the long march to emancipation

Trying to free one's self from the overdomineering market structures is a long and complex process. It starts with a moment of criticism linked to a particular sector or product. Some examples one can take as a starting point of unhappiness with the market could be

• Software: "I dislike Windows because they've systematically and unfairly gained a monopolistic position leaving millions dependent from them";
• Food production and distribution: "I dislike large supermarkets because they use their overly powerful position to force the agricultural sector to move towards gigantic farms, pushing prices down and buying only large quantities, disregarding environmental and social consequences";
• Labour market: "I dislike the labour market because I am made to compete with others in order to sell my working force and my time for absurd activities that I often do not find relevant, or even positive, for society."
  

Other examples could include more generally political institutions, hierarchies at the work place or else where, the production of clothes and other consumer goods, electricity production etc. - anything that we are made dependent of but have negative social and/or environmental impacts.

From then on, if the person formulating the critique wants to live according to their ideas, there starts a long process of emancipation. As I'm experiencing it, it is a Very Long Learning Process. The first step to this emancipation starts within: Deciding and slowly accepting which goods and which habits one can do without. I suppose most people have a lag like I do, a lapse of time of varying length separating the moment of realisation (I shouldn't buy that much meat, it contributes to deforestation and supports industrial food production) and the moment when the perception of the problem has been internalised so that the decision can actually become a personal priority, destroying the original perceived need (in this case moving from "I shouldn't" to "I don't even think about buying meat").

My march to emancipation is slow but has been making steady progress, especially in the area of consumerism and waste production. I not only do not buy meat anymore (or on those super rare occasions I do, it comes from regional organic farms), I've stopped eating meat outside of my flat as well (I had absurdly continued to eat meat at the Uni-cafeteria or whenever I ate out - meat that was sure to come from damaging industrial production). Nor do I eat fish. I've stopped buying anything that came in overly excessive and unnecessary packaging, such as sweets, yoghurt pots (I buy yoghurt in re-usable glass jars or even in re-usable glass bottles), pre-packed vegetables. All drinks (juice, milk) come in re-usable bottles. I obviously do not use plastic bags to carry my shopping home (my organic shop doesn't have any, one has to come with one's own cloth bag). I have stopped buying products that have travelled half the world. I've been getting electricity coming from renewable, non-nuclear, non-coal sources for the past two and a half years. And now that I'm joining the food coop, I will use own containers to get detergents and cleaning products as well.

It did take me several years to reach this point but I have internalised all decisions so that I can count on the sustainability of my new habits. But there's still loads I could and can and will do. I've been trying to install Ubuntu on my computer for the past several weeks (unfortunately my CD-drive started malfunctionning just as I got the idea, so I've not been successful so far), and I've only now started to be more consistent about using OpenOffice instead of word. Working with the group for regional agriculture is also part of these efforts - it's obviously a lot more demanding to try organise alternative logistical structures for food distribution than just rely on those that already exist. But that in itself cannot be the justification for not doing anything (to get back to the slavery example - it was a lot easier to rely on the economic system functioning thanks to the slave trade rather than try set up something else). I've decided to be a lot more stringent as regards avoiding planes and planning my travels. And then there are all those other areas I need to free myself from, such as the unnecessary and counterproductive job, but also all the knowledge I need to gather in order to be more independant from anonymous opaque structures - repairing, doing, producing. Not that I want to be able to do everything that I need myself, or that I find dependence in itself bad. As I said before, I'm perfectly fine with labour repartition - but I'd like to have some links, non-anonymous ties with the networks that are in charge of producing what I use.

And why did I write all this? Not because I want everybody to feel guilty about their waste-producing, environmentally and socially destructive behaviour. I'm in it with you. If everyone lived like me, we'd still need 1,4 planets. But I do want to push people to reflect just how much destruction they are willing to accept as being done on their behalf, and just how far they are willing to go to bring their acts closer to their ideas. And then we can perhaps swap tips...