Loading ...Welcome to the world of the Freegan. Freegans are a wonderful example of the revolutionary spirit of the age, gone a bit off target.
A Freegan - a practicioner of Freeganism - will eat, drink, use, wear, listen to anything as long as its free. Its the latest fad amongst the straggling leftovers from the Battle of Seattle, the anti globalisation protesters that time forgot. It seems like a brilliant idea - the rejection of materialism, capitalism and consumerism, the embracing of recycling. A form of modern day mendicancy, even. But in reality it translates into a bunch of dreadlocked drop outs hoking around garbage cans looking for our admittedly profligate society’s cast offs.
In fact, this so-called rejection of materialism is materialism by a different name. This is not to say that the sentiments are not laudible, but rather than their application is a little misdirected. Perhaps it would be more useful to show that materialism can be replaced with something else. Yes, the pursuit of material wealth as an end unto itself is not a good thing, but even the staunchest Freegan would admit that whether it is acquired through wealth or stealth, we all require a certain level of material goods. What counts is what lengths we go to in order to acquire those goods, and what we do with them once acquired. Do they impede or impell our spiritual development?
There are so many groups and ideologies out there knocking on the door of something bigger, on the door of a revolution in human history. Surely someone’s going to turn the key soon…
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Sometimes I wonder whether the big mistake with the Battle of Seattle was the decision to not line the protesters up against the wall. Meanwhile, the new mendicantism is similar to Jainism, itself a branch of Sikhism that is so obsessed with penury that penury becomes a material distraction, a blind clinging to something; in this case, the dogmatic eschewal of things.