours. (Yes, for real.) They trade crypto. They water their lawns. They shop at Walmart. They complain about taxes. They read Rich Dad, Poor Dad for the seventh time while fantasizing about owning vacation homes in six countries. Then they moan about the entitlement of younger generations who say they’re tired of giving 50 percent of their paycheck to landlords.

It took me a while to understand the dynamics at play, but now I get it. When some twit from the upper-middle class asks what you’ve been doing to help, it’s really just a pitiful deflection of their own responsibilities. It’s also an egregious display of privilege and entitlement. They’re saying that those of us who’ve already dedicated ourselves to a cause simply aren’t doing enough. They want us to keep cleaning up their mess, and leave them alone. It’s exactly like the deadbeat spouse who expects their mate to do all the laundry and childcare.

It’s the logic of a 14-year-old gamer.

They don’t get it.

Of course, they’re missing the biggest point of all:

It’s actually not that hard.

We aren’t asking anyone to make enormous sacrifices. They just act like it. In reality, it’s not hard to wear a mask. Some of us do it every day, and we even forget we’re doing it. It’s not hard to plug up a purifier or change the filters on a HEPA. It’s usually not hard to upgrade the ventilation in a building. Doing that would even stimulate the precious economy, wouldn’t it?

It’s not hard to take climate change seriously, either. My family uses a third as much water as the typical American. We use a third of the electricity. We produce a small fraction of the garbage. We don’t eat beef. We gave up poultry, including eggs, a long time ago. We eat beans and plants, and oats. We treat cheese like a garnish, not a staple. We haven’t bought a television in 12 years. I built my own computer and upgrade the parts as needed.

You get the idea.

When we finally moved into a real house a few years ago, we immediately rewilded the yard. That was easy. It was fun. It’s cheaper than normal lawn care. It’s better for the environment to let the place do what it wants for the most part. It’s also beautiful. We’ve got critters like rabbits and chipmunks, squirrels and raccoons. A couple of months ago, I even saw a coyote wander through.

We already use water in line with the true global average, but a few months ago we replaced our showerheads and faucets. Now they all use .5 gallons a minute. That didn’t feel like a huge sacrifice.

None of the things climate activists are asking us to do require anything more than a slight tweak to our own sense of privilege and entitlement. Unfortunately, Americans suck at that. Somehow you have to convince them they don’t need a showerhead blasting 2 gallons of hot water at them every minute. They don’t need to eat cheeseburgers every day.

And so on…

Western culture seems to revolve around most people doing whatever they want, and making a minority pay for it all. They celebrate martyrs because it’s a convenient fiction. Americans love the idea of someone else killing themselves in order to enable their sins, spiritual or otherwise. We’ve extended the idea of biblical martyrdom to virtually every aspect of our society. It’s all predicated on some small group doing all the work, to the point of self-destruction.

The mainstream media gives us a brilliant example. When railroad workers went on strike, news outlets ran a relentless campaign of guilt trips asking why they were willing to sacrifice the economy over sick leave, completely disregarding their right to basic health. They do the same thing when nurses and teachers strike for living wages. The story never changes. Activists and essential workers are simply expected to keep giving everything they’ve got.

On top of that, they have to be nice about it.

It wouldn’t be hard to pay railroad workers. It wouldn’t be hard to pay teachers or nurses. It wouldn’t be hard to put brakes on trains and make sure they’re actually working before you load them up with toxic chemicals. It wouldn’t be hard to cut back on our energy use or rethink how we run our economy. It would just take a little bit of conscious thought, and some adjustments to what we think we can have. When someone complains about activists or “the last holdouts” of whatever cause, do you know what they’re arguing for?

Here’s a brief list:

They want the right to wear clothes once and throw them away. They want yards that look like golf courses. They want a new smartphone every other year, along with a new laptop and flatscreen television. They want to drive around in cars for fun, and they want to go out and buy things when they get bored. They want to let billionaires and their corporations do whatever they please, even if that means poisoning entire towns and working people to death for the sake of cheap plastic goods. Above all, they want celebrities to fly around in private jets and drown them in a constant stream of exotic vacation photos, so they can fantasize about doing that themselves one day, even though deep down they know they never will. They want to eat out several times a week, regardless of who it hurts.

Are you kidding me?

We don’t need martyrs. We need people to stop all of this. We need them to imagine a better life for themselves, one that doesn’t involve gruesome commutes and deadend jobs frothing lattes and juicing fruit for spoiled boomers and crypto bros. It doesn’t matter how many care packages we send to eastern Europe if affluent Americans and aspirational influencers continue to live as if the entire world belongs to them. That’s what kills us. That’s what brought us to this stage of collapse. We won’t change any of that with martyrs. If anything, the idea of the martyr simply encourages these types to continue their reckless abuses.

Americans need to get this through their heads:

Out here in the real world, nailing some guy to a cross won’t solve anyone’s problems. There’s nobody to die for our sins. Nobody’s going to pay for it all with their suffering. We’re all going to pay, especially our children.

So often, the things we need to be doing isn’t the work of martyrs. It’s the work of ordinary people, doing small things that add up. It’s minor inconveniences that we get used to over time.

When someone tries to deflect your criticisms by asking what you’ve done to make the world a better place, they’re trying to set you up. They’re trying to make the contributions you’ve already made feel small and insignificant, so they can get back to doing absolutely nothing. They want you to think that if you’re not destroying yourself for their sake, you haven’t done enough.

Don’t fall for it.