The Self - An Idea Project, by Ed Whitfield

So you are dissatisfied with the way the world is going. You have heard a little about socialism and communism and the Russian revolution and know a little about Che Guevara. But what now? You could spend the next couple of years, even decades, pondering on how to create the momentum for such a revolution in your own lifetime, how to mobilize the troops and gain popular public support so that the government will come crashing down and the 'people' will erect a great big picture of your head in government buildings and on their walls and hold you the saviour of the world. A great leader!

Or perhaps you have grown out of such silly ideals and decided that the whole thing is useless and impossible, that there will never be a revolution for the common good, that no matter who is in power, they will never be able to satisfy everyone, basically that there will always be shit and that's just how the world is.

Or how about you wake up and realise that the only reason it isn't happening is that you keep saying it won't happen. And also maybe you might realise that the time of mass insurrection against the industrial capital bourgeois has long gone, and that leaders and hierarchy will only bring misery.

Both the attitudes of the optimistic idealist and the negative realist hold grains of truth and also detrimental untruths. If the positive sides of both arguments were combined and adopted by more people, leaving the idea of leaders and lack of hope aside, then there may actually be hope for this planet. These positive sides being: the idealism to believe that something can actually happen and the realism to realise that one must not depend on a popular movement to get things rolling.

Yes, the change depends on you and you alone, for you can't change nothing but yourself! Not everybody is the same, and there will never be a common line of agreement. At best there may be similar ones, and, once you have your own line (ideas) sorted out, these similar points of view are the ones you must reach out to and create links and networks with. Due to diversity I believe that this form of organisation has the potential to eventually and naturally combine every single individual, no matter what their point of view or argument, in a beautiful and varied coalition against the common enemy. That is, global capitalism.

Whether middle class women refusing to pay bin taxes like it or not they are on the same side as the travelling community and, through realising their own problems and deciding to do something about them, I guarantee they will not only find themselves side by side with travellers, but also amongst Maori, Indian farmers, Brazilian land squatters, Zapatist soldiers and anarchist youths that live next door and play that mad loud noise in their garage.

This global coalition of and for humanity can only reach its full potential when you decide to give up your ego and/ or begin to believe that things can actually change. The war is raging right outside our windows. We just can't see it because 'they' have our vision filled with Brittany's boobs and Justin's johnson. It's out their, all you have to do is look. As for leaders, have we not learned that if they aren't just plain useless they are downright dangerous?

With the organic and democratic process involved in creating these personal and autonomous networks to finally come together and defeat global capitalism, why couldn't we apply the same (dis)organisation in an attempt to create a new and peaceful world where communities run themselves. It makes sense and it's possible as it has happened before and is happening now. (Just go find out!)

This real and radical change is possible when you decide to start creating reality out of your dreams so what are you waiting for?

What I have learned from all of this is that there are three steps that must be taken. They are the self, the immediate environment and eventually the world! For a radical, global change to take place we all must look within ourselves and then spiral outwards from our minds. We all must realise our dreams and desires, what makes us happy and what makes us sad. Then we must act upon these desires and work to rid our lives of the barriers that keep happiness just out of our reach. We must realise that happiness is our birthright and that no person may stop us in our path. If they do so then they are wrong! We must realise that universal morals are set out to make us feel guilty about ourselves and that prejudice is introduced to keep us apart from one another in order to disable any collective action taking place. Divide and conquer.

So, instead of looking to outside influence for signs to follow and how to act, we must look inside, into our own minds, find our true nature and realise what makes us happy. Once this is found then we are able to identify the factors that keep us miserable and therefore do something about them. It is quite probable that you will find, if you look hard enough, other people with the same or similar problems and that will lead you to the second step.

But first we must look at the first step, the self: the mind and the body. Personally I believe that our general lifestyle is in complete contradiction to our nature and if it continues it will bring not only the death to our species but to the planet as a whole (bar cockroaches, apparently). And through following a logical thread I have come to the conclusion that, not only is it possible to live without macro economics, it is global capitalism that is destroying the world. It isn't the government, it isn't even CEO's, for all those involved are trapped too, trapped in the vicious and soulless game that is the economy. It is needless and it will never bring anyone any true happiness and it is also consuming the world's resources and destroying the lives of millions.

It seems that those involved, those that implement their development plans, define poverty as not possessing the means to keep a country's economy afloat, believing that once a nation is rich, the affluence will eventually trickle down to the people below. How I would define poverty is when one does not possess the means to survival. This is a poor person. And the means to survival is not necessarily having the means to making money. Therein lays the farce and the blatant lie! In creating a worldwide game, substituting life for money, 'they' have entrapped the planet in a vicious cycle that, unfortunately, is not an unlimited cycle as pretty soon the limits of consumerism will have created such a strain that we shall find every being in the throes of poverty as the means of survival are growing slimmer by the day, with every billion that digitally passes over / under our heads.

We in the 'developed world' may not live in general poverty but it is a very tight rope that we walk upon on our journey in search of wealth. The conditions are quite strict in maintaining the means of survival and the choices are closing with every day that passes. There is not much room for diversity and freedom of choice in the modern life as we are making the transition from humans to consumers. And I think it is with this fact, along with the evidently terrific state of the world, that I find the root to my inner frustration, the fear that, yes I may have a wide and varied choice of exotic canned fruit but the lifestyle I might choose, well, there isn't much choice without that radical change, until the people of a country, of a community begin to make the decisions about their land, and that old, fat men no longer make drastic choices after it is pointed out that they may gain an even larger pension.

Now that I have identified global economics as the one miserable factor in my life what can I do about it? I don't wish to exclude myself from society at large, I don't have enough friends that would follow me to the hills in such an eventuality, and there is no hope that I wont have killed myself before the age of forty if I dive head first into the 'first world' and all its glorious wonders. The idea of creating self sustaining communities in their own autonomous space is very appealing to me. It makes sense to me that people ought to have the right to choose how their lives are lived, that the people living in a certain area have direct responsibility and control over that area, and it also makes sense to me that people in a community work together and cooperate with each other instead of living close to one another but not actually getting to know one another or even liking each other.

But, what can I do about it? Well, in an attempt to begin creating the foundations of a viable alternative to current, modern and destructive lifestyles I have thought long and hard about certain aspects of my own lifestyle. Labour, materialism and diet are a number of factors I thought important to consider in the struggle to maintain my status as a human being as opposed to a consumer being. The punk DIY music scene has taught me many things about alternative lifestyle and led me to thoughts on individual rights and what aspects of our lifestyles create risk factors in society. The zine and book section of distros always drew my attention before the records and CDs did. Books like 'Days of Love, Nights of War' by the CWC, and 'We Are Everywhere' by Notes From Nowhere changed many of my perspectives and helped me to understand and develop many alternative ideas about labour and living. Also plenty of zines on issues such alternative economies, alternative punishment processes, academic views on anarchism, along with plenty of personal stories about struggles and everyday life. The wealth of literature that is out there has opened my eyes to the possibilities and choices that we all have. It has sent me on an irreversible trajectory, there is no going back. At least, no bearable way back and the only way forward is to keep thinking and understanding, to keep learning and implementing.

I used to work in MacDonald's as a service supervisor, the first step towards being a manager! Here I learned of the insane lack of happiness something that promises such, actually offers. All I saw were children throwing tantrums and irate parents, leading to even more pissed off workers and what's worse, the apparent abuse and complete lack of respect for those that gave their lives for this hell hole. Well, their lives were more taken than given, but I'm talking about the poor souls that don't get a chance to be pissed off as they are now dead, their skulls mashed up between two burnt slices of bread that, before you chow down, had most probably slipped off the tray and landed on the floor, then quickly scooped back up and placed in non-biodegradable Styrofoam and handed out to the zombie masses on the other side of the counter.

It was when my entrepreneurial skill of running a second till (and when I got the blue shirt and tie, having others running them for me) became an issue, it was time for me to leave. Nearing the end of my time there, however, was the period in my life when I really became aware of the political and economic nightmares of the world. I had always known of them, but this was when I started going to protest marches in Dublin and got interested in the Socialist Youth Something-or-other. At work I had begun to post newspaper articles of how Indonesian children were forced to make happy meal toys up on the front door of the store. It was terrifically satisfying to watch people think twice before entering, or not entering in many cases! With this, the amount of meat that passed through the store and the suspicions of second tills in mind, it was time for me to leave after a year of corporate service. And with my departure I had three goals in mind: vegetarianism, anti-materialism and activism.

Over the next half a year I had weaned my self off of meat and thrown out most of the stuff I had in my room, giving away CDs and Discmans, books and videos etc. and promised myself that I would stop buying stuff. It wasn't until a while after that my mad habit of spending almost €100 every time I went to tower records stopped. The third step, being activism, was limited to a brief time attending SWP meetings and wandering like a lost and very bored soul around protest marches in Dublin.

I knew that this wasn't it. I knew that there was more to it, more I could do. And I knew it wasn't going to be a popular insurrection either, although I did believe at the time that what we needed was mass anarchist education. Now I understand that this sort of thing is a fairytale and what we ought to be looking for now is a little mix of tipping the balance regarding mainstream political attitudes, and groups of people fighting for their own autonomous spaces, pushing their hardest to fold back the barriers and borders.

Then I came up with the idea that people should think within themselves to find out what they want, begin to polarise their environment in accordance to their own principals and, in doing so, come in contact with others of a similar position, therefore creating groups, or communities that may work together in fighting for their own way of life, and then, in doing so, reaching out to other groups fighting a similar fight and eventually a tightly knit force would span the globe in resistance to economic globalisation, as it was the lack of tightness amongst the left (and the incredible tightness amongst the right) I found to be the problem within revolutionary circles. I called this idea An Idea Project and you are reading it right now, and what I wished to do with it was print it up and travel Europe with it, getting it reprinted in different languages as I went, and having all spin off groups stay in touch through a central website.

It wasn't until afterwards, of course, that I learned of the history (past and present) of the current anti-globalisation organisations and all affiliated affinity groups. What I wished for had already began around the world with the Zapatist revolution in Mexico in 1994, Seattle, Prague, Genoa, so many struggles and they all believed in what I believed in. There were no leaders, no wish to create a state and what's more they were actually getting up and doing something. I had always thought that the likes of Seattle, great as they were, would never amount to anything, that they were just larger, more exciting versions of Dublin marches. But after reading about such events and the organisation and beliefs behind them I have come to understand that they are exactly what I am looking for, all I need to do is create the same infrastructure in my own environment. There is a small amount of it here, but Global Days of Action seem to be overrun by the likes of the SWP, and RTS never seems to be as spontaneous or radical as it ought to be. But, like I said, I realised that it was up to the participants as much as the organisers to create the carnival and I am currently quite excited for the future of the Irish movement, especially as we have just entered the period where we hold the seat of the EU presidency (for all that's worth!).

So it is only now, three years on, that my head has figured out what it is I wish to become active upon. However I have considered, and acted upon, factors of my lifestyle leading up to now, and what I want to describe here are these things, and more still in consideration, things I have thought of and identified as key points in how I wish to live and from them it is quite obvious why I must be a part of the struggle against current forms of globalisation.

For me the sale of my labour is a major issue. I don't believe people should work for others. To me the idea is absurd. And what's worse is the amount of work we do. Realistically we ought to be working about four hours a day to sustain our communities, and feeding the young and disabled. But it isn't really about the amount of work, rather its nature is far more unpleasant for me. Work should be a form of play, of creation. Instead of pride in what we are able to buy after we build a house or till a field. What about the pride in the creation? In today's labour market there is none because what we produce is immediately robbed from us in exchange for money, and shipped off to another location. This has the same, albeit on a smaller scale (plus we have become numb to it), effect as robbing a child from a mother. Money or no money, it still has a malevolent psychological effect.

But because the role of consumer is being pushed upon us we must work, to maintain the lifestyle that is the current norm. It is all apart of the big trick, the huge cycle to keep us trapped in a mode of control that is very difficult to break away from.

Recognising these points, it is very difficult for me to work a normal job and I am in search of a viable form of 'living'. I decided it best not to work so I would be forced to find alternatives. I hoped that others might help but this was unrealistic at the time and fortunately I came across a job within the social circle, rather than the commercial.

The wages are low but this suits me as I don't spend very much money. In fact I save most of what I earn as I live at home and study. I have asked myself, what do I need to spend money on? Why would I spend money on things I don't need, things that 'they' depend on us to keep buying. Needlessly consuming! Confectionary, fashion, pop culture. Our whole society is made up of things to keep us from crying out in pain, items to numb us from the harsh realities of our pointless lives. And they are pointless as far as the individual involved is concerned. The only point that person serves is to keep churning the milk so 'they' on the top can scoop off the cream. They then spend a small fraction of that cream in creating the glittery and cheap objects to keep us occupied and in doing so they have us squirming even more! Creating even more cream!!! Modern culture is completely mad! It makes very little sense! In exploitative societies of old at least there was a definite line drawn between the king and the serf. Now, however, any Joe Schmoe is given the chance to climb to the top of the beautiful neo-liberal ladder and collect, if they are rich enough to pay their college fees, of course and receive their 'free' education.

So it only makes sense to me not to get involved in this crazy system, to participate as little as possible in the market and to buy as little as possible. Hopefully attempt to create my own space where I can make anything I need. If you tend to the material side of life how will you have time to look after the spiritual? And also, how can you have a spiritual connection with your possessions if you have merely purchased them, rather than actually creating them yourself?

Another market to avoid is the meat market. Animals eat animals, we are animals that eat other animals. It's natural and therefore essential to nature. Of course some may not like meat, and that's fine, as long as the majority do it's ok. Another thing is that plants are alive as well and I'm confident that the mass destruction of plant life has just as large a negative effect on the world as the mass slaughter of animals. Meaning that I don't see much difference (although of course there is) in the eating of a carrot and of a cow. But what is not natural, what is not agreeable is the way we go about it. The meat market and in fact, our entire attitude regarding other forms of life is despicable. The view that we are superior to all other life forms is ridiculous and has got us in a lot of trouble with nature.

We grow animals. We slaughter animals. We stock pile their bodies and throw away what we don't need. We waste animals. We are sick. The meat market is just such an unnatural institution that has no regard or respect for the lives at hand! Once again we are distanced from our human characteristics as we go to market instead of forests and lakes for our food, and become consumers instead of people.

And because of all this I have decided to stay away from meat and animal bi-products such as dairy. I am not vegetarian or vegan, I am not this or that. I don't follow what has gone before, I only feel that I don't wish to be apart of it. It is not that I don't allow myself these things, it's that I don't desire them. Or at least I don't most of the time. Being an omnivore for twenty years of my life, it does get on top of me and at times I do want to eat meat or dairy products. And I will have them. A lot of people don't understand this. The way I see it, for one, is that the lack of a discipline on the issues allows me to maintain it as, once I have 'failed' to play by the rules it doesn't mean I have lost and am out of the game, like I have seen happen to many people. They declare themselves vegan / vegetarian and slip up, then its all over and they see the task impossible and carry on with their old habits (same thing tragically happens with people who want to quit smoking). But for me it is not a matter of being something and therefore adhering to rules. I feel it is more important that, if you believe something to do your best and, in this case, stay away from what you disagree with as much as possible.

Through the punk scene I learned about DIY which means Do It Yourself. The market to stay away from in this case is entertainment, particularly the music industry. I believe that music and art are very spiritual human resources that should not be exploited and abused in many of the ways the music industry does. By mass producing highly polished, low quality tunes and by stuffing Ken and Barbie dolls on the front of the CD to suit a frivolous market you end up tearing away at true artist's integrity as their hope fades of ever gaining any recognition. Fortunately, however, there is an underground and this is where I and many of my friends play, record and release their music. DIY is intent on making music as free as possible, with cheap, all inclusive gigs and homemade releases sold as close to the cost price as possible. The underground scene can be a hive for raw talent and there are some great gems if you are into real music.

Like I have said above it has taught me a lot about alternative lifestyles and independent productions. Also I see it as a potential network of communication. Within the DIY scene you can come across such wonderful books and zines. It has also made me think a lot about culture and identity, how an identity can be falsely forged, therefore tarnishing a culture, or how a culture can limit peoples identity and scope for personal development and also create elite niches and cases of social exclusion. But identity is what can also drive us to do everything we do in life and many people's lives have been destroyed once they have lost their identity. A feeling of being lost and worthless can swoop in in replace of a shift in culture and leave a person completely depressed and even suicidal. And culture can be such a wonderful thing to experience, to learn about others and to feel a belongingness and understanding amongst friends. While I feel culture should be a loose factor between individuals involved it is worth fighting for in the face of the homogenous American monoculture that is consuming the planet.

These are just some of the things that the (punk) DIY scene has sparked off in my imagination. It has helped me develop many ideas about who I want to be and how I wish to live, and also how to go about achieving these goals, as impossible as they seem.

Now that my head is sorted out (to a reasonable extent, of course there is room for development, change and growth of the mind are inevitable) it is time to 'polarise' my environment, to take action within my space. I have looked at my room and perhaps I could do with another clearing out of stuff that I don't need.

None of the clothes I wear are major labels, which, to me is an important point although most clothes now are made in sweatshops. What I have to do is try and stop receiving clothes as presents as, one: I have enough and two: if I need any I will buy them second hand, therefore avoiding participation in the clothes industry first hand. Second hand shops seem to be charity and not commercial. I haven't bought clothes personally in about three or four years and managed to wear a pair of skate shoes for three years before having them retire, a fact I was very proud of.

At this very moment I am pleased with my first weeks attempt at staying clear from dairy. Even though I have had scraps of chocolate that are lying about after Christmas I am proud to report that all my major meals have consisted solely of animal free products. In regard to what I was saying before about it is not that I don't allow myself, but I simply do not desire… I do believe that if I constrain to an extent, my desires I will teach myself to put a leash on them naturally and without thinking about it in the future, another form of will and not a rule.

In my home I plan make some ecological changes. I want to start a vegetable garden and a compost heap with proper recycling bins as well. I also want to keep an eye on groceries and try to lessen the needless consumer stuff we all tend to buy without thinking. I think it is also important to try to get more ecologically friendly appliances and the likes.

All these plans and changes are within my immediate and personal space. My diet, clothes, where I live and the stuff I own. I plan to have all factors of my life in accordance to how I wish to live, or as close to this ideal as possible.

My attempt to polarise my space will indefinitely come in conflict with the others I share it with. Compromises must be made where possible, and also I hope that some of the people I will affect will agree with the changes and support them. With these interactions the next phase of An Idea Project will commence. Networks will begin to form, networks regarding an alternative lifestyle, more to the point. The compromise stage will act like a filter where those who polarise with what I attempt can be deemed a strong relationship as far as activism may be concerned. Those whose polarities show to oppose the changes may still be deemed friends but not comrades, so to speak. This sounds harsh but what I have learned is there are people who want to, and there are those who don't. What people must do is accept this and not to judge others due to what ever the case is at hand (what they want or don't want to do, that is).

Now to create and strengthen these networks and, together, find out what hinders us in the path to fulfilling your lifestyle and dreams. . .

-- Ed Whitfield, March 2004

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