There’s a war inside my head and every day, I wrestle with conflicting messages that pull me in opposite directions.
On one hand, I’m a nerdy, optimistic humanist who believes that human potential is unlimited so long as we invest the full weight of our human, financial, scientific, and material resources towards the welfare of all humans.
If we can build complex cities and towering skyscrapers in a matter of months, cure ravenous diseases that exist on a microscopic level, and program a dumb rock to perform acts of artificial intelligence, we can divert that same tenacity, hard work and expertise to solve virtually any societal, cultural, or economic problem.
There are no excuses for our consistent human failures. Or at least, not any good ones.
Which brings me to hand number two: I’m also a pragmatic leftist who understands that the path towards any utopia will probably be paved in the blood, sweat, and tears of marginalized workers.
In other words: colonizers gonna colonize.
If history has taught us anything about utopias, it’s the harsh reality that everything from the pyramids in Egypt to the urban skylines in Dubai and New York were all paved by an exploited group people who were underpaid and deeply oppressed.
We also have an oppressive global supply chain that that exploits POC labor and oppresses POC communities, making it even harder for us to “see” the daily cost of doing modern business.
It’s okay to be high on optimism and believe in a higher potential for humanity.
But just because we have an ambitious vision for greatness, doesn’t mean the journey towards the promised land of success won’t come at an unfortunate and irreversible cost to human lives, our economy, our culture, our communities, or our planet.
We are a nation of opportunity and excessive and accessible resources that overflow at the seams, yet we consistently overdevelop the wrong parts of society. We overinvest in neighborhoods that have already had their 7th and 8th plate. We expand amenities and luxuries for lofty white neighborhoods while we watch proletariat neighborhoods crumble. We evict already unhoused communities from underneath our freeway bridges just so we can justify rental increases for the neighboring and overpriced apartments across the street.
Two hands pulling me in different directions: One hand sees the allure of our untapped human potential. The other recognizes the potential consequences of building a utopia too close to the Capitalist sun.
And then there’s a third hand that kinda popped outta nowhere in my mid-to-late 20s:
My creative branding side that believes in our potential to change all of our existing circumstances, rewrite all our outdated rules and narratives, and produce more humanizing stories, programs, communities, policies, and solutions that serve the people.
I believe radical change is possible, but it can only work if we reshape the way we talk the future and the people we include along this journey towards growth.
We need to change our core values about who we should protect, the communities that deserve our support, and the problems that need the most attention. We need to reprogram society into becoming more compassionate and inclusive. And we need to educate people on all the nuanced experiences of being and supporting LGBTQ, disabled and neurodiverse people so they can ride into the futuristic sunset with us.
But that’s a whole lot easier said than done.
It won’t be easy to reform Christianity’s eternal grasp on the American conservative political community and its downstream impact on reproductive justice and trans rights. It won’t be easy to teardown the seen/unseen forces that empower white supremacy to thrive in our culture and media. It won’t be easy to reshape the greedy capitalist mindset that infects every corner of our modern work and academic culture. It won’t be easy to revolutionize healthcare access, affordable housing, and education equity when our existing systems are corroded with financial corruption and racial exclusion.
But it is possible. I truly believe that we can change all of it.
We need an acute awareness of all the tiny cracks within our currently outdated society so we can to identify stress points that will allow us to seamlessly transition towards a more progressive future.
We don’t have to rebuild our entire system from top-to-bottom if we want widespread change. We can target specific problems, at specific times, and allow our strategy to repurpose our existing infrastructure into a more positive one that works for everyone.
Just look at the progress happening with Starbucks workers unionizing their workplaces: not every Starbucks location nor Starbucks worker needed to join this movement at the start. But when Starbucks workers slowly and consistently joined forces, store by store, state by sate, inevitably, there was a tipping point where the presence of union supporters overtook the pressure from the unionbusters, and the choice became clear.
We need to identify those tipping points.
Starbucks’ movement towards unionization wasn’t an option available to workers 5 years ago. Hell, this wasn’t even an option 3 years ago.
It wasn’t until the pandemic hit that the burnout of Starbucks employment started to dawn on the employees. And none of this could have happened without the increased access to progressive education that has slowly but surely radicalized more proletariat workers into believing in the power of unionization than any college textbook could have done.
This third hand represents my recognition that there are moments in time when change must happen. When you need to activate change right NOW. When the scales need to be tipped and something old has to give way to something new and improved. And it is this third creative side of me that continues to keep my nerdy optimism and my pragmatic leftism in harmony by always proposing the idea that things can change.
Our vision of progress can change. Our mindset can change. Our strategies for growth and improvement can change.
We can build an impressive future that is a step in every right direction, but we need to communicate and package our ideas in a way that is attractive to others.
The future we deserve is available for us to capture.
We just need better branding.