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Get in bitch, we're living our values

New York City recently unrolled a delayed, revised, much-dissected plan requiring motorists to pay a toll to enter the “congestion zone” in Manhattan. This measure is meant to reduce traffic, and to fund capital improvement projects on the city’s public transit system. But this isn’t about congestion pricing, really.

It’s about what I noticed in the reactions to this barely-3 week old newborn traffic measure. I was surprised to see the few people I know who drive regularly in Manhattan react to this lil baby policy with rancorous vitriol. They reposted media whose theses began and ended with “fuck the MTA;” they shared tips and tricks from influencers on how to evade paying tolls.

I don’t think it’s wrong to harbor doubts about financial mismanagement from the MTA and the entrenched NY Democratic establishment. I don’t think it’s wrong to ask, for instance, why folks living in the congestion zone and paying NYC taxes should bear the same rate as out-of-city commuters. But the core of these complaints wasn’t a genuine discourse on the finer points of transit financing. What I saw was a savage, self-protective urge; a rage at the personal inconveniences of this plan.

“Why should *I* be asked to…”

What this attitude displayed, to my eye, felt counter to communitarian values: Investment in shared spaces. Public transit. Parks. Schools. Commitment to trying on solutions (however imperfect) to begin to address the degradation of our social fabric and sense of entwined wellness. Solutions that might come at some (literal!) personal cost. Why shouldn’t you be asked to…?

It was this anger that caught me by surprise, particularly from people whom I would consider to be at least somewhat community-minded – and who would mostly self-identify as being into equity, sharing, kindness, gays, single mothers and Nelson Mandela. [< is making an obscure Bridget Jones reference at this point SO dated that it’s sorta chic?]. An investment in communitarian values might, as it turns out, require discomfort and inconvenience. And that is where people often seem to find the limits and boundaries of their values.

Is it a value, truly held, if it doesn’t withstand requiring us to tolerate change? And much bigger change than a $9 toll, even… what about when it's a job opportunity, or a friendship, or very literally wealth that's at stake? An untested value —one that has never required discomfort or sacrifice — is merely a performance. A floor model whose rubber has never met the road.

I have plenty of values that I perform, without having ever been fully tested. [and let's not even get into my spotty ethical consumption]. Ever since I encountered those reactions of rage towards congestion tolls (which, I suspect, is underlain by fear; fear that we may be asked to give something from which we may not directly benefit in return) I have been thinking seriously about what I'm willing to pay for the values I claim to profess. Am I willing to be uncomfortable, inconvenienced, or more?

There are many things I think I know will be guided by communitarian values in the year ahead. How my non-nuclear family will weather change and stress. What kind of work, and for WHOM, I will court in the coming months as I find myself needing to make professional changes. How I might react when whatever fresh hell all the Instagram astrologers promise is coming in 2025, comes.

Woof. All right, cool, let's get these values road tested.

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