The Tesla test

People keep vandalizing Teslas.

In the last month, suspects have blown up Teslas in Las Vegas, allegedly thrown explosives at Tesla charging stations in North Carolina, stormed a showroom in New York, and vandalized a dealership in Oregon.

The violence is politically motivated: Tesla CEO Elon Musk—reportedly now the richest man in the world—has worked closely with the Trump administration since January, and continues to support conservative politicians around the world.

But Musk and Tesla weren’t always “right-coded.” In fact, the Tesla brand had a decidedly progressive veneer just a few years ago. They were the electric car company that promised to save the earth’s climate.

It’s unclear how much the earth’s climate has unnaturally changed since 2017, but the cultural climate certainly has. Driving around Phoenix recently, I spotted a Tesla with a bumper sticker above its rear left tire that would have made little sense in 2017: “I bought this before we knew Elon was crazy.”

It’s a poetic picture of the irrationality of virtue signaling: I imagine this person bought a Tesla back when they felt it was the “right” kind of symbol—the climate-saving kind—and now lives in fear that it’s become the “wrong” kind. It’s the same literal object.

Maybe our symbols aren’t up to the task of standing in for our identity after all.

Our obsession with searching for personal meaning through symbols has a long history. In 1990, psychologist and cultural observer Philip Cushman wrote that Americans were increasingly turning away from anchoring their self-identity in religious and familial ties, and starting to look elsewhere. Many, he observed, were turning toward consumerism to find a kind of existential paint brush. By buying or wearing certain things, or associating with certain “brands” (including people), they believed they could invent and then sketch their own reflection to the world.

In Cushman’s era, those searching for rootedness through consumerism used objects as symbols of status and taste. The ’90s were the decade of sneakers collections and couture brands. Today’s unfulfilled searchers are still looking to objects to create identity, but with a twist: the objects are now a moral signal. Rather than screaming “I’m wealthy! I’m stylish!”, we want our symbols to say “I’m the right kind of person.”

If you’re skeptical this is taking place, look around. Only in a symbol-obsessed culture could we find grown men and women with carefully selected—unironically!—collages of branded stickers on their water bottles. We put signs in our yard, we broadcast where we shop, we broadcast even harder where we don’t shop. All this works together to tell everyone else what sort of person we are.

But finding our identity and fulfillment through symbols didn’t work in the ’90s, and it won’t work now. We are not the things we buy, or the brands we like. Those things might offer clues about us—she must enjoy music; he must like to travel—but they don’t make us human, and they can’t stand in for our actual moral decisions. We’re not walking mood-boards. We’re humans.

That means we’re the only created beings which carry the dignity of our Creator’s imprint. This is our identity; and because our Creator God is triune, His image is only fully realized in community with other people. Our human identity is not a collection of preferences, it is the function of being vulnerable. It’s being dependent on others, and living among people dependent upon us.

Truly, the bitter irony of our culture’s search for identity through personal “branding” is that most of the people we’re peacocking around for aren’t paying attention anyway, because they’re too focused on their own “brand.” The even deeper irony is that spending so much time trying to broadcast what sort of person we are robs us of the time it takes actually to be that sort of person.

Once we’ve committed ourselves to real virtue, and to caring for others as ourselves, we should feel absolutely free to make whatever consumer choices we want (and which don’t violate those prior commitments). The real power move, in a culture irrationally obsessed with symbols, is to buy and use and do things simply because they serve their stated purpose and nothing more. Do you like Tesla? Fantastic. Buy one. Don’t want a Tesla? Fantastic. Buy a Subaru. In the spirit of Ecclesiastes, eat, drink, and be merry without worrying so much about what the food and drink “says about you.”

Hold all these things loosely; because they are just things. And when your brother or sister needs your care and love, drop everything in order to give it.