George G Clark, 12 October 2011
There is a small supermarket 325 footsteps east of my front door. Every day a cornucopia of goods is delivered by the invisible hand of commerce and a series of large trucks. The goods are attractively arranged on the shelves where I go hunting and gathering for the bits and pieces of plants and animals that I need to survive. Then I use a plastic card to connect to a computer that links to the data clouds of cyberspace to arrange the magical movement of funds from my bank account to that of the supermarket.
But the computer does many clever things apart from shifting cash. For example it keeps track of stock and lets ‘HQ’ know how much of what needs to be delivered in the next few days and therefore how many bananas to buy from Belize.
The computer also keeps track of what you have bought in the past and provides you with customised recommendations for items that match your profile. This can be seen as either (a) very useful or helpful or (b) as unwelcome interference in what occupies your attention. This raises the issues of advertising and the manufacture of desire! If you don’t know it exists you won’t buy it. Beware of fads and fashions!
In the old days families would grow most of their food in their own gardens. These days most gardens are landscaped with low maintenance, lifeless gravel; and with cement and tarmac to give parking space for the family car(s). The subsistence economy is now well gone as is the freedom from the need for money. We are all now wage slaves in the cash economy.
We need food. We need money to buy food. We need a job to earn the money. Many modern jobs are boring, repetitive and do not pay well. The workers grunt for peanuts and the managers and shareholders slurp the profits. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer.
I am now entering the post-work stage of life. I was always careful with money and now have savings and a modest pension. And - I am not a dedicated follower of fads and fashions. So - I no longer have to work for shopping money. I have unlocked the chains of wage slavery. I am FREE FROM all of that.
But what am I FREE FOR?
To wholeheartedly breathe, eat, pee and poop?
I am a fleeting item in the global ecosystem. Commerce conspires to bring Belizean bananas to a small supermarket. 650 footsteps there and back. Peel it, pop it in my mouth, extract the goodness. The remains are in the faeces that are flushed into the sewerage system that runs past my front door and leads to the North Sea and thus back across the Atlantic in the Gulf Stream to Belize.
Round and round and round in the circle game.
[Joni Mitchell]
