People

In everyday life, when we pause to consider our actions and how they affect other “people,” it can be useful to broaden our perspective. Sometimes, “people” can mean any singular entity whose loss one might mourn. This could include a pet, a tree, or anything else that creates value or holds meaning to someone. However, In most contexts, when we say “people,” we’re referring to human beings

We're called lots of things—workers, employees, citizens, consumers, students, voters, patrons, constituents, or any name which provides cognitive dissonance to those trying to control us for their personal gain. (too cynical?)

If one of us were the only person on Earth, we would only worry about survival. But the presence of other people creates a reason to care about the state of the world. When facing challenges at a global scale, however, it's easy to lose sight of the fact that, for each individual, sustainability is fundamentally about survival.

Corporations and the government all say that they're about "People." Their actions say otherwise. Their actions prove that they only care about are short-term profits. They are sacrificing humanity to feed their egos. All of them. No sizable company other than Patagonia cares about profits for the right reason: to support the commons; the common good and the common man.

Somewhere along the way, we the People lost sight of that fact that the governments and corporations trying to profit off of us, actually work for us.

In the United States, people’s natural rights—life, liberty, and the pursuit of [self-actualization]—are blatantly violated when corporate profits take precedence over human health, when manipulative marketing undermines individual autonomy, and when consumer culture prizes materialism over personal meaning and expression. As the Declaration of Independence reminds us:

“Governments are instituted among [People], deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, – That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness... But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”

This founding principle reminds us that legitimate governance must protect each person’s right to a long and healthy life, genuine liberty, and the freedom to self-actualize. Environmental degradation made legal through corporate lobbying, and made possible through relentless consumerism—run counter to these rights and violate the spirit of the Declaration’s call to ensure the “Safety and Happiness” of the people.

THINKERER stands for a reimagined approach in which government, guided by robust guardrails, and the free market, guided by ethical and ecological imperatives, work together to safeguard humanity’s shared future. By championing sustainable capitalism, we can restore the balance between our economy, our environment, and our most fundamental human rights.

The beauty is we do not need the government to adopt new policies, we can force the hand of negative-impact businesses through mindful consumption. We have all the power. Some of us just need constant reminders.