Tompkins Weekly, 5-13-26, by Patrice Lockert Anthony
Let’s start with something uncomfortable: sustainability doesn’t begin with government laws. Consent of the governed doesn’t begin at the ballot box. It begins with self-governance. One person. Then that person-in-community. Therein lies the dilemma. Until individuals—and the communities they build—actually behave as holders of power, politicians (whose moral arcs too often bend toward corruption) will keep holding, and controlling for their own benefit, the levers of change.
A YouTube algorithm listed a video where the creator was using John Locke to explain Superhero dilemmas in The Marvel Universe (as they relate to power and the governed). I wondered how Locke and Superhero dilemmas might apply to issues of sustainability. We love our Marvel heroes because they expose, and “fix” the causes of our fear of inequality, of the powerful few crushing the many. But Marvel always resolves that fear with fantasy—a serum, a bite, a magic trick. Earth gives us no such luxury. On a finite planet, the only true super powers are the human mind and the will toward self-limitation by consent. Not muscles. Not cryonics. The real test of power isn’t force. It’s the willingness to bind your own power so that soil, animals, neighbors, and future voices can also thrive.
That’s the expansion I mean: ever-widening sustainability. Human. Land. Animal. Reflection. Determining its presence in the shared work of justice. Because here’s what happens when we skip that work: any nonconsensual, brutish power belongs only in movies with super villains playing tyrants. It does not belong in leadership that reverses decades of progress on how we partner with the planet to survive.
Locke’s natural law understood this. On a finite planet, we are all the “super” among us—not just the powerful, the wealthy, the influential—and we must all voluntarily agree to a social compact that moves community to community, following sustainable practices. Otherwise, nature will choose for us. Finally. No sequels. No director’s cut for alternative endings.
This is also how we siphon off the biases that steer us away from true democracy and justice. Bias loves silence. Bias loves the lone, unaccountable decision-maker. But bias cannot stand the steady pressure of a self-governing person in an honest community, asking: *Are we renewing what we use? Are we including who we’ve ignored? Are we repairing where and what we’ve harmed?*
We are all in this together. And it is our collective responsibility to do what corrupt leaders will not do. The real question isn’t whether government will save us. It’s whether we will save ourselves — before the credits roll for good.
Patrice Lockert Anthony is a local writer. She attended the University of Washington in Seattle, Washington. Her major was Political Science; she focused on American and Black Political Thought.
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