Hi friend,
There are some things we fundamentally do not understand as folks living in the Western "civilized" world. And one of those things is the actual cost of things.
In case you haven't been paying attention, the capitalist class heavily relies on our insatiable appetite for consumption amongst other things to make lots and lots of money.
We're brainwashed from a very early age to "keep up with the Joneses," which by the way, who the fuck is the original Jones family, and what the hell was so great about them?
I digress.
Anyway, we're brainwashed to want these things, to live this kind of life, to have this kind of family and partner and kids and house and dog, to go on those types of vacations, and so on. And all those things require us to accrue things.
We need to accrue people (a partner and some kids).
We need to accrue places (a home, and if you really got it MULTIPLE homes, baby!!!).
We need to accrue things (clothing, the latest appliances, the nicest cars, everything the soft life girlie influencers post about basically).
We need to accrue experiences (vacations, the most popular concerts, the most elite and unique dining experiences, art shows, and musicals).
And we need to have enough status to be "rewarded" for accruing all of these things (those luxury credit cards like Amex Platinum and the Chase Reserve come to mind).
All of those types of accruals are what I call the more obvious forms of consumption. We're developing a practice now as a collective of examining and picking apart this type of consumption and understanding the hows and whys of what makes it problematic.
Examples are criticism of travel to and vacation homes in Hawaii and Puerto Rico, deciding to keep things like cars and home appliances until they no longer work and can't be repaired, and buying clothing from thrift shops to avoid fast fashion.
All of those things are well established in today's conversation. We may not have a full grasp on the cost of things but we do have a vague sense that sweatshops halfway across the world where children work in horrible conditions for lots of hours to produce our clothes and accessories are bad.
Because of that, we've changed our consumption habits by shifting our consumption from one place to another, and for the most part felt like that was a good fix.
But shifting our consumption from one thing to another doesn't actually fix the fundamental problem of consumption; it just puts a bandaid on a gaping wound.
To understand this, it's helpful to shift the conversation about consumption from tangible things and people and experiences to the Internet.
We all spend hours consuming things on the internet every single day. Whether it's scrolling on social media, doing whatever you need to do for your job, streaming your favorite movies and TV shows, or having Google Maps give you directions somewhere. All of those things require you to use the internet.
But what we don't talk about -- correction, never talk about -- is how much our use of the internet actually costs us. Yes folks, I'm talking about our friend internet pollution and the fact that the internet is not climate-neutral.
This is a conversation happening behind the scenes that is starting to get more traffic with the introduction of AI and the insane amounts of power required to make AI a thing. But the long story short is that we as consumers never hear about the server farms that power the internet that are built right in the middle of poor neighborhoods.
And even though AI is here, we're not hearing about how the current internet and power infrastructures aren't equipped to meet the demands that AI requires. Nor are we hearing about the negative environmental impact that increased use of AI has.
We just view AI as another "neat" tool to make our lives and work more convenient. Just like the internet and being able to search for and find whatever you want is another "neat" tool for us to utilize.
We just use the tools; we're not meant to dwell on the consequences.
The Internet then is one of the most obvious ways we as consumers are wholly detached from and unaware of the impact of our consumption. We don't see that impact and none of the tech companies whose survival depends on us staying on the internet forever are keen to inform us about it.
So they don't talk about it and despite our ability to literally search for and find anything on the internet, we don't go looking for it.
And unlike our other consumption habits, we don't have an obvious place to shift our consumption. We can certainly shift from one part of the internet to the other, but at the end of the day, we're still on the internet.
That to me is what we fundamentally do not understand about our consumption. We can shift our consumption from one place to another, but at the end of the day, we're still consuming.
It's why we have trouble with sustained boycotts. Too many people believe boycotting is a practice of "voting with your dollars," where you shift your consumption from one place to another. The boycott doesn't last because it turns out the replacement thing isn't as good as the "real" thing and so people inevitably cave.
But boycotting isn't about changing where your dollars go; it's first and foremost about not giving your dollars at all.
Boycotting is about reducing your consumption for a political purpose. But in a world of convenience consumption, that concept is particularly difficult because we've been brainwashed to believe that we need a replacement for the thing we're giving up.
So we buy that thing from another equally awful corporation instead of exploring what it might be to go without. We buy the replacement thing instead of asking the question: what did we use to do before this convenient thing existed?
We're currently in a place where we haven't normalized questioning the primary issue, which is our neverending consumption. Instead, when we want to do better now, we simply choose to consume differently.
And while we continue to pretend that this strategy "works" for other things, it doesn't work for the Internet because we don't have a replacement Internet.
That only leaves us with one choice.
We have to practice consuming less Internet.
We need to spend less time on the Internet or streaming TV shows. We also need to work less.
And in this way, the Internet presents a unique opportunity for us to evolve our liberation practices. Because at the end of the day, one of the best ways to handicap the capitalist machine is to consume less. And if we can learn to consume less of the Internet, then I feel like it will naturally result in reduced consumption of everything else. After all, the Internet is now one of the primary places where we buy all of the things.
And yes, I know in your head you're like "But Brionna, what about these fucking corporations? Shouldn't they be held accountable?!"
Yes, they should.
But, I'm not talking about them right now. I'm talking about us and the reality that we are all we have. And the fact that capitalism has conditioned us to replace the time we used to spend with community and building relationships with time spent consuming things and experiences by slowly and deliberately creating an economy of convenience that we simply could not refuse.
But if all we have is each other, then we can't keep consuming just because it's convenient.
We have to reclaim our time by reducing our consumption. We need to replace hours on the Internet with reading books in print.
We need to replace hours on the Internet with making dinner with friends.
We need to replace hours on the Internet with technology-free walks, sunbathing, and art-making.
We need to replace social media likes and our desire to buy something as a "treat" or "comfort" on a bad day with a phone call to, or a meetup with, a friend or a loved one to connect and receive support.
We have to start exploring, and in reality remembering, what it means to choose connection over consumption.
When we put some distance between us and consumption and lean into connection, we might finally be able to understand the true costs of our consumption.
On that note, this will be the last email from me for the next week or two. I'll be stepping away from the Internet and work to nurture connections with friends, myself, and my writing, both Upstate and in New England. I'll be back in your inbox the week after July 4th.
In the meantime, I'd love to receive your support in getting The Everyday Lawyer Solidarity Fund fully funded. It's stalled out at about 60% funded. The goal is to receive $11,000 more in one-time or recurring donations to support my work. If you don't have money to donate, consider sharing it in your newsletters, with your friends and family, or posting about it on social media. Info about the fund is here and info about why I started the fund is here.
No contribution is too small. Some folks make recurring contributions of $10 and others have made one-time contributions of $4,000. It's all about what you can contribute from a financial perspective as well as from a spaciousness perspective. It's important to me that people feel expansive and excited to support the work because the energy behind the contribution matters just as much as the contribution itself.
Thank you for your continued support and see you in a couple of weeks!
May you choose love over fear and safety over comfort,
Brionna
Mutual Aid for Palestinians: Operation Olive Branch has a list of GoFundMe's for families trying to evacuate Rafah before they are massacred. Check out the spreadsheet and donate whatever you can.
Offers from Friends: Bianca still needs to complete more sessions to obtain her official EFT clinical certification. Because of that, she is offering 20% off all of her sessions when you enter the code TWENTYPERCENT at checkout. You can book via her website. Seriously, run, don't walk to book a session with Bianca. It was also her birthday the other day so like, give her a great birthday present!
