First, do no harm…if you can avoid it.
I’m not a doctor, and I likely never will be because I’m not sure I believe it’s possible to follow the maxim “do no harm” in today’s world.
I was born in the United States, so my perspective is necessarily biased by my experience growing up in the Global North. The US is a uniquely pernicious creature, especially as the world’s largest economy and arguably the one with the greatest global influence (although China might be giving us a run for our money). In my mind, the US is like a spider: having spent the last century spinning an intricate web of industry, economy, influence, military occupation, and geopolitical pressure, we now sit at the center of our silky universe, ready to turn our attention towards any movement.
In many ways, this web-spinning has gone well for Americans—or, at least, that’s what the US wants you to think—but I’ll get to that in a minute. Ten years ago, when Barack Obama was still in office and before this country slipped off the pool deck and into the deep end, it wouldn’t have been crazy to posit that the average American was enjoying the fruits of neoliberalism’s labor—or rather, the fruits of the Global South’s labor. It may have even felt as if we (humans) were unstoppable for a moment or two: inventing cutting-edge technology, treating diseases worldwide, reducing inequalities, supporting the spread of democracy, etc.
This is the story that American society raised me with—the United States as a generally benevolent hegemon, sharing its wealth generously with other countries that wanted to settle themselves under our wing. Sure, we had done some questionable things in the past, but we had learned our lesson! We went from legal discrimination against African Americans to electing one President in under 50 years! Yes, I’m being facetious.
I’m still trying to forgive myself for ever believing this horrendously transparent propaganda. It’s crucial to spell it out, though, because up until about 10 years ago, I think many Americans also believed this storyline. Then Donald Trump somehow got elected as President, and things took a turn. Given this clearly powerful propaganda that US politicians have been feeding us, I wouldn’t even blame my fellow Americans for thinking that Trump himself is to blame for the mess we’re in—in fact, I think that’s precisely the story Democrats have been selling for almost a decade.
But the truth is much darker. The truth is that the United States has been spinning itself into destruction since its inception. The American Revolution was not only a foundational cultural moment, it provided an opportunity for the property-owning class to throw off feudalist power structures and calcify their privileges in a new economic system: capitalism. We have created a web so intricate that any movement reverberates to the outer edges of our silk-covered existence—and the consequences are real.
I try to be the best person I can be. My parents raised me with strong values of equity, justice, and caring. I have learned, over the years, that there are some things I can control—like how I treat others in day-to-day interactions, and things I have very limited control over—like our collective global greenhouse gas emissions, whether the United States wages war on another country, or even whether a new train line gets built in the city I call home. I’m not here to argue about whether individuals have the power to make a difference—I’m here to talk about integrity and responsibility.
For me, it seems very clear that in order to be proud of who I am, to be able to look at myself confidently in the mirror, I must participate in—not just talk about—the things I believe in.
I could give you a long list of the things I believe in—some of which you may agree with, and some of which you may not. Instead, let me distill it down to one idea: When I leave this Earth, I would like to have had a positive impact. Hopefully, most people can agree that having a positive impact on the world is a worthwhile goal.
But what does that mean, in reality? The United States—with help from other Global North countries—has exploited far and wide to build a social machine so powerful that it feels unstoppable. This exploitation has surfaced in many shapes and colors over the years, but don’t be fooled by the change in appearance. Whether through the enslavement of humans or via the plundering of Earth’s natural gifts, the United States greedily consumes everything within reach and then some. Doing it in the name of justice or for the goal of equality doesn’t make the plundering itself ethical—and we’re still waiting on the promised goods.
Not only did the Global North exploit, bribe, murder, and extort our way to “economic success,” we actually made it impossible to exist without contributing to the very machine that created this reality and now keeps it running. Today, I can’t be a tax-paying citizen of the United States without helping fund genocide. I can’t stream music, own a phone, or transport myself reasonable distances without contributing to exploitative practices happening right now. Trust me, a huge part of me would be absolutely thrilled to stay home, get rid of my phone, and listen to music using only my record player—but my individual choice to step away from these things doesn’t change the system.
Until about three years ago, my father didn’t own a phone. He’s old school, he likes using cash; watches movies on DVDs he taped himself throughout the years whenever something he liked was on live TV; and uses a decade-old computer because it still supports iTunes, where he keeps an impressive library of music. Now he technically owns a phone, but he rarely turns it on and doesn’t know how to do much more than call. Lately, though, he and my mother have found it harder for him to continue his phone-free existence. When he’s outside his home, he’s on his own. If he gets lost, there are no longer paper maps to help him find his way. Other people can’t help much, now that we’re so reliant on GPS. He can’t pay for parking, which requires an app, and many stores won’t let him pay with cash anymore. This giant web of influence that the United States has built, stoked by capitalism and greed, is more than happy to leave you behind if you don’t keep pace. Doing so, however, means giving up any semblance of morals you once had.
I don’t have the answers. I’m struggling with this, every day. But I do know that a system that requires me to compromise my morals just to meet my basic needs is not one I want to be part of.
I’m confident in saying that I’m not the only one who feels this way. Perhaps it is bold, but I dream of a world where I can meet my basic needs without harming others. To do that, though, we must start unraveling this silky web, piece by piece. At the end of the day, a spider’s web is nothing more than a bit of fuzz blowing in the wind without the corners of a window to anchor it in place.
 | A guest post by
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As a fellow American, yes, to all this. I guess I'll offer a couple of things:
1) Don't be too hard on yourself for believing the lie. We all believe what we're raised with, and I think many of our teachers and parents truly believed it. My parents thought Reaganism was the problem, and it took me till Obama's second term to realize the problem is not the administration; it's the whole system.
2) I like to loosely paraphrase/build on something Barbara Muraca put forward:
We have a right to live without causing harm.
I would like to see that (or something similar) take off as a core value.
I see this primarily as an economic issue. One credible response would be to phase out payroll taxes, corporate taxes, and sales taxes, and instead tax the economic and exclusive rights and privileges on which extractive and exploitative practices depend. If these were taxed at a level that at minimum reflected the full cost of remediation, the true cost of the current system would become visible to the general public, and genuinely sustainable alternatives would become the cost effective option rather than a moral add on. Over time, economies of scale would further reduce costs for sustainable producers.
The deeper problem is that most responses focus on symptoms rather than root causes, while many of those attempting to address the economic structure undermine themselves by adopting a neoliberal framing instead of grounding their work in progressive and heterodox economic analysis.