The Impossibility of Being Perfectly Ethical

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Show Notes

This week we chat about how it is impossible to be fully ethical consumers under capitalism, colonialism, patriarchy, and white supremacy. These systems are actually dependent on unethical practices. Folks on the left can absolutely tie ourselves in knots trying to make every single choice be “the right one.” We also talk about the weird (and gross) moralizing that sometimes accompanies the privilege of being able to afford the seemingly “most ethical” options.

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Sound editing by Jen Zink

Transcript

Music: [Intro Music] 

Patricia: Hello, Monsters! Welcome to Enthusiastic Encouragement and Dubious Advice, the podcast for folks who would rather curl into the fetal position than lean in. I’m your host, Patricia Elzie-Tuttle. 

Nicole: And I’m the sugar to your salt, Nicole Elzie-Tuttle. We are recording the show on September 24th, 2024. 

Patricia: Happy autumn, everyone!

Nicole: It’s autumn! I mean, in my brain it’s been autumn since the start of September, maybe even part of August, but you keep telling me that that’s summertime still. 

Patricia: Yeah. I mean, okay, so, I recognize we’re also being very centered on where we are. It is autumn where we are, and our friends in the Southern Hemisphere, it is springtime.

Nicole: Yes. 

Patricia: So, happy spring. 

Nicole: Because we just had… 

We just had an Equinox? 

Patricia: Yes. 

Nicole: And that’s how you divide the seasons? 

Patricia: Spring equinox, fall equinox. 

Nicole: And then the solstices. 

Patricia: And then the solstices. Solstices? 

Nicole: Solstici. 

Patricia: Solstici. 

Nicole: I don’t know. I go off seasonal vibes, so. 

Patricia: I know, you’ve just been saying it’s summer, it’s summer, it’s summer, and then you said it was like autumn a month ago, but now it’s summer again.

Nicole: Yeah. No, it’s not summer. It’s autumn. It’s been autumn since August, because they start the same.

Patricia: [Laughing] 

Nicole: Anyways. 

Patricia: Anyways. 

Nicole: [Laughing] 

Patricia: We recently went on a bookstore and chocolate crawl. 

Nicole: Heavy on the bookstore, a little light on the chocolate, and crawling this time. 

Patricia: Yeah, there was no crawling. 

Nicole: Thankfully. 

Patricia: I don’t think I could have handled any crawling.

Nicole: No, especially, we had to go, there was a hill involved at one point. 

Patricia: There was a hill involved. 

Nicole: That was, yeah. 

Patricia: But we stopped at four bookshops. 

Nicole: Yeah, and then there was ice cream at the end. 

Patricia: And then there’s ice cream, and there was also, this was in San Francisco, and we ended in The Mission, and there was some kind of festival going on, so like we had ice cream, and also there was a concert, so.

Nicole: Yeah, it was great. 

Patricia: Yeah. 

Nicole: We got some good books. 

Patricia: We did. 

We scored a first edition of Octavia E. Butler’s Dawn. 

Nicole: Which has a very silly cover on it. 

Patricia: Yeah, it has two white women on the cover, which if you’re familiar with Octavia Butler’s writing, that’s very unlikely to be the characters, but you know, they put white people on the cover because they thought that would help it sell.

Nicole: Yeah. 

One thing we, or I learned, so as part of the bookstore part, was it the second bookstore or the third? 

Patricia: It was a second bookstore called Et al, which might have been like a pop up even. It’s like a bookstore in front and then a gallery in the back. 

Nicole: Yeah, and there’s like three gallery spaces in the back with some art situations and installments around.

But as part of the event we were participating in, they had a local author come and read the first chapter of their upcoming book, and a band came and played. 

Patricia: Not at the same time. 

Nicole: Not at the same time. That would have been a lot. They happened sequentially. But this was a gallery space, so it was not a space intended for public speaking and music, which meant there was a lot of echoing and with people talking or murmuring that got picked up. And there was also a lot of street noise. 

And for me, It was incredibly difficult to be able to make out, like, what the author was saying. And later, like, the music was just almost overwhelming because it was a very echoey space and everything. So I tried something out with using my AirPods. I specifically have the Apple AirPod Pro, Pro AirPods or something two, I don’t know. 

But they have a feature on them called adaptive mode that what it does is it tries to like filter out some of the outside noise. It’s not fully noise canceling, but it reduces noise levels and filters out loud noises and tries to like really balance out the sound for you. And in this space, when the author was talking, I popped them in. And it cut out so much of the background noise that I could very easily make out what the author was saying.

Patricia: Yeah. And sometimes the noise processing for you and for other people can also be related to ADHD, 

Nicole: mm hmm 

Patricia: um, and just wanting to hear all the noises all at once and then you can’t kind of single out a sound. 

Nicole: It’s not even wanting, it’s, I, I literally just hear everything. We have this discussion even in like restaurants and stuff.

I’m hearing everybody’s conversation around us all at the same time. 

Patricia: Right. 

Nicole: Or the TVs that are on or whatever. 

Patricia: So yeah, I was really worried about you being able to hear in this space and I saw you pop in your AirPods and that it looked like you were able to hear. And even when I leaned in and talked to you, it’s not that they were noise canceling, you could still hear if I whispered to you 

Nicole: mm hmm 

Patricia: or something like that. 

Nicole: yeah 

Patricia: And as a person who is an Android user, I usually see people with headphones in, and still I have that gut reaction of they’re not listening 

Nicole: yeah 

Patricia: or they’re being rude. And so I also am trying to learn like, oh no, actually this is assistive. 

Nicole: yeah 

Patricia: This is making this space accessible for you. 

Nicole: And this is something I think we’re going to see a little more in the future because Apple just got FDA authorization to have their headphones also count as hearing aids. And so coming up, they’re going to start introducing the ability to actually do a hearing test on your phone, which will then program your headphones to be hearing aids. Which means we’re really going to have to shift our perspective on why people are wearing headphones.

Patricia: Yeah. Yeah. I think it’s super fascinating. I love the expansion of technology 

Nicole: mm hmm 

Patricia: to do this. And also I recognize I am not deaf. I am not hard of hearing. So I’m also looking forward to hearing what people from these communities 

Nicole: yeah 

Patricia: think about this technology. 

Nicole: Yeah, and I, I will second that. As far as I’m aware, I am not deaf or hard of hearing.

I may have some sort of processing situation going on. I haven’t been evaluated for that. 

Patricia: Although all those Ozzfests might have, uh. 

Nicole: All the heavy metal concerts in my teenage years. Yeah, that one day afterwards where everything sounded like a robot probably meant I damaged my hearing. 

Patricia: Maybe a little. 

So, as usual, we need to mention we have a Patreon, we have a bookshop where you can buy books through our affiliate links.

These are ways to support this podcast so we can keep it without ads, and we will always link those in the show notes on the website, we’ll also link it in the show notes that go directly into your podcatcher, whatever, whatever you happen to use.

Music: [Transition music] 

Patricia: So it is election season and today I thought we’d talk about what I have coined as Perfection in the Progressive Olympics. So perfection for that is just trying to do everything fully ethically. And then the Olympics is the implied competition and moral hierarchy that can come out of trying to do everything ethically and always hire certain people and, and, and make your money go certain places.

And so that’s what we’re going to talk about today. 

Nicole: Yeah, and we will definitely burn ourselves out on this because there are infinite events to compete in. And I’m gonna state up front, it is literally impossible to win when capitalism, patriarchy, whatever, don’t care about it at all, unless they can make money from it, or gain power.

Patricia: Absolutely. So let’s start with the perfectionism part of that, something that I struggle with constantly. I kind of have to, like, bring myself back when I find myself kind of spiraling. To start with, one thing, it’s really expensive to always buy things ethically. And it’s, it’s also impossible, but it’s also really expensive.

Nicole: Yeah, and this doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t try at all, but we do, like, try to focus on what we can in this whole capitalist situation that we’re in. So, like, we buy ethically sourced coffee. I think, did you… 

Patricia: I think in the past I’ve mentioned Kahawa, where it’s both, like, local to the Bay Area, and she’s a Black woman, and she works with Black women farmers, and so it’s like, yes, I will, I will buy my coffee from the person. And it’s also really good. 

Nicole: Yeah, and I get my tea from a company called JusTea that, again, purchases its tea from Black women farmers, and it is also really good. But we also get other things like when we bought our sofa, we… 

Patricia: We researched a lot for like, what company has the most sustainable, but also what sofa is maybe gonna last the rest of our lives, or at least a very long time, so that we’re not constantly buying sofas.

Nicole: Or has an option to repair it. 

Patricia: Yeah. 

Nicole: Versus having to just throw it out and buy a new one. Sometimes we even try for clothing. This has been something I’ve mentioned recently that I’ve kind of been on a kick on is buying second hand clothes, which is a really ethical way to purchase clothes, and also coincidentally save money if you’re good at it and have the time.

Patricia: Well, and if you have access 

Nicole: yes 

Patricia: to places where you can 

Nicole: Get quality clothes. 

Patricia: get quality, 

Both: yeah 

Patricia: quality thrift shops. And it has also been a barrier, like this, this wanting to do everything, right, is a barrier to some things. Like I was researching for months and I had to take a break because I wanted the music for this podcast to be by a black musician or a black composer.

And I was like, if I’m having a show, I’m not having music by anyone unless they’re black. And so I don’t know if you’ve ever looked for music for a project to download, even pay for. Often, you don’t know what the composer or musician looks like, and even so, like, you can’t always tell by pictures, and you shouldn’t make assumptions a lot of the time, and it’s often not listed in these giant databases of music for projects or podcasts or whatever.

I did eventually find music, like, music for our show is by a Black musician, but then it was also like, I also need to like the music. It also needs to fit with our vibe. And I was having the same thing when I was looking for a tattoo artist. I was like, okay, they need to be black, they need to be queer, they need to do color on melanated skin, but I also need to like their style, but also they need to be in the Bay Area.

And it kind of is a throwback to our podcast episode about finding a therapist, like the more things you add to the list, the harder it gets, or maybe even impossible it gets to find someone who checks every box. 

Nicole: So then you start rolling back some boxes. 

Patricia: Absolutely. 

Nicole: Yeah. 

We also try to source most of our produce from the farmer’s market.

This doesn’t always work out. Like, I like to have mixed greens for my sandwiches. But if I buy it from the farm market, then it needs to be washed. And like, I, in the mornings, do not have the time to hand wash and like salad spin 

Patricia: A fistful of greens. 

Nicole: triple quadruple, like a fistful of greens.

Patricia: [Chuckling] 

Nicole: Because then also that means the whole salad spinner needs to be washed and everything.

Like, I just do not have the time, energy, effort for that. So that is one thing, like, yeah, end up buying from the grocery store. And I know it’s packaged in plastic, but I try to get the one that’s going to last me two weeks instead of one week, and like, that’s my compromise in produce. 

Patricia: Totally, and, and I think it’s also a balance.

It’s not that we buy everything from the farmer’s market, it’s not that we buy every, everything we consume food wise from small companies, like, we also get boxes of frozen corn dogs from Foster Farms. 

Nicole: Yeah, because we, we talked about this a little bit, there’s, there’s no one taking a locally sourced hot dog with locally sourced wooden sticks and dipping them in locally made and sourced organic cornmeal.

Patricia: Well, and what I was saying to you is even if they were, that sounds awful. That sounds terrible. I want my Honey Crunch Foster Farms corn dogs, pop them in the air fryer. I remember I went to, I’m ranting about corn dogs now. I went to the Fillmore Street Festival one time, maybe like 20 years ago, and there was a corn dog stand and I went and they had tried to weirdly season 

Nicole: No 

Patricia: the batter with 

Nicole: No 

Patricia: like paprika and stuff, it was terrible.

It was a corn dog of melancholy. Like, it was so, so sad. 

Nicole: Yeah. What we’re trying to get out here is balance. 

Patricia: And going back to the salad greens you use for your sandwich, I also think there’s just such a villainizing of convenience foods as well. That somehow convenience foods are less than and we’re not going to get into the whole diet culture of it all.

But I will give a book recommendation that just came out. It’s Live Nourished by Shana Minei Spence and I’ll definitely link it in the show notes and in our bookshop. She is a black dietitian. Remember a dietitian is a medical professional, a nutritionist, anyone can call themselves a nutritionist. So she’s a dietitian.

It was a great entry level book, I think, on diet culture and nourishment. So, again, it’s Live Nourished. I’ll link that in the show notes. She talks a lot about convenience foods and not villainizing them and how helpful they can be. 

Nicole: Another place we, we try to be a bit more, I guess, ethical in our consumption under capitalism is that we try to repair the things we have.

I think we’ve talked about this sometimes before. And if we need to buy something new, we try to check for recommendations on the, like, Buy it for Life subreddit, finding things that will either hold out for extensive amounts of times or are hopefully able to be repaired in the future if they need to, instead of throwing it out and creating more waste and buying a new one.

And really, here we want to recognize that being able to financially afford these things and participate in this way comes with a lot of privilege. This is not something that is accessible to everyone. 

I’d say to even most people. 

Yeah 

Patricia: Right? 

Nicole: I think that’s valid. 

Patricia: And so sure, Amazon is evil, but we still buy things on Amazon.

But we try to balance that, and for us, we don’t buy books on Amazon. We know how predatory they are against independent booksellers, and so it’s like, okay, we may need these other things that we can then, like they’re more affordable on the site, maybe like your eye drops, like we could actually get a larger volume for less money.

Nicole: And it’s not like a little bit, it’s like twice the volume. 

Patricia: Right. 

Nicole: For half the price. 

Patricia: And I was thinking about when my mom got sick and how it was invaluable to be able to order things delivered to the house for her care. And how incredibly important it can be to have companies like this to make things accessible to people who can’t just run out and get things, or running out and getting things is so much more expensive than ordering them online.

But like I said, we try to balance by at least not buying books on Amazon. 

Nicole: Yeah. 

When it comes to books, one thing we do do is we get a lot of books from the library, which should not be a surprise to our regular listeners. But that definitely. puts more than a few bonus points on the board for us in the Perfection in the Progressive Olympics.

Patricia: So much of this is unrealistic for most people and it’s, it’s a lot. Like I, even just saying it right now, it’s like, yeah, we do a lot 

Nicole: We do a lot. 

Patricia: and I can tell you it’s not always fun. 

Nicole: It’s also exhausting. There will always be more than we can do. And beyond that, it will still never be enough. We are a household of two adults, and we are not going to single handedly end white supremacy, capitalism, patriarchy, by, I don’t know… 

Patricia: By the consumption choices we make.

Nicole: Yeah, like, us buying cucumbers from the farmer’s market is not gonna fix this. 

Patricia: Right, right. And I think it is also, Impossible to do everything ethically under these systems. Under capitalism, colonialism, white supremacy, like these systems are designed for unethical gains. 

A conversation I have frequently with a few people is around investing and investing for whether it’s wealth, investing for a retirement, investing for a specific thing, buying a home.

There is no way to invest and get returns on your investment and still have them be 100% ethical. And you might say, well, but what about, you know, like green investing? And, like, some of the green investing usually involves Tesla stocks. 

Nicole: Bleh. 

Patricia: Right. 

And so, one, that’s not a great product, the money is going to someone who I certainly don’t support.

But, also, the human rights violations that are involved in making the batteries and the components of electric vehicles, like, sure, it might be green in that way, and, like, absolute human rights violations. So, again, there is no, there’s no ethical investing, so you gotta weigh. But I still want to retire. I still, you know, I still want to save for a rainy day.

Nicole: Yeah. 

Patricia: The system is designed that we can’t do any of this fully ethically. 

Nicole: And as we mentioned, like, there’s a lot of privilege that comes with even being able to try to participate in this way. And I want to acknowledge that not only is this not accessible to most people, because of cost. Being poor is more expensive than not being poor.

I think a great example of this is what’s kind of referred to as the Boots Theory, which actually originates from Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series. And the base concept of this is that while a well made pair of boots may cost you, say, $500, they’re gonna last you 10 years. Whereas a cheap pair of boots may only cost you $50, but you’ll have to replace them every year. 

Patricia: Or every half year, if you’re gonna do the math. 

Nicole: Yeah. 

Patricia: For that. 

Nicole: You end up spending more money because you can’t afford the products that last you longer. And also, you end up generating more waste in that. Just because the better quality products are inaccessible. So in the long run, it costs you more money to be poor. 

Along these same lines, though, I also want to recognize that companies who make products have an incentive to, over time, reduce the quality of their products so that there is faster turnover, so that people continue to buy more of their products.

When they exhaust the market and everybody’s got the product, if it’s going to last 10 years, then there’s no more people to buy it. So they have to make inferior quality so that they break, wear out, and people have to buy more. 

Patricia: And there are companies that, well, first, I want to go backward. Don’t check Nicole’s math on the numbers.

Nicole: No, don’t check my numbers on that. 

Patricia: I think in the, in the bootstrap. theory example, it’s actually 50 bucks for a good pair of boots and then 10 bucks 

Nicole: Sure 

Patricia: for whatever, and then 10 years. So, but… 

Nicole: We’ll link it in the show notes 

Patricia: We’ll link it in the show notes. 

Nicole: to the Wikipedia article that has math that checks out. 

Patricia: Absolutely. 

But going back to companies have an incentive to make things of worse quality.

You are seeing this with some companies like Tupperware having to file for bankruptcy. And what happened was their products would just last for so long that people weren’t buying new Tupperware. 

Nicole: Yeah. 

Patricia: And then the same thing with Instant Pot. Once you have an Instant Pot, like, then you have an Instant Pot, and it works, and it’s great, and you’re not buying a new Instant Pot every year.

And so that company also is, was struggling trying to figure out like what do we pivot to because the thing where they got known for and making their money, no one was buying it anymore because everyone already had one. 

Nicole: I think that’s why you started seeing like weird attachments for it, like an air fryer lid and stuff.

Patricia: Yeah. Yeah. 

Nicole: The other thing that we think about, particularly as people who, who live in the United States, is that we are living on stolen land. And this is a frequent point that comes up with Patricia and I. Because we are renters, and we, of course, like many people, dream of homeownership someday, but… 

Patricia: But what does homeownership mean on stolen land?

Nicole: Right. 

Patricia: But then, like, we’re basically paying housing for our landlord right now, and it’s, there’s no way of winning. 

Nicole: Yeah. 

Patricia: A lot of what has kind of helped my thinking on a lot of this, is the book Wallet Activism, How to Use Every Dollar You Spend, Earn, and Save as a Force for Change by Tanja Hester.

This book really, really helped me reframe how I think about all of this. 

Nicole: I read this recently and I similarly was just like, oh yeah, this is, this is really helpful. 

Patricia: One of the things she goes over was using almond milk or oat milk versus actual dairy, but then almond milk uses a lot of water, but then how far does it travel to you?

And trying to like, weigh all these things when I just want a bowl of cereal. 

Nicole: There was also another aspect of that was that like, a lot of the, the almond trees replaced what was formerly cotton fields, which were far more, like, water dependent. 

Patricia: Oh, I don’t know. Yeah. 

Nicole: There was something else. There was, like, another factor in that, that some of the farming that was being used to make the almonds that turned into almond milk was formerly cotton fields.

So, by transforming them and supporting the farmers who were growing the almonds, you’re, in some ways, even though they were maybe require more water in one aspect, they’re using less water than what was formerly in that field. So you’re encouraging the farmers to do like, there’s, 

Patricia: Yeah 

Nicole: levels of calculus to this. 

Patricia: But then I was like, we’re in California where we’re always in a drought. 

Nicole: Yeah. There’s levels of calculus to all this that is, that this book goes into. And I think it’s really helpful in reframing how you think about some of these products and what you are saying when you purchase products. Especially under this, like, capitalist economy system.

Patricia: Let’s talk about the other part of the phrase, Perfection in the Progressive Olympics. Progressive Olympics. This is the term I use for the phenomenon of the implied hierarchy of what we’ve been talking about. It would be like me thinking I’m better than other people because I’m learning to make my own pasta.

Like, I am not better than other people because of that. I’m learning because I think it’s fun and it tastes good. But also, I think pasta from the grocery store tastes good, too. I am very open to all types of pasta. 

Nicole: Are you a pan-pasta? 

Patricia: I don’t know. I’m not a pasta purist. 

Nicole: Okay. 

I was actually thinking about this when we were at the grocery store on Sunday, as I was buying a few more cups of yogurt, because I like to have them in the fridge, especially as it’s still been warm.

They make for a good part of my lunch. But they all come in plastic, unless I think if you buy like that one particular French brand or something, but most of the yogurt comes in plastic. And for the volume I want, because I’ll sometimes supplement it instead of a sandwich or something, it’s in plastic.

And I was like, oh, [exhale] I could learn to make yogurt. 

Patricia: We have an instant pot. 

Nicole: We have an instant pot. It has a yogurt button. Um, and I have friends who’ve made yogurt. It can’t be that hard. And that would help cut down on packaging waste. 

Yeah, and we could also, like, I, I love making bread. I think it’s fun, and the bread is delicious.

Like, we could, we could make our own bread, and we can make our own pasta, and we can do all these things. But then we wouldn’t have time for anything else. 

Patricia: We wouldn’t have time for anything else. And the internet, the tradwife internet also tries to make you feel like if you are doing all these things, you are better than other people. 

Nicole: Yeah 

Patricia: And that is not true. 

Nicole: Also, the tradwife internet does a weird thing where it leads people to, like, white supremacist content. 

Patricia: Yep. 

It’s a direct line. 

Nicole: It’s a direct line. Do not fall down that rabbit hole. 

Patricia: But, yeah, like, constantly doing all of those things wouldn’t leave us time for anything else. We have day jobs. I have a whole other job with Book Riot. I have writing. We have this podcast. We also need to clean and take care of the garden and I don’t know, see friends once in a while, and if we were doing all of those things, we wouldn’t be doing any of that. 

Nicole: Yeah. Another example of this is thinking someone who uses disposable plates or cutlery is somehow less than a person who doesn’t.

This is, this is really another, like, Progressive Olympics thing. And you have to, like, reframe this into, like, that is, that’s an incredibly ableist thought. You don’t know everyone’s story, and honestly not everyone is in a place in their life where they can have nice dishes and silverware that they can’t throw away, or is even able to wash them.

Patricia: Yeah, and there are some people who just use them and they don’t like washing dishes, or they don’t have time because they’re working multiple jobs, and it’s like, people are going to make their own decisions, and you are not somehow better than a person who uses disposable cutlery and dishes. 

Nicole: Yeah 

Patricia: Or they are somehow not less than people who don’t. It goes back to the whole disposable straw situation. There are many people who need disposable straws, and no one is better than anyone else for either not using a straw. Or carrying around a metal straw that then gets dirty and then you do what with it? Do you just like put a dirty straw in your purse? I don’t, like, I, I never really understood what was happening there. 

Nicole: Yeah, you have to like wrap it up in a thing and then you have like a dirty straw in a… 

Patricia: In a dirty napkin that you then throw away, like, ugh. 

Nicole: Yeah, no. 

I think about this a lot too. I think this was something that was mentioned in the Wallet Activism book.

When we started getting rid of all of the plastic straws, Starbucks introduced a strawless lid, and in some circumstances it was at least equivalent to the same amount of plastic as the old plastic straw and lid combo, and in some situations it actually ended up being more plastic 

Patricia: Oh my gosh. 

Nicole: by, by weight than the old straw and lid combo.

Patricia: I’m fascinated how the whole conversation was around plastic straws and not, say, like, cotton swabs. 

Nicole: Well, I mean, if there was dramatic footage of a sea turtle with uh, cotton swabs stuck up its nose, then that might have been the conversation we had. 

Patricia: But the thing is, there is footage out there of cotton swabs littering the ocean.

My take on it, my hot take, is that the beauty industry would never let it fly to villainize cotton swabs. 

Nicole: Mmmm 

Patricia: And also, there’s no quote unquote good replacement. 

Nicole: Yeah, there’s not. Wait, we’re not going to get a, uh, a glass swab or a… 

Patricia: You know what? I have seen a company, they made a silicone swab, 

Nicole: Yeah 

Patricia: but then you have to, like, rinse it.

I don’t know. 

Nicole: Yeah 

Patricia: I don’t know. It seemed like it was doing a lot. Um, there’s an episode of Struggle Care that I’ll link to where they actually talk about, like, environmentalism and ableism. 

Nicole: That’s the, that’s the episode with Imani Barbarin, right? 

Patricia: Yeah, Crutches and Spice. 

Nicole: Yeah. 

Patricia: She’s great. 

Nicole: That was a good episode too.

Patricia: I’m also fascinated by how something that started out as a greener option like a Stanley Cup or a Hydro Flask suddenly morphed into rampant consumerism and status symbols. 

Nicole: I mean, that’s what capitalism does, right? Especially with these higher priced items that we’ve been kind of talking around. They cost more because they’re supposedly higher quality.

And because of this higher price point, it becomes a status symbol, which earns you points in the Progressive Olympics, and… 

Patricia: Oh my gosh, yeah. 

Nicole: But then, because it becomes a status symbol, it is also consumed at a higher rate, and then, as soon as it’s out of fashion, it’s thrown away again. And now you have this item that, while it would have lasted years on your shelf, lasts even longer in the landfill.

Patricia: Yeah, I mean, you could tell when they’re going out of fashion when you start to check the thrift shops. As soon as you see them showing up at the thrift shops, 

Nicole: Mm hmm 

Patricia: you know they’re over. 

One of the effects of the idea that Group A is morally superior than Group B is that, say, when I end up having to throw something out that isn’t recyclable, there can be a lot of guilt around that.

Nicole: The other side of this, like, trying to be perfect in the Progressive Olympics is that because these more ethical, sustainable options are often more expensive, It leads to some people to believe that having wealth is a reliable substitute for being a more ethical person. 

Patricia: Yeah, like it’s a proxy. 

Nicole: Yes. And therefore, having wealth on its own gets you more points towards that Perfection in the Progressive Olympics.

Now, I want to be very clear here. There is nothing morally superior about having more wealth, and nothing morally inferior about being poor. 

Patricia: Absolutely. 

I’m also fascinated how the context constantly changes. Like, growing up, I grew up in my grandparents house. They lived through the Great Depression, and I grew up washing Ziplocs, which I’ve mentioned before.

And, you know, that was not necessarily seen as something people who are wealthy do, right, wash their Ziplocs. But now it’s seen as something very green and environmental. And there’s also, I’m only vaguely aware of the new under consumption core trend online, where it’s like a direct response to the constant over consumption that is especially popular on places with pictures like Instagram and TikTok.

And so people are like, making aesthetic videos of like, using what they have, and I’m like, oh, like, normal people? 

Nicole: It is impossible to win at achieving Perfection in the Progressive Olympics. We don’t have to play that game, but it is important that we try to be ethical in our choices where we can. Every little bit does help, and that means sometimes we are better in some places than others, but please recognize that while it’s good to make your little individual effort, the amount of waste any individual person creates, or can stop creating pales in comparison to that generated by these massive corporations out there.

Those are the ones really responsible for all of the environmental problems we have. 

Patricia: Yeah, and I also think about it when it’s like, oh yeah, I want to buy Black, or I want to buy Asian, or what have you, and sometimes it’s like that thing you want, you can’t find a person in that group that makes that thing.

Nicole: Yeah. 

Patricia: And that’s just the way it is. I mean, if you are a person of color, you can make your own thing. But anyway, at the beginning, I mentioned we want to talk about this because it’s election season, and I think a lot about these ideas of Perfection in the Progressive Olympics in the context of political candidates.

I don’t think there’s such a thing as the perfect candidate because people are not perfect creatures. I think it’s important to vote, especially down ballot. I think it’s important to push candidates and officials toward a more just world. And I think, recognizing that politicians are not perfect and they’re not going to save us, it is important to continue organizing and doing community work and supporting folks doing the community work.

Nicole: Whew. That was a lot to pack in there. 

Patricia: Yeah. 

Nicole: What do you want to make sure people take away from this episode? 

Patricia: I want everyone to recognize when you’re, when you’re doing this spiraling. Recognize when you’re setting yourself on fire to keep other people warm. It is so easy to burn out trying to do everything right and every right thing, and it’s actually impossible.

What do you want people to take away? 

Nicole: I want people to keep an eye out for how they’re participating in this attempt at achieving Perfection in the Progressive Olympics. And how that shows up in their life in the form of unconscious biases for people who have less disposable income to purchase the newest green product or whatever.

Music: [Transition Music]

Nicole: [Exhale] Okay, that was kind of heavy. 

Patricia: Yeah. 

Nicole: Patricia, what has been filling your cup lately? 

Patricia: It’s actually kind of related to the show, which is, we have a lot of stuff, and what’s actually filled my cup is we’ve decided to really maybe focus more on like a nice dinner or doing something, going on a road trip or something, for each other for Christmas instead of buying more things.

Like we don’t really have shelf space for more dustables. We have all the books and all the plants and all the perfume and it’s actually kind of maybe not filled my cup, but it’s lifted a weight from me. Not having to expect to be making room for, for more items. 

Nicole: This is something we actually did in the pre COVID era, and we did a lot of really fun things.

Patricia: Yeah, we need to, now that it’s still COVID, it’s the, I don’t like saying post COVID era, but it’s… 

Nicole: We have better mitigation. 

Patricia: We have better mitigation, and like, it makes us be creative, too, 

Nicole: Yeah 

Patricia: about what we do. 

Nicole: Yeah. 

Patricia: Nicole, what’s filling your cup? 

Nicole: I am holding on to things in the future right now. We’re going to go to our local Renaissance Faire this coming weekend, but we also have a lot of autumnal adventures planned and other various things, and I’m just, it feels really nice to have things to look forward to. 

Patricia: Yeah. 

Well, that’s our show for today. We’d like to thank our awesome audio editor, Jen Zink. You can find her at loopdilou.com, and we’ll leave a link to that in our show notes. 

Nicole: You can find the full show notes and transcript at eedapod.com, that’s E E D A P O D dot com. There you can also find a link to our Patreon, our Bookshop link, and a link to the ongoing Enthusiastic Encouragement and Dubious Advice newsletter.

You can also find us on Instagram and bluesky at eedapod and email us at eedapod@gmail.com. 

Patricia: We are nothing if not consistent. 

Nicole: We would appreciate it so much if you would subscribe and rate us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts that allow ratings. It really does go far in helping other people find us.

Patricia: We would also appreciate anyone who can subscribe to us on Patreon. Support there is going to help us keep this show going, especially without ads. You can find us at patreon.com/eedapod. In the meantime, we hope you find ways to be kind to yourself. Drink some water and read a book. We’ll be talking to you soon.

I wish we bought corndogs the other day.