Not My Problem
You should not feel guilty about not doing enough
I feel guilty about not doing enough.
Not doing enough to mitigate global climate change.
Not doing enough to end racism in our time.
Not doing enough to alleviate poverty and hunger.
Not doing enough to save democracy.
But I shouldn’t feel guilty. You’ve heard the justification, “I’m just too busy trying to get by to have any energy (or resources) left to work on all that!” It may sound like a lame excuse, but it is not. It is, in fact, very true for most of us. And I’ve figured out the intellectual underpinning of it, at least well enough to satisfy me. Here it is:
Once upon a time, we were hunter-gatherers. We spent half our day hunting and processing game, and gathering edibles. The rest of the day, we ate, played games, talked, slept. Life was good. (Except for occasional droughts and saber-toothed tigers.)
Starting about 10,000 years ago and throughout subsequent history, most of us were subsistence farmers. Our families worked from dawn to dusk growing food and husbanding livestock so we would have enough to eat. We would stock up to have a larder to rely on during the winter non-growing months. We got by. Life was okay—except for the occasional famines and pandemics. And when neighbouring families came with weapons and stole our stuff.
However, there was this nice (not so nice) noble person who lived in a nearby castle, who had soldiers. He said he would protect us from marauding neighbors in exchange for a fraction of our crop and livestock. It was a good deal, so we took it.
And so it went, down through history to modern society. I work from dawn to dusk using my specialised skills, and I send a fraction of my income to a nearby noble in a castle. Today, the noble in the castle is the government, and I pay my fraction through taxes, obviously. Besides protecting me from marauding neighbours, the government, supported by our taxes, is supposed to safeguard the environment, enforce equality for all, prevent poverty and hunger, and protect its own institutions, i.e., democracy. I don’t have time to do all that stuff, nor are my specialized skills best applied in those areas. Instead, I vote for people who want to do all that stuff, and have the skills to do it. And I pay them to do it, with my taxes.
So come on, dammit! Senators and representatives and judges and Mr. President, do your damn job!
I encourage everyone to do all they can to mitigate climate change, end racism, alleviate povery and hunger, and save democracy. But if you don’t have the time or energy to spare, don’t feel guitly. It’s not your f’ing job.
