🚨 MULE SUMMER SCHOOL 🚨

Join us next week, as Erika and I talk about How to Get Laid Off.

This week’s question comes to us from Kio Stark:

How do I figure out what is a me problem and what is a someone else problem?

It’s a “me” problem if it’s keeping you from doing something you need to be doing.

This is a deeply unsatisfying answer. It’s an unsatisfying answer because it exposes some of the unfairness of the world, and none of us need a reminder of that at this particular moment. But it’s also a very understandable answer if you are someone who is more interested in getting things done than in assigning blame.

Let’s go to everyone’s favorite domestic battleground: the sink. Let’s say you wake up in the morning and want to make coffee, but the sink is full of dirty dishes. Let’s also say that those are not your dirty dishes in the sink. (To be clear, I am neither throwing shade, nor being passive-aggressive here. Erika and I have achieved sink peace, and I don’t do passive-aggressive. This is an honest-to-goodness theoretical dirty sink here.) Now, you may be looking at that sink full of dirty dishes and getting pissed off about them, and that is fair. Those are not yours, and the person responsible for them shouldn’t have left them in the sink. We both agree on that. But that wasn’t your question. Your question was whether this was a “me” problem or a “someone else” problem. The deeply unsatisfying answer is that it’s a you problem, because the dirty sink is between you and your goal of making coffee.

Coffee is very good, especially first thing in the morning. And while you shouldn’t have to deal with the dirty dishes before you can make some, that is the unfortunate reality you are facing at the moment. Which means you have to at least make enough room in the sink that you can make the space you need to brew your coffee. (Please don’t move the dirty dishes to the kitchen table. That is both passive aggressive and it creates a second, bigger, problem.) After which, you’ll feel better. If possibly still a little annoyed, which is fair. But again—coffee! Which you will need in order to have a calm but stern conversation with your roommate/partner/child/etc about the state of the sink. Because, while the short-term issue is a “me” problem, the long-term issue of the dirty sink is a “someone else” problem. Problems can be two things. And that conversation is more likely to produce positive results if you’re not going in hot.

I was a wee lad in Catholic school when I was taught about original sin (which I refuse to capitalize). For those who aren’t familiar with the concept (congrats), it’s the idea that “we” are all born with sin in our souls because of the shenanigans Eve pulled in the Garden of Eden. (For the record, the real original sin here is that all of Christianity hinges on this very sexist idea that Eve (not a real person) did us all dirty by eating an apple from the Tree of Knowledge. I would’ve absolutely eaten an apple from the Tree of Knowledge, and you probably would’ve as well. We’re curious people. A better question might be why the fuck Adam (not a real person) did not. It’s the Tree of Knowledge, my man. There’s probably an apple that teaches you how to make dovetail joints. Are you not the least bit curious? Men are fucking idiots.) Anyhow… because Eve disobeyed god (not capitalized) by eating an apple from the “Tree of Knowledge,” she and Adam were kicked out of the Garden of Eden (not a real place) and we are now all born with original sin and damned to spend eternity in hell (also not a real place). But then I guess god was remorseful? So he set Jesus up to get got, and his resurrection (not a real thing) somehow freed us all from original sin, but only if we’re baptized. (Offer not available to Lutherans.) Religion is fucking insane.

So imagine being six years old and being saddled with that. Upon which, my first reaction was to ask, “How is this a me problem?” Which was also fair. How is it that I had to carry this burden of something that happened (never happened) thousands and thousands of years ago? Why did I need to spend my life atoning for someone else’s sin? And the answer, of course, is that the church benefited from you seeing this as a “me” problem. Because the church derives its power from convincing you that it can save you from eternal damnation, which it created.

At roughly the same time that the Catholic Church was saddling me with the transubstantiation of a “someone else” problem into a “me” problem, a new ad appeared on television. In this ad, a Native American man is peddling his canoe through what looks like a future superfund site, pulls up to shore, and looks out over a dystopian landscape. Then a car speeds by, chucks a bag out the window, it explodes at his feet, revealing a bunch of fast food trash. The camera zooms in on the man’s face, to witness what would become the most famous single tear in advertising history.

This ad wrecked me, as was its intent, and I immediately told my parents that we needed to stop throwing garbage out of the car, and recycle all of our bottles. Neither of which happened. I wasn’t alone in doing this, either. Every kid my age saw this ad multiple times a day, got gutted, and then internalized what was then referred to as the pollution problem, until it pokévolved into the Climate Crisis (which I will capitalize). This of course created a generation of people who are, for the most part, better at recycling, not tossing their trash on the street, choosing eco-friendly packaging when possible, and even composting, which is nice but gross. These are all good things to do. They certainly don’t hurt.

Here’s the fun part: (hush if you know the punchline) that ad was paid for by the anti-litter organization Keep America Beautiful (so far so good), which was in turn bankrolled by the American Can Company, Owens-Illinois Glass Company, Coca-Cola and the Dixie Cup Company (oh oh). All of them major producers of the shit we were tossing out of our cars, at that nice Native American man’s feet. (For extra credit, the Native American was played by an Italian-American immigrant.) The whole point of the ad was to turn a “someone else” problem into a “me” problem. (Click here for a photo that will make you cringe.) And for decades, we recycled our little hearts out feeling like we were the ones who could fix the problem, while industrial polluters kept releasing carbon into the atmosphere with the effervescent joy of a teenager finding a stale pack of his Aunt’s Virginia Slims between the couch cushions.

We grew up with two of the most insidiously powerful institutions in human history, capitalism (invisible hand of the market) and religion (invisible whole guy), convincing us that systemic problems were actual personal problems. Convincing us that “someone else” problems were “me” problems. Convincing us that it was on us to clean up their shit. Deflecting their sins onto us, while also happily selling us recycling bins and carbon offsets, and mailing us brochures about what temperature to set our air conditioning at.

The greatest trick that capitalism and religion ever played on us was convincing that there was only so much room in heaven. Or only so many jobs to go around, or only so much money that could be used for extravances like salaries and healthcare.

The greatest trick that capitalism and religion ever played on us was convincing us that there were “me” problems, and “someone else” problems, and then pointing to our neighbors and telling us that those were the “someone else.”

I would like to propose a third kind of problem. Now I hear you saying we don’t need more problems, and I certainly agree with that. But let’s consider “our” problems. As cheesy as it might sound. I’m ok with being cheesy. Let’s consider the dirty sink a shared resource that we all need to be vigilant about our problem. Let’s consider that the reason we wash a dish is not because it’s our fault that it’s dirty, but because it’s keeping a shared resource from being clean. If you see a dirty dish, you wash it. (This will infuriate you at first, until one day it just doesn’t anymore.) Let’s consider the dog park a shared resource, where you pick up dog shit because you saw it, not because it came out of your dog. (I guarantee other people have picked up shit that came out of your dog, because you just missed it.) Let’s consider that the reason you might speak up at work isn’t because of how it affects you, but because of how it might affect your co-workers. Let’s consider that the reason you put your body between a neighbor and an ICE thug is because ICE is very much “our” problem.

Let’s consider that while the death of 20,000 Palestinian children is certainly not a “me” problem, it is also most definitely not a “someone else” problem. It is definitely “our problem.”

And while I started this by saying that a problem is a “me” problem if it’s keeping you from doing something you need to be doing, I’d like to amend that. Because while that statement works perfectly well for dirty sinks and making coffee, it tends to break down when our problems grow from the personal to the systemic. Those in power are very interested in convincing you that all your problems are of your own doing, and your own personal hell to fix. That way your struggle becomes about your own inability to achieve. You didn’t try hard enough. You weren’t resilient enough. You didn’t recycle hard enough. You didn’t work hard enough. But to believe this is to believe that everyone who’s lost their job recently has lost it because of some moral failure, or lack of effort, or ineptitude. We know that is far from true.

To believe this is to believe that every parent currently mourning a child is doing so because of their inability to move them away from our bombs and our bullets fast enough. And we also know that is far from true.

“Our problems,” when we look at them at a systemic level, are also keeping us from doing what needs to be doing. And therefore still our problems to solve, but that doesn’t make us the cause of them. And we will solve them. But at some point solving our problems means we need to track down those who’ve laid them at our feet. At some point we need to look at who’s benefiting.

And then our problem will become their problem. Because as many billionaires as there are out there, trying to convince us to take the blame for the hell they created on Earth, hell ain’t half full.

You were probably hoping for a more practical answer today. I’m sorry.

🗳️ Also, here is an “our” problem: They are going to try to fuck with your vote, and we are NOT going to let them. Last week I pinged my friend Dana Chisnell, who knows how elections work, and said "Hey, let’s make it hard for them to fuck with us.” Today, we are very proud to announce the HOW TO VOTE/CÓMO VOTAR zine.

The zine is free to download and we encourage you to make as many as you want and spread them around to everyone you know. Leave copies on the bus, cafés, park benches, school, your breakroom, Ed Sheeran’s trailer, hand them to neighbors, etc. Please share the site.

Each zine is in English and (flip it!) Spanish.

Besides me and Dana, we had a whole crew working on this: Lucy Bellwood made an amazing cover illustration, Sadie Ray did the Spanish translation, Jason Cosper did the site. Brian Carr, Christopher Patten, and Suzanne Chapman reviewed the text.

🙋 Got a question? Ask it!

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📺 Here’s Ed Sheeran working a shift at Starbucks because he’s the fucking worst.

🍉 Please donate to the PCRF. Hey, that’s the org Miss Rachel donated a million bucks to. They need every penny.

🏳️‍⚧️ Please protect trans kids. Lotta idiots out there.