As Stewart Home put it, the essential fallacy of liberalism and lifestylism is that it is impossible to live differently under capitalism. But it is possible to live ethically - i.e., with integrity. And part of that integrity must surely involve putting something into training ourselves and others to live differently. "Starting with the Man in the Mirror" is a cheesy way to put it, so maybe "live as if you were in the early days of a better nation"? Or even - this horrible world of advertising agencies and mechanised death is a university in which we train ourselves to live in the better world. The Kingdom of God, in Reality as it is in the Nice Place We Made Up Inside Our Heads. A world where Love In Action becomes easy, or at least easier.
"It's steam-engines when it's steam-engines time", as a wise man once said, and while you can't stop playing the capitalist game (there is no longer any outside to the money and capital system, which, as Rosa Luxemburg said in 1903, means it's coming near to TILT), if you play the game with integrity - which means accepting that you're not going to win the Fabulous Prizes, and that you wouldn't want to anyway - you will keep enough "soul" (energy + free time + financial spending money) to give you a chance at contributing to building a better world.
At the right time, that is. You can't be a revolutionary in a non-revolutionary time for the same reason you can't be a saint or a prophet by your own volition. The time is not right for most of the world, but - for example - in Greece I think it's getting close. If you and your mates keep doing your exercises and your eyes on the prize, one day the Black Iron Prison might show a chink and you might be able to declare a jailbreak or even an occupation.
I've been putting just this into practice.
ReplyDeleteI've lived my whole life with cable or satellite television. A few months ago, I realized my budget was greatly unbalanced and I had to trim some fat. The most reasonable was cable.
I find I'm saving money AND I have more time to do the things I've wanted to do.
I've begun looking at all aspects and trying to figure out what I can trim, knowing that I can indeed live without watching new episodes of Futurama as soon as they come on.
That's not to say that television is totally gone. Actually, I learned something about antennas and built one, getting free over the air television for the rare occasions I do watch TV.
I've never had pay TV and I live somewhere which doesn't get good aerial reception, so I haven't had a working TV in my house for years. However, I have just bought a DVD player for the first time. I think I've been a little too ascetic for my own good, as I think one kindly contributor pointed out.
ReplyDeleteBut that's the essential issue, isn't it? The ability to make choices; the ability to say YES or NO to things, rather than working on instinct or programming. Being a human rather than a robotic monkey.
DVD player? Get some Studio Ghibli: Spirited Away, Nausicaa, Ponyo ... Robin Ramsay, the guy who blew the whistle on MI6 versus Harold Wilson and wrote one of the good books on "conspiracy theory" (AND played with Derek Bailey!) told me "he's just a guy with a bike and an allotment" but ... that's obviously the best thing in the world to be ...
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