By Alliance President Terry Gips
Jeffrey Epstein and Sustainability? What? Have we slid into the land of National Enquirer?
No, we’ve slid into the hard-nosed Substack sleuthing of The Ink’s Anand Giridharadas, who continually connects too-often unseen dots so that we can wake up and stop the madness. It’s far bigger than the shock that Epstein’s dirty sex web includes the likes of Bill Gates and some of our favorite cultural icons, like Deepak Chopra and Noam Chomsky.
In true Anand fashion he takes on a massive, complex topic that’s far beyond the reporting you’ve read and plunges into the hidden underbelly of the ultra-wealthy and privileged men who run and ruin our lives. He shows us why this really matters for all of us.
For us to ignore this complex, internecine web of ultra-wealth and power would make those of us in the world of sustainability culpable and allow this barely visible structure controlling everything to remain in place. And destroy our precious planet in more ways than we might imagine.
A Caveat on Wealth but a Warning About Power and Privilege
At the outset, I need to clarify that just because someone has ultra-wealth doesn’t mean they’re part of a sexually abusive system. Certainly, most women aren’t, though Epstein accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell was. And there are examples of women, even sexual abuse survivors like US Rep Nancy Mace, who use their power to lie and unfairly malign, attack and devastate others.
Obviously, there are lots of people of wealth doing great things in the world who abhor an Epstein-type system. There are even prominent people in the same family who fight the system, like Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker, and those in the same family who succumb, like Tommy Pritzker.
It’s important to note that Epstein also drew in non-wealthy people, but always for a purpose, whether for essential knowledge, connections or access to power. They had value and allowed Epstein to penetrate our top university systems and use them to his advantage, like he did with now disgraced former Harvard President Larry Summers.
What we have to face is our human frailty that when we become friends with someone there’s trust, and that trust makes one overlook what normally would be red flags. It’s much harder to confront people we know, especially if our relationship provides big benefits. Why rock the boat? It’s much safer to lay low. This is a fundamental fault in our operating system.
How Anand Prompted Me to Speak Out about the Epstein Impact on Sustainability
As a feminist male, I’ve been struggling with how widespread sexual abuse is for a long time. Way before Epstein or Weinstein, I’ve been quite public in my calls for men to stop and be held accountable for their crimes – regardless of whether they were left, right or center. I’ve personally posted about it, but I couldn’t quite figure out how we should speak about it at the Alliance for Sustainability. But reading Anand’s article made it clear.
“Never eat with women“ is the deceptively deep Slack title for his dark dive into the mafiosa-like male world of privilege, power, shocking sexual abuse crimes, self-interest scheming and cover-ups. On its basic level, the title reflects the fact that Epstein and his Bros seemed to enjoy sex with underage girls but would never eat with them because these girls were just an objective currency to be traded, but not heard from post-sex. The Bros had business to do over their sumptuous meals. But Anand looks at what’s really going on under the table.
“What we are seeing in the Epstein circle is a strange hybrid of patriarchies new and old: There is, as Kate Manne has brilliantly articulated, a new-world commodification and fungibility and trading of women and girls, on one hand; and, on the other, a persistent old-world sense of where women belong and don’t belong,” Anand points out.
Epstein lured the world’s wealthiest, most powerful men with his charm, wit and offers they couldn’t seem to refuse: self-aggrandizing big money deals with sex on top as dessert. While each of his Bros benefited, Epstein himself built his empire of unrelenting sexual satisfaction and gross personal wealth by sucking in more and more men.
When Anand lays it out like this, it becomes a ten-alarm fire scorching all aspects of our world, even sustainability. Anand reveals the frictionless world these men seek to create — with AI at the apex — in which humans and ecosystems are just commodities to be manipulated and discarded when they get in the way.
“These are men who do not like resistance. Friction. Pushback. Any obstacle to the sprawl of their ideas and needs. The most extreme manifestation of this tendency is the pedophilia at the heart of the story, in which Epstein and some of the men around him participated.”
Sound familiar? It was way too similar to Epstein’s long-time playboy buddy — malignant, sociopathic narcissist Donald Trump. He actually believes he could shoot someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue, or emulate his much-beloved dictators Putin, Xi and Khomeini with their untold numbers of protesters killed, tortured or imprisoned for life.
Feminism Confronts the Sick Tech Bro Billionaire System
Why am I a longtime, ardent feminist and how does that matter for sustainability? Because feminism in its true meaning is liberation for women, men and every person to be fully who they are. Feminism also calls for us to be fearless, to challenge, to call people out.
Even though the word feminism has baggage – especially its past of bra burning, stridency, judgment and exclusion – its actual message is core to sustainability.
The freedom to choose and to be a fully human being is essential. And just as important, feminism sees our oneness with all nature and the need to protect and preserve ecosystems, regardless of Wall Street’s valuation.
Are We and Nature Just Cogs in the Capitalist Machine?
Anand helps contextualize what are horrific sex crimes into a larger and even more disturbing web of domination of all being to serve a few. We are simply cogs in a machine of their creation. We used to think that the ultra-wealthy, like the Fords and Rockefellers, were the evil force of capitalist domination.
Epstein has created a system enabling a new, improved and far more malignant Tech Bro Billionaire breed that has literally taken control of capitalism while discounting and objectifying girls, women, natural resources and our precious ecosystems. These Billionaire Tech Bros use females for their pleasure and currency for the transaction of business at scales of control and enrichment most of us can’t even imagine. That’s their real game…at least after pleasure.
Sustainability and Our Survival is at Stake
Anand’s article is a call for all of us to wake up and not tire of the disgusting Epstein crimes, but to stand up and stop the system that is threatening our world. Those of us committed to sustainability need to see this big, daunting and dangerous force field for what it is — a threat to our very survival. And we need to call out any Republicans and Democrats who aren’t willing to challenge this system.
This sick operating system is already raping our planet. We are called to fully expose it, jail all of its perpetrators and co-create a world of sustainability, health, equity and kindness.
Our Last Call for Fundamental Systems Change – Take a Stand and Say Stop and Never Again
I don’t want to end by further depressing you, but I feel there exists an even more dangerous and potentially lethal inconvenient threat: AI. Yes, that seemingly wonderful gift that makes so many things easier and seductively sucks us in. It’s a gleaming efficiency and productivity machine, though we’re increasingly aware of its challenging water, energy, health and equity impacts.
So, what am I concerned about? The very Billionaire Dollar Tech Bros like Bill Gates who compromised laws and their morals are the same people who control the big AI firms in a win-lose race to the top. They have captured the attention of Trump and even given him a share so that AI will go unregulated. And they lock that in place with their massive political donations in order to capture Congress and state legislatures.
That’s bad enough. But worse is their values. Listen to Trump Whisperer and Big Tech Bro Peter Thiel, who shows up in the Epstein files and “has articulated a vision of monopoly as an ideal — of the absence of competition not as a policy problem but a nirvana,” according to Anand.
Thiel sees a world of AI in which lesser humans aren’t really needed, just him and his privileged, wealthy buddies. Consequently, the resultant AI incorporates his sick worldview, which lacks the feelings, values, empathy, creativity and spirituality which most of us feel are essential to being human.
Anand addresses Epstein’s connection to people like Elon Musk and says, “A.I. offers so many of the men in this network their fantasy: economic heaven without the sublunary friction of humans.”
When AI comes along, there will be no sympathy for humans. We’ll just be obsolete obstacles in its way. AI will make it very fast to get rid of us. If our system is just rotten to the core, AI is just a facet of it and will magnify the faults when scaled. AI is already outsmarting humans and even thwarting our control of it. Soon AI will allow completely autonomous warfare.
These developments highlight how flawed our basic operating system is. We don’t have a great road map, but these flaws underscore the need for us to have a humane operating system and co-create a world of sustainability, health, equity and kindness.
I thought we had learned from the Holocaust that “Never Again” meant Never Again anywhere for anyone anytime ever again.
But here we are. This time they’ll be coming for all of us if we are not the privileged and super-wealthy. Epstein’s Rape Island will soon become Rape Planet…and well beyond if Thiel, Musk and others have their way.