The burden of hard choices for creatives in late capitalism, and how we can lighten the load
Shame, blame and difficult publishing decisions
As usual, I’m not writing what I intended to write about today! This is because I was part of a really fascinating conversation yesterday about Australian author Richard Flanagan’s refusal to immediately accept the Baillie Gifford prize for non-fiction, delaying it while calling on Baillie Gifford to act more effectively and decisively on climate change. The writers I was talking to were united in their admiration of Flanagan’s stance, although we had various differing opinions and questions about its effectiveness and the knock-on effects. Our conversation was interesting and nuanced, but it was when I watched Flanagan’s gracious and eloquent video in response to winning the prize that I saw something else I really want to chat about today, which was the phrase he used in the context of climate change and fossil fuels: ‘none of us are clean, all of us are complicit’.
Now, I understand exactly what Flanagan is getting at here, but I want to gently push back against the phrase and examine it, to see what it might be doing to us. Because I don’t believe that our culture benefits from the way we use the word ‘we’ to make us all feel morally culpable for pretty much every contemporary world issue. I see this as an ongoing problem that is as disempowering as it is galvanising, and I’ve been looking for a moment to talk about it.
With this all-encompassing and regular use of the word ‘we’, we are all easily and equally deemed responsible for anything from diamond mining in the Congo to male violence in our society. And the burden is insurmountable.
Oxford Dictionary definitions:
Complicit: Involved with others in an activity that is unlawful or morally wrong.
Culpable: Deserving blame.
The emotionally charged sense of wrongdoing in words like these leaves me flat, guilty and ashamed. It also pushes me towards feeling helpless and ineffectual as I often have no idea what to do about most of these situations that might actually make a difference. Do you feel this too?
Many writers I know spend a lot of time exhausted from feeling morally conflicted. Writers generally want to support positive progress and change, believe in equality and inclusivity, actively promote causes they are passionate about, and we pay attention to a lot of things that are going on in the world. What we tend to find are endless ongoing moral conundrums that are challenging and complex, which can leave us feeling overwhelmed and burnt out.
Issues that writers come up against include:
Whether to attend writing festivals that are sponsored by fossil fuels companies.
Whether to take creative grants from mining companies.
Whether to allow our work to be fed into AI.
Whether to be published by corporations owned by billionaires (who support leaders inclined to authoritarianism).
Most writers are very much aware that, if we do any of these things, we become a greater part of the problems we see in the world. However, the money that allows us to continue to write and publish flows predominantly through these channels, and to step outside them is to straitjacket ourselves in an industry where publication and financial reward are already extremely challenging. Furthermore, writers at the top of the success tree can make different, generous and braver decisions that push back against these kinds of issues largely because they have greater financial security, so their decisions don’t threaten their ability to maintain their career. This unintentionally compounds the guilt of writers in the midlist who might feel they need to make different choices.
Is there a better way of describing our collective predicament? How about saying that we are all ‘enmeshed’ in the current world scenario – i.e. inextricably part of complex capitalist systems that rely on the suffering and impoverishment of different groups of people – or the environment – in order to benefit others.
Enmeshed: entangled in something / involved in a difficult situation from which it is hard to escape.
This is still challenging to hear, but it doesn’t assert guilt or blame in the same way it radiates from those more emotionally charged words. I’m not suggesting that guilt or blame are always irrelevant – sometimes we might be playing a much bigger part than we realise in perpetuating unfair or corrupt systems, and we can only decide that through self-reflection. But I am asserting that too much shaming and blaming, when it comes from so many different sources, may end up being ineffectual, because it causes people to turn inwards to soothe and protect themselves - and we need everyone outwardly focused right now if we’re to tackle all the critical world problems that are currently compounding into a runaway nightmare. Therefore, through alternative word choices – perhaps by dialling down the suggestion of ‘culpability’ and changing it to something like ‘enmeshment’ - we might find ourselves with more energy and space to critically examine our actions and choices. And then we might discover how to untangle and detach ourselves and our communities from some of the challenging scenarios that are hurting our world.
This issue has hit home in another way for writers this week, with the announcement that HarperCollins has made a deal with an unnamed AI company (how mysterious!) and they are offering non-fiction writers $2500 (with HarperCollins taking an equal sum) if these authors allow their work to be used to feed/train AI systems. The implication is that writers are being given agency through this choice, but, in reality, writers are in a bind here. Those who want (or who can afford) to take a moral stand will do so. However, writers who are struggling might take the money because times are so hard, and this will buy them another month of writing.
What frustrates me most, aside from the demoralising image of writers feeding all their hard work and intellectual property into an AI system, is that the onus of moral choice is being pushed onto individuals: ‘see, we’re getting your permission so it’s all okay now and you’re also partly responsible for whatever happens next’. There are huge corporations and powerful systems at play here, and way more to think about than whether, in this instance, individual authors take the money or not. There’s an interesting examination of this particular offer in an article by the Authors Guild – but it’s only the beginning. We’re all going to come up against AI continually in future, and there will be many choices to be made in the coming years about how we respond. I believe we’ll do so more effectively if we can come to these issues with curiosity, energy and detachment, rather than absorbing continual shame or blame for the huge ethical conundrums we’re all caught up in now.
Really interesting issues. Another take on the 'we' is that it shouldn't necessarily be used to invoke blame or guilt, but it should be used to suggest it's our combined responsibility to address the various environmental issues, starting with our personal contribution, but more importantly embracing the 'we,' our collective response. Which nothing less than will do. I think many writers do and have helped throughout written history by providing narratives for a different world. 'We' are the ones who change the course of history by writing it ahead of time and projecting it forward for others to be challenged, inspired and, hopefully, changed by.
Such a helpful and gentle take, thank you, Sara!