One thing that has discouraged me from trying to help people understand and survive climate collapse is that I tell people they have to be adaptable and find ways around their own limitations. If you’re worried about heavy weather where you live and you don’t drive, then you better have some good routes to get to safety on foot. I say that and people get angry with me. “Well, I’m in a wheelchair and couldn’t drive a car even if I could afford one, you asshole!”

Like, do you think I’m gonna go “Oh, shit, my bad, that’s my privilege talking,” and go have a quick word with Mother Nature? Or were you expecting me to fly to wherever you live and do a thorough analysis of your situation, home and the surrounding geography and draw you a map? Or perhaps design and build you an amphibious wheelchair with jets on it for vertical takeoff and landing like some Charles Xavier shit that I can assemble for you on your budget?

(OK, I actually might design something like that, if only for my own half-crippled ass. But I’d at least open-source the plans.)

The greatest failing I see in the Left in the Western world is how many of us actually think that we will ever see a perfectly equitable world where nobody is a loser or the victim of prejudice or just bad luck and limited resources; that when we find a mismatch between what we need and what society has to offer that our focus should be entirely upon changing society, and that telling people to adapt themselves to circumstances as they are here and now is some sort of betrayal of ideals or cruelty or dismissal of people’s pain and challenges.

And I just do not believe that, and I never will. I’m sorry. Nor do I believe that every single statement anyone makes anywhere ever must take every other possible viewpoint before being uttered. I believe it is contingent upon each and every person to take context and source into consideration. To put it bluntly: I’m not talking to you every fucking time I speak, just as you’re not talking to me.

I believe in agency. I believe that though our choices are largely shaped by our place in society, our upbringing and our past, they’re still choices. We can choose what we do. If we can’t, if there’s no free will, why even debate or have a democracy? If I’m just a product of my weird ass upbringing, why should you consider anything I have to say, because my life doesn’t align with yours and I couldn’t possibly understand what the world is like for you, any more than you can for me, so why even bother talking to each other?

I believe that everyone is stronger than they know they are, tougher than they’d possibly believe, and capable of much more than they even give themselves credit for. I know this because I see it every day of my life. I see people who are absolutely ass-reamed by the world from the day they’re born decide they’re not going to let other people’s greed and cruelty and bigotry ruin their lives. I see people who have absolutely shit luck who still find a way through it. I see people who are the victims of every kind of horror this world can come up with to throw at them who still make it. And I know even on my worst days that no matter how fucked up my situation seems to be, there are people who have it way worse than me who still manage to find a way to live and laugh and, yes, goddamnit, love - love their own lives and other people and the world.

See, when Red said “Get busy living or get busy dying,” in The Shawshank Redemption, I actually believed it. I don’t believe anyone has the right or the power to tell me that I can’t be happy, do the best I can with what’s around me, and try however I can to make the world a little less shitty for myself and others. And I know plenty of other people who are in far worse circumstances than me, or you, who believe the same thing and live it every day.

Things are not fair and probably never will be. We need to work hard to try to fix that as best we can, but we also need to live in this unfair world ourselves. And that means accepting the things we can’t change right now, changing the things we can, and knowing the difference. And the one thing I know - I know - is that we always have control of the world as it extends to the tips of our fingers and from the tops of our heads to the bottoms of our feet. So that’s the first place we need to start with.

I remember a quote that stuck with me: when a college professor was challenged by a student who said that racism was basically over in America, he asked his white students: all things otherwise being equal in your life, would you prefer to be black in America or white? And you know what the answer was.

But let me ask you: if you are not a cishet white man like me, would you rather be a person of color and/or a woman and/or LGBTQ, or would you rather be a cishet white man like, oh, I don’t know, let’s say… Stephen Hawking? The hierarchy of privilege is real but it’s not the only thing that defines us and who we are or the only lenses with which to understand the world. And Stephen Hawking had some pretty godawful fucking luck, but he also had an amazing life and did amazing things. I had three heart attacks by the time I was 45 and if I tried to run to the end of my block I’d probably explode; would you rather be my pale dick-having ass? But I still manage to do a lot with my limited resources, which are not limited by society but biology and human frailty. I used to know a dude in Long Beach when I was young who got paralyzed by a bullet when he was a young Crip; when I met him he owned a small head shop selling bongs and One Love incense and shit. Is that the best path the universe could have possibly provided for that young brother? No. But it was what he got and what he did afterwards was his choice. He didn’t have any of the luck of the dice I did when I was born, but what he got, and what came later, he did the best he possibly could with.

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