Power of the People

Photo: Washington Post

The Atlantic published an article this month about how the ten most prominent right wing publications in America have lost 40% of their readership since 2010. The headline says they’re “in trouble” (i.e. not making enough money). All over the country, women are furious about the loss of hard-earned rights and we’re seeing lots of commentary about how the furious women’s vote could win the election. Both of these situations reflect the power of the people.

On one side of the aisle, there is the power of money, like that which powers mainstream media, right wing politics, huge corporations, and other entities disinterested in anything but dollars and ratings. On the other side, we grumble. But one thing is obvious: when we change our behaviors only slightly, we influence what happens in the world. Boycotts are wonderfully effective. We know that when we take away a corporation’s income, they can’t last long unless they change. So when we read that General Mills has jacked up prices and made astronomical profits, we can complain—of course—but if we really want to affect things, we have to stop buying their products.

No one likes being deprived of their favorite things or cherished conveniences, of course, which feel like losses for us. So a new perspective is necessary. Instead of feeling deprived of our Cheerios, we need to see not having them as a way to show the manufacturer that we’ve had it with price gouging. We can, in fact, live without Cheerios. We could make it a game, perhaps, to see how many injustices we can get rid of together. We could do this, were it not for our one universally shared issue: Habit.

As Proust wrote in Within a Budding Grove, “Habit is a second nature which prevents us from knowing the first,” and also that “Habit dispenses us from effort,” as in driving everywhere spares us from public transit. We’re compelled to habitually consult social media and the news, as we live through this transformative period in human history, which informs us of a new thing to worry about every hour. We have to fit that in between all the necessary and pleasantly habitual things we do every day, leaving little time for organizing a boycott, or anything, for that matter, unless an issue is of huge significance for you.

However, the good thing about habits is that we both form them and lose them. There are countless things in everyone’s life that we used to do all the time, and don’t do now. There are also things that didn’t exist before, so we had no opportunity to add them to our resumes of habits, where they’re now firmly embedded. As Proust wrote, “We die many times in our lives and become another person.”

So we have the choice to form new habits that are positive contributions to the greater good. Shop locally, go as green as possible, smile at strangers, show up to support important causes, and so on. Every new, positive habit we cultivate moves us closer to a better world.