I like Coke. It is important for me to have brand loyalty to Coke. In 50 years, I can't imagine drinking Pepsi for the life of me. Whether or not I drink Coke or Pepsi is essential to my identity as a person.
Whether I vote Republican or Democrat in the next election, however, is not at all essential to my identity. I could switch sides between Republican and Democrat as the wind blows with no remorse. In fact, the very idea of becoming loyal to the Republicans or Democrats in principle sickens me. I don't think I would be doing my duty to America if I picked sides in that debate.
Now you may think all of the above absurd, but there are very important reasons for these things, which are essential to building a just and creative society. Since the second paragraph is probably more controversial than the first, I'll speak to it first.
There is a man in Idaho by the name of Tom Trail. He's a Republican State congressman in the House representing Latah County, and he's been reelected year after year without fail. Now you may think that, for Idaho, this is to be expected. And condemned. After all, Republicans are consistently wrong on just about every issue. And on many issues, they are so off the deep end in the "wrong" territory that voting for any Republican in any election must be seen as morally reproachable. For the most part, I agree. I wouldn't have voted for Romney if my life depended on it.
But Tom Trail is different. He is a truly compassionate man. He voted against all of the anti-woman legislation, and all of the anti-education legislation. When I was working for my college newspaper, I found him to be the most approachable legislator in Idaho. It may put things in perspective to know that Latah county is, for Idaho, a heavily Democratic county. Obama carried Latah county in the 2008 election. Many of our state congresspeople are Democrats. The fact that a Republican keeps getting elected in a Democratic county year after year is significant.
Our district also elected Walt Whitman to the United States House. He's a Democrat. Now he voted along the party line on every single issue during Obama's first term, when voting along party lines was actually important. The only problem was, he voted along the Republican party line, and against the Democrats. On Every. Single. Issue.
Naturally, it would make me as sick to my stomach to vote for Walt Whitman again as it would to not vote for Tom Trail. Of course, you would probably say that these particular people are the exception and not the rule. You'd be right. But what I'm getting at is this. The fact that Walt Whitman is a member of the Democratic party, or that Tom Trail is a Republican, is a completely ephemeral thing that does not, and should not, carry any significance. I know, there are systemic problems with the Republican party. But even so, there is a possibility that the Republicans will get things right on an issue or two. And that the Democrats will get things wrong. In these instances, it would be immoral to vote Democrat, and moral to vote Republican. In these instances, party loyalty should be instantly ditched.
Why is this so? Because political parties, by their very nature, do stuff that is important. (Or, at least, they should.) This is a key point. On any issue that is important, we must always try to take the position that is ethically right. Loyalty, in this case, must be ephemeral. If we see an issue as fundamentally important, like whether or not women in Pakistan should get an education, getting the issue right is more important than loyalty. Thus, if my friends start to believe that women are inferior and should be ordered around by the government, I should ditch my friends, not my position on the issue.
Contrast this to the Pepsi / Coke debate. It is not at all important that I get my position in issues correct. For instance, if Coke, for whatever reason, decides to add a lemony flavor, my position on the lemon vs. straight Coke debate is ephemeral.
But it goes even deeper than that. I would argue that just as it is our duty to America not to take sides in the Republican / Democrat debate, it is our duty to America to definitely pick sides in the Pepsi / Coke debate. It is our duty to decide whether we will drink Pepsi or Coke, and stick with that decision, probably for the rest of our lives! Besides the obvious issue of the morality of the company, there is a caveat of course: if the cola debate isn't important to us, then there is no need to pick sides. But I will nevertheless argue that we should pick sides in some similar debate, such as debates among the various sporting teams (not my cup of tea), or the Apple / Google debate (though we should ditch Microsoft, for moral reasons), and so on.
I'm not just saying this to be weird; there is a reason for this. And it gets to the topic of this post. Brand loyalty among unimportant things is important, because it is essentially creative. Developing sincere (though not excessively violent) conflict over things that aren't important gives our society the groundwork necessary to build a better future.
Conflict can act as a scrying tool to figure out what is important. I like Coke, as I've said before, because it is a cultural ambassador of America around the world, and because of the connection with Andy Warhol. There may be other legitimate reasons to like Pepsi, but this is why I've chosen Coke. Now if I get in a heated shouting match with someone who likes Pepsi (an experience I truly wish to have someday), I'm sure these reasons will come to light. And because of the shouting match, and because this shouting match is heated, we will do serious cultural work determining what values are important to us as Americans. Coke supports the troops (or says they do). Pepsi may, one day, decide to support the Dalai Lama, who is against all war. In this hypothetical shouting match, the Pepsi guy will probably say, "You goddamned lousy hypocrite, you're a Tibetan Buddhist but you're buying Coke when Pepsi gives money to the Dalai Lama, and Coke funds military people?? Whose side are you on?" At which point I'd hang my head in shame and donate a few bucks to the Tibetan Government in Exile. Then buy another Coke.
See, just because I've taken sides in the Coke / Pepsi debate doesn't mean I have to forget about every other debate. If Pepsi comes out with a solemn, principled stance that they will absolutely not support the Republican anti-woman agenda, and will even give money to reverse it, I will solemnly salute the Pepsi guy as one culture warrior to another and go home to lick my wounds. In fact, that issue is so important to me that I may even buy a Pepsi out of respect. But as long as Coke does not decide to take a morally reprehensible political stance in an issue of importance, I see no principled reason to switch to Pepsi. I can always donate a couple extra bucks to women's groups, or whatever. And then I could write a letter to Coke, or start an online petition. But I'll be drinking Coke while I do it.
The principle at play here is the one of generative conflict (or generative violence if you wish). Every unimportant brand has a constellation of qualities that, if you look deeply at them, present a concrete vision of morality. Other brands have other constellations of other qualities involving the issues of importance. The act of picking a side represents a moral act, because what you are doing is declaring the important things to be important. On the other hand, the act of not picking a side, or rejecting both, is an immoral act, because you are rejecting the idea that these things are important at all. The act of picking both sides doesn't help things, because the identity of you as a person cannot coalesce around something that isn't cohesive.
Let me explain that last point. We as humans are really not multi-taskers. We cannot do two things at once, because we have a single body. And we shouldn't give our body up, because having a cohesive identity allows us to relate to others, which is important should something bad happen. In the West we like to say that when someone is badly hurt, it hurts all of us. In a sense, this is true. However, I tend to think that this isn't exactly the right way of looking at it. It is much worse when something bad happens to someone else if it doesn't hurt us than if it hurts all of us. If it hurts all of us, there is necessarily no one to help us. And if there is no one to help us, we have no responsibility to try and fix the situation. We might as well just let it go. But if it hurts someone else and doesn't hurt us, we have a grave responsibility to act. Conversely, the other person has the responsibility to get help. In this way, there is a possibility that things will get better for everyone.
If nothing bad happens, then we still may as well retain our cohesive identity. We can just go on merrily drinking Coke or Pepsi for the rest of our days without worry. There's no problem at all. And when a bad thing happens to someone, then we're prepared to help.
I'm not saying that we should cling to our identities. We don't want to become high school jocks, always talking about what sport is best, then beating up people who don't think sports are important. We should all have a sense of camaraderie about these things. But I don't think it's a bad thing to have an identity, and to define our identity in such a way as I've described. And in so doing, having some healthy conflict about it is definitely beneficial. There is a difference between fighting and debating, even if the debate is impassioned.
Coke and Pepsi, as brands, offer us a way to form an identity. When we talk about important things, on the other hand, it's better not to form an identity. It's better to just be a good human being and do the right thing. Thus it is precisely because the choice between Coke and Pepsi is not important that actually making the choice is important. The Coke / Pepsi debate, and others like it, are therefore the only debates worth taking sides in.
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