Last week I wanted to get some sense if you all are cool with one long newsletter with lots of variety, or if you’d prefer two newsletters per week. More frequent, but less lengthy. This time, you can message me or post a comment.

Here at nearly 60 days out from the midterm elections, I’ve gotten 2/3 of the way through Season 3 of my Buffy the Vampire Slayer rewatch, and in particular to the episode that represents a fork in the road for the second “shadow” slayer, Faith. And the strangest idea popped into my head: Would Faith be MAGA?

I wrote about Faith just a month ago with empathy:

Faith is an anti-hero, and feeling magnanimous toward a tortured anti-hero has been a thing forever, I guess.

For example, one of the first things the s.o. and I did when the COVID lockdown started was watch every Marvel Cinematic Universe movie in order. They’re great fun, but something that rubbed me the wrong way was how the scale of destruction could be massive, but the potential cost to living beings caught in that destruction is never mentioned. Last week I saw the latest MCU movie, Spiderman: Brand New Day, in the theatres, and it was the same. The movie’s villain, similarly to Faith, has real grievances. When those grievances become known to Spidey, it changes the entire equation for him (presumably standing in for what we the viewers should feel).

But in a world post-9/11, multiple financial crashes, never-ending wars, global pandemic, and especially the MAGA movement, I didn’t have much appetite for the MCU’s approach to mayhem, and in this Buffy re-watch I’ve discovered that 1999 Faith’s behavior strikes a different nerve too.

Both Faith and Spiderman’s villain (no spoilers!) cause so much real harm, even to those who didn’t contribute to grievances they rightly feel. My empathy muscle doesn’t need a workout; the creators of these works should develop accountability muscles!

Turning back to Faith, as Slayer she knows she has power. There are things she can do with impunity. She is different than mere mortals. Yet despite these wins, she is fixed on her grievances. She begins to think everyone owes her. And that any damage she leaves in her wake is earned by how the world has treated her and by the power that is all she believes she needs.

She lives by an explicitly stated philosophy: “Want. Take. Have. 🤷🏻‍♀️’

Her moral code seems to be if she can do it, then she should. Buffy is momentarily seduced by the simplicity of this philosophy. I think we viewers are meant to be too.

Maybe this philosophy would have struck me differently during this re-watch if we weren’t coming out of week where:

·      Wild horses were having their protections removed and being rounded up for slaughter in the American West

·      The Trump administration is trying to sell of a piece of Yosemite to a real estate developer who wants to build a private road on it

·      At the same time, there are (still in flux) reports that the Administration is planning  to chop down some of Washington D.C.’s famous cherry blossom trees to make improvements to a golf course

·      All after previously chopping down and paving over the Rose Garden and destroying the East Wing

Want. Take. Have. In action. No empathy OR accountability.

FYI: I refer to “the Administration” because each of these actions requires others to go along. From government functionaries who do the work of lining up the resources to execute on these decisions, to the vendors and service providers doing the work, to the media outlets trumpeting the actions as triumphs, to GOP lawmakers who have stood by and signed off on (sometimes tacitly, sometimes with their whole hearts) every bad idea and rapacious decision. Up to and including the voters who led with their grievances, and who seem furious even when they’re winning.

It’s not just politics, though, it seems like the “Want. Take. Have.” philosophy is being mistaken for business strategy by too many people who lead companies. Maybe, like Facebook, they’ve taken your data as a user. Maybe, like all those “gig economy” companies, they’ve made you “freelancers” instead of “employees,”  downgrading your pay and benefits. Or if you’ve been a consultant or vendor, like I have, you may have experienced how some prospects constantly try to wear you down on price and some clients unceasingly try to foist scope creep on you.

Sometimes it seems like “too big to fail” has become too big to abide by the ethical standards most of us used to take for granted. And each of those decisions are often backed by numbers crunchers who can calculate what percentage increase to the bottom line can be achieved and lawyers who can ensure that the law is bruised but not broken.

Earlier this week, given the news items I shared above, I felt a bit like throwing in the towel on my own individual attempts to contribute. All the Want. Take. Have.-ing going on feels so disheartening. Cruelty for the sake of it.  Unchecked greed. Destruction of beauty (probably due to a lack of appreciation of beauty). What can I do to stand in the way of any of it? It seems far above my pay grade.

But there is an alternative to Want. Take. Have.

It is to Be the Buffy. She is at first drawn in by Faith’s charismatic but ethically challenged ways. She’s not immune to wondering why, in a world gone mad, she should have to stick to the straight and narrow. She’s not immune to feeling like she has not been given her due; she has not received what she believes should be coming to her, given her contributions. It’s not like she has never asked, “Why me?” and wanted to save herself, not the world. She has asked.

But when it comes right down to it, she realizes that just because she can, it doesn’t mean she should. Nope, rather, she knows what she should do, then figures out how she can.

When I think about the #BuffyLifeLessons from the last few weeks, they build to this idea:

Fighting for what you believe isn’t easy, and it requires some triage and intentional prioritization to not flame out. Sometimes you do things only to live up to your own values, for the very sake of doing so…it’s personal, not performance. Sometimes you raise your voice and ask for more from institutions that seem far more powerful than you.

Here’s mine:

I want a just world for more than just for myself. Even if that means being loud (and potentially obnoxious) about power players in my own line of work. I’ve been here in Silicon Valley (the belly of the big tech beast) ranting about companies like Meta, Amazon, and Twitter since before it was cool.

I take steps every day to work for that…I build it into my routines, into actions large and mostly small. It’s not always convenient, but few things give me as much satisfaction as reverse showrooming Amazon in favor of going direct to people making stuff I want.

Doing the above means I have the comfort of clarity about my values and how I try to live by them (and try to let my grievances go…that’s probably the hardest part; I’m kind of a grudge holder).

 So tell me, am I missing the point of anti-heroes? Do I need to work harder to feel empathy for them (as much as I do for their victims)?

And, if you’re a Buffy fan, do you think I have Faith all wrong?

And whether you’re not following along on the Buffy train or not, what is your Want. Take. Have. Philosophy?

I have a personal social web rule I live by: If I leave a comment on someone else’s post that exceeds two paragraphs, is is crying out to be its own post. It’s a way to own my own words. Last week long-time colleague and tech writer Alexandra Samuel wrote a post on LinkedIn that was very aligned with last week’s #BuffyLifeLessons newsletter (about turning on one another about AI and why that’s not the answer).

Check out Alex’s work, especially her fascinating recent podcast, Me + Viv, a collab with her very own AI coach:

I watched Season 3, episodes 13 (The Zeppo recap) and 14 (Bad Girls recap)…which aired on January 26 and February 9, 1999 respectively. Both episodes feature a main member of the Scooby Gang being momentarily seduced by bad ideas. Because there is camaraderie in doing good, but sometimes there’s camaraderie in being bad.

The core #BuffyLifeLesson in The Zeppo is sometimes you’re called on to do the right thing…even when no one’s looking. And that’s the true measure of a person.

The core #BuffyLifeLesson in Bad Girls is that moving fast and breaking things sounds awesome until it crosses the line. And if there are no guardrails, no real accountability, it doesn’t take long for that kind of power to get out of hand.

I’m here every week, using pop culture (and Buffy the Vampire Slayer right now) as a jumping off point for everything I’m thinking about professional leadership, personal development, political philosophy, and pop culture. I would love you to join me by subscribing. And I would love you to share the link with other nerds like us!