Isms

I just read a very interesting article titled “What is a Freegan?” In short, they describe a Freegan as

“people who employ alternative strategies for living based on limited participation in the conventional economy and minimal consumption of resources. Freegans embrace community, generosity, social concern, freedom, cooperation, and sharing in opposition to a society based on materialism, moral apathy, competition, conformity, and greed.” (More info/the whole article can be found at www.freegan.info )

Freegans, as I understand it, realize the flaws in our economic system and as opposed to selecting one evil over another, they simply reject the system as a whole. Some themes mentioned in the article (which I would strongly recommend reading) include: Waste Reclamation, Waste Minimization, Eco-Friendly Transportation, Rent-Free housing, Going Green, Working less/Voluntary Joblessness.

According to the article, the word “Freegan” comes from a compound of the words “Free” and “Vegan”.

“Vegans are people who avoid products from animal sources or products tested on animals in an effort to avoid harming animals. Freegans take this a step further by recognizing that in a complex, industrial, mass-production economy driven by profit, abuses of humans, animals, and the earth abound at all levels of production (from acquisition to raw materials to production to transportation) and in just about every product we buy. Sweatshop labor, rainforest destruction, global warming, displacement of indigenous communities, air and water pollution, eradication of wildlife on farmland as "pests", the violent overthrow of popularly elected governments to maintain puppet dictators compliant to big business interests, open-pit strip mining, oil drilling in environmentally sensitive areas, union busting, child slavery, and payoffs to repressive regimes are just some of the many impacts of the seemingly innocuous consumer products we consume every day.”

This made a lot of sense to me for a lot of reasons. One of the most apparent stems from the glaring contradictions I see through some of my friends. One of my friends in particular is strongly against animal cruelty and avoids all products/medicines violating this belief of hers. It’s the same person; however who buys Nike shoes which are made by an eleven year old in a Chinese sweatshop.

Likewise, another friend refuses to eat meat, but instead feeds into the American Myth that consumption will make you happier. At the root of this is immense quantities of waste, exponential depletion of natural resources, causing severe damage to natural environments for raw materials and carbon-based fuels to send the raw materials to Asia and then use petrol to haul back completed and assembled products (like new Nikes). Throw in the abuse to all laborers (many of whom are underage, overworked, and underpaid) and we certainly have danger brewing.

I suppose that’s why the Freegan movement is so interesting and appealing to me. How else can we sidestep evils which are so deeply rooted in the system, short of starting from scratch?

It is interesting to think of the cycle as a train going around a circular track. There is no place to say “we change the way we act past this point” because, in fact, there is no place in the cycle that isn’t a crime to humanity and nature. The only thing that can be considered a “solution” is to stop the train; if not for everyone, at least in our own lives.

As a side note, we should ask ourselves: How happy do these material things actually make us? Do your new Nikes make you a happier person? If not, ask who convinces you to buy these things? Not as though our happiness over petty material objects would be cause to let these conditions exist. How can we, as human beings, let this injustice exist?

This follows closely one of the most dangerous ideas (in my opinion) in the world today: Sheeple. People who choose to follow as opposed to think. People, who are nothing but undistinguishable faces in the crowd, whose individuality not only no longer exist, but needs not exist. Sheeple collectively and unquestionably follow authority figures (including but not limited to Media, Advertisements, Branding and the fallacy of social pressures whose fires are stoked by the aforementioned)

I think that this is the reason that I (along with a growing number of people) have not been able to just forget about the vicious and degenerative cycle of consumption. We really aren’t any happier. If we were, it would be a lot easier to forget and continue living out our lives.

So, Isms. There are many similarities. If we simply gently scratch the surface, we see that “Animal Rights” can be extrapolated to include not only animal testing but human sweatshop labor. It can also be inclusive of rejection of the logging, mining and oil industries (which comprise some of the most concentrated sources of ecosystem destruction through deforestation, improper waste disposal, poor drilling practices, oil spills, and the seemingly irreparable damage caused by the burning of carbon based fuels TO NAME A FEW). Being against carbon fuels entails being against driving, 95% of the electricity in the USA, and the plastics industry. Not to mention all objects not made in a very near proximity to you (because that pair of shoes takes a lot of petrol to be shipped from China to you).

Well wait, you just wanted to protect animals, right?

Another interesting thing I learned recently is that for all of these “solutions” there is a big grey area. As demonstrated above, it’s nearly impossible to stop all adverse affects to animals. In fact, the best thing to do to preserve animals would be to kill yourself in the forest and nourish the wild (ironic, yeah?).

The bigger picture, though, is that all of the people who embrace “isms” have one common streak. We all want to do what is right (and “what is right?” is a completely different conversation). We just choose different places we want to do the right thing. Freegans are, in this sense, the unifiers of all of the isms. As opposed to saying “I reject products which test on animals”, Freegans say “I reject your system because it is so inherently flawed, and I choose to introduce my own.”

Certainly there are negative connotations with such a belief, especially in a culture based in consumption, like the one in the US. But can we really trivialize and look down upon the idealistic beliefs of these people? Au contraire, it is the true definition of humanity and the antithesis to the Sheeple syndrome that we look at ourselves, our habits, our leaders, our idols, indeed our world and ask ourselves “Why?”