Rage. Almost every adolescent feels at one time or another or most of the time a feeling of suffocation and expresses that feeling with rage. David Graeber in his on line essays on revolutionary social movements called “Revolutions in Reverse” , he focuses on this alienation. Why were so many American teenagers “entranced” by Raoul Vaneigem’s book “The Revolution of Everyday Life ?” he asked himself. Then he answers his own question. “It must be the highest theoretical expression of the feelings of rage, boredom, and revulsion that almost any adolescent at some point feels when confronted with the middle class existence.” The young see before then mind-numbing unimaginative work before them and it freaks them out.
I got to thinking about this. For a long time young working and middle class people were bought off. Not by the distractions of game playing, sports watching, or mindless movies although those activities helped the fragmentation of their social life. No it was more insidious. They were bought off by the myth of American freedom through ownership of your very own home. You could leave the nest and feather your own complete with mate and cute little chirpers. You were no longer subject to authoritarian education structures or parental controls. You were free.
But unlike a bird, you had little time to soar like an eagle or dart and play in the sky. To mix some metaphors, you got yourself saddled with debt and if you went to college, you piled on some more saddle packs full of anxiety and woe.
In the new AMC TV series “Hell on Wheels”, the railroad baron asks a couple of young Irish lads why they were in the middle of the U.S. tagging along as the continental railroad was being built. The brothers tell him of sneaking on a train when they were mere lads and going to the big city of Dublin. Their father found them and hauled them home, but it was the grandest time of their life. So for them a train was the symbol of freedom and they wanted to be a part of the building of that railroad in the hopes of capturing that feeling of freedom again.
For over 40 years we have been subjected to a bad version of “freedom” with its emphasis on the mythical rugged individual. But libertarians of the right should take a look at what left libertarians call “freedom” and maybe find some common ground. Here’s how the CrimethInc collective (who Graeber calls “the most inspiring young anarchist propagandists”) describes freedom:
We must make our freedom by cutting
holes in the fabric of this reality, by
forging new realities which will, in turn,
fashion us. Putting yourself in new situations
constantly is the only way to ensure
that you make your decisions unencumbered
by the inertia of habit, custom, law,
or prejudice – and it is up to you to create
these situations
Freedom only exists in the moment of
revolution. And those moments are not as
rare as you think. Change, revolutionary
change, is going on constantly and everywhere
– and everyone plays a part in it,
consciously or not.
Graeber calls this statement “elegant”. Direct action is, he says, “the defiant insistence on acting as if one is already free.” “Sovereign” may This is revolution and not some kind of “to the barricades” moment. This is releasing the barricades in our minds and unleashing our imaginations. It is pushing back against the elites who say that we need to get back into the boxes; the voting booths, the endless marches and rallies to petition our king for some gruel, writing letters to the aged satraps in the halls of congress, or sitting in the audience at public hearings of excruciating boredom. So-called “realistic” “pragmatic” choices are made in those boxes but “in an insurrectionary situation, on the other hand, suddenly anything is possible.”
This is what is called “reinventing everyday life.” So forget universities. Go sign up for a course in freedom at one of the Occupies. The tents may be gone for now, but the Forum is always open to those who choose to live as if they are already free.
Dig It! – Making a Wrong Turn in the Fifties – Updated Version
I recently wrote about the difference between a job and work; between “useless toil and useful work.” And why do we work? When did we start to devalue leisure time? A hundred years ago people in the I.W.W. argued for more leisure rather than higher wages. Keynes talked about the ten hour week. So when were basic needs replaced by wants? Adam Curtis in “The Century of Self” speculates that it started in the 1920s with the rise of advertising. But the real push to go beyond needs seems to have occurred in the 1950s.
I just finished Bill Bryson’s memoir “The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid” about growing up in Des Moines, Iowa in the 1950s and 1960s. Like all his books, it is filled with amazing detail, hilarious stories, and keen social commentary. For white folks in America things were pretty good in the 1950s. Bryson remarks that their basic needs were being met (although he thinks the toys of his childhood like Mr. Potato Head and the Slinky really sucked). But instead of being content they started living large. They went from not needing a car at all in cities with streetcars and rail service to buying two cars. They needed bigger refrigerators and more gadgets. “…televisions, room intercoms, gas grills, kitchen gadgets, snowblowers, you name it.” That meant they needed bigger places for all the new stuff. And so they worked more and women started working too. They were sold the idea of “careers” which were jobs where you could “get ahead”. Continue reading →
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Posted in Social Commentary
Tagged automobile industry, Bill Bryson, capitalism, cars, Chicago, consumerism, individualism, leisure, The Fifties, work