I'm someone who has spent a lot of my life trying, often failing, to "be good". More and more, it seems like an impossible goal:
On the one side you can retreat to the woods and live off of roots and berries trying not to do any direct harm. But then, depending on your privilege, you leave on the table so many opportunities to steer the ship of society in a less harmful direction.
Or, at the other end of the spectrum you can yield all reaponsibility for your direct actions, instead throwing yourself into the wheeling and dealing of systems of harm, trying to invest what privilege you have to gain leverage so that you can make a bigger difference, focusing only on some theoretical calculus of your global influence, measuring yourself by your imagined net global effect.
Or, more likely, you pick something in between. In the end, we all make a personal decision about what we are willing to sacrifice.
I often use oil, even though I know it's harmful, because I think my boycott of it would cost the world more than it would gain. I could be wrong, but that's my best guess based on my (flawed) understanding of my self and my world.
And I may boycott Ender's Game and I do not think that's hypocritical. It's just an acknowledgement that there are limits to our power and we must choose our battles.
My approach has been that if it is easy to do, I had darn well better do it.
To illustrate - since I was a teenager I realized that the war on drugs was manifestly wrong. I chose not to participate in any aspect of the war on drugs as best I could. When I was fresh out of college, most forms of employment required a drug test. So I did it, reluctantly, but I felt I could stand on my principles as a pauper or compromise and live a reasonable life.
But once I had FU money in the bank, I felt that it was my obligation to refuse all future drug testing because the cost to me is now practically nil. Since I can pick and choose the jobs I take, it is my moral obligation to never compromise again.
A corollary to this approach is that anyone who shares my ideals and chooses to give up the comfort of an easy life for those ideals deserves an enormous amount of respect because whatever character flaws they may have, they are "walking the talk" more than I was willing to.
The real problem with drug tests though is that those in a good position can refuse them, but those in a less advantageous position don't get so much choice.
I guess it wasn't exactly clear from the way I phrased it, but I'm not just refusing the tests, I'm refusing to contribute my labor to the betterment of companies that impose them on their employees.
If I were to encounter an employer willing to make an exception to their policy for me, I would have to consider the greater implications. I might accept such a job as long as I remained free to tell anyone and everyone that an exception had been made so as to undermine the policy going forwards. Maybe. Hasn't happened yet.
'Not seeing a movie' is a pretty small battle. Did you act politically in favor/against the issue? Write a letter to your congressperson? Speak publicly on the subject?
We must not imagine for a second that a personal boycott is a significant political/moral act to anyone but ourselves. I agree, you must do what you can, but the movie is a trivial point at best. Your posting on this forum is more significant than, probably, the entire boycott issue.
On the one side you can retreat to the woods and live off of roots and berries trying not to do any direct harm. But then, depending on your privilege, you leave on the table so many opportunities to steer the ship of society in a less harmful direction.
Or, at the other end of the spectrum you can yield all reaponsibility for your direct actions, instead throwing yourself into the wheeling and dealing of systems of harm, trying to invest what privilege you have to gain leverage so that you can make a bigger difference, focusing only on some theoretical calculus of your global influence, measuring yourself by your imagined net global effect.
Or, more likely, you pick something in between. In the end, we all make a personal decision about what we are willing to sacrifice.
I often use oil, even though I know it's harmful, because I think my boycott of it would cost the world more than it would gain. I could be wrong, but that's my best guess based on my (flawed) understanding of my self and my world.
And I may boycott Ender's Game and I do not think that's hypocritical. It's just an acknowledgement that there are limits to our power and we must choose our battles.