The reality that society is headed to collapse is a pretty well-known and accepted fact. Just as the Queen is old and Greg was the best Wiggle, the combination of climate change and capitalism is eventually going to bring doom upon life as we know it. On the off chance that humans collectively get their act together very quickly and mass collaborate on a selfless, world saving scheme, then maybe it won’t. 

Regardless, the fact remains that right now there are a bunch of super rich billionaires who control most of the money, most of the politics, and as a result, most of us. Don’t think about it too much if you don’t particularly feel like having an existential crisis today.

If you’re someone who has basic empathy and at least some level of awareness about the things happening around you, you’ve probably accepted this fact too. 

Or maybe you haven’t accepted it, in the sense that such a catastrophe does not sit right with you, and you have confidence that the good guys still have a chance. 

If so, bravo, and maybe you should be the columnist here, providing some helpful, proactive strategies on ethical consumerism to those who need it (me).

While some people are trying to save the world against the people who in my head all look and behave like the guy Leo plays in the Wolf of Wall Street (I don’t know or care what the real man’s name is), others take the ‘ignorance is bliss’ approach. Meanwhile, the rest of us are left scrambling, hyper aware of the terrible reality of neoliberalism, fast fashion, racism, and the patriarchy. There’s too much to fix, and we still need to pay the rent. Pay the rent to the landlord who hasn’t fixed the hot water tap after three weeks and is probably a misogynist. I can’t tell you how foolish I feel working my 9-5 while being staunchly against everything it represents. 

It all feels like a massive setup, as if I’m Truman and the audience is switching on my show every night (or these days, probably streaming and binging), thinking,

Ha! She can’t get out of this one. Look at her drinking her silly little coffee on the way to her silly little job.

These silly little things are exactly what we need to discuss, because in my opinion, they aren’t silly at all. 

The $25 bowl of pasta I often eat alone down the street may seem, to the untrained eye, like an insignificant purchase made by someone who has food at home and can’t actually afford it. The bunches of flowers my housemates so often come home with may die within a week and hence seem like a waste of their hard earned barista money, especially by the money gods who tell us these are the exact purchase we should be cutting out if we would like to continue to afford survival. 

Here’s the thing. 

The coffee, pasta, flowers, or whatever other silly little treat, is exactly what connects us to the community we so often feel disconnected from, when worrying about the failings of the world's systems. 

Whether you’re on your world saving mission already, or just a little frantic about where to start, please don’t give up your Saturday trip to the bakery. The capitalist cogs are gonna keep turning, so the very least we can do is ethically support the locals, and buy a handmade candle to burn while you disassociate for hours thinking about how much of your youth was stolen by part time work. Even better, take a night off from studying climate policy and go make some of your friends laugh. They’re part of the reason you care so much, right?

We are only human and so is the guy making that delicious $25 pasta. 

Culture and experience will always be beautiful and intrinsically important to wellbeing. That’s the reason we are all so stressed about saving it from the bad guys. Saving money is overrated if it means you aren’t connecting with the food, art and creative people around you. 

I might be overstepping here, but I would say that the whole (or maybe 80%) point of life and existence is to enjoy it. So be a human and enjoy the things other humans produce. The interactions and experiences we gather when out for dinner or drinking coffee are what keeps our world turning day to day more than the economy they promote. 

In this way, the collaborative world saving scheme just might work, even if we all turn up with a keep cup.