Walking is political
Readers of this blog and of our print editions (and anyone who has been unfortunate enough to bump into me on the street) will probably know of my loathing of cars and my love of walking.
Another fan of independent perambulation is Will Self. He sees it as a cure for the sense of disconnectedness one might experience in the post-industrial urban environment.
He has a piece in today’s Guardian (in fact a partial transcript of his inaugural lecture at Brunel) about walking as a political act. It’s not wholly readable to be honest but it does contain this:
The contemporary flâneur is by nature and inclination a democratising force who seeks equality of access, freedom of movement and the dissolution of corporate and state control.
The article also tells us that walking is in decline, that by mid-century it may be a completely obsolete way of getting around. My recent experience of life in the States would seem to concur, that the future is not bright for walkers. It’s difficult to get from your house to the corner store without a car: not just because of distance but because of a lack of pedestrian infrastructure. Try crossing a three-lane road with no sidewalks to speak of on either side, all to buy a newspaper and an aspirin.
The “mid-century” prediction presumes that the way of the future will be the American way though. I prefer to remain optimistic, choosing to believe in a future predominated by Asian modes of culture rather than American. Economically, this does seem more likely. In which case, we’re looking at the car-free pedestrian-friendly future of karuma banare.
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Boldog Szuletesnapot, Ehrich!
March 24th is Houdini’s 138th birthday.
Regular reader, François, sends us this news story:
To celebrate Houdini’s birthday […] a French escape artist will get through a 5.5 meter concrete dome in Northern France. Alexis Hazard, son and grandson of conjurers, will pay tribute to both Harry Houdini and La Coupole, a major site on the western front during WWII. Thousands of viewers are expected to attend this memorable feat […] Alexis Hazard, 30, will be flown to the dome in a helicopter. He will then pass through the concrete dome which resisted the shelling of 3,000 tons of bombs during the war. The event, which is to last 45 minutes, will be filmed and shown on a huge panoramic screen. A major illusion to be remembered, although not an escape, but an inscape. Nobody’s perfect.
Why not pay tribute to the Patron Saint of Escapology yourself? No need to theatrically pass through a concrete dome. Instead, resolve to shrug off another of the “mind-forged manacles”. Not that doing so would be any less of an awe-inspiring feat.
Image swiped from these good people.
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F × S = k
Escapological wise words from sci-fi author Larry Niven:
F × S = k. The product of Freedom and Security is a constant. To gain more freedom of thought and/or action, you must give up some security, and vice versa. These remarks apply to individuals, nations, and civilizations. Notice that the constant k is different for every civilization and different for every individual.
More here.
Moksha
Two major obstacles we faced when planning how to circumnavigate the world using only human power were the [Atlantic and Pacific] oceans. In order to stand even a remote chance of success we needed a very special craft that could carry enough provisions for two people to survive for up to six months at sea without resupply, but which was streamlined enough to travel quickly through the water.
I’ve been reading slightly obsessively about Expedition 360, a thirteen-year-long journey around the planet using only human power. This meant walking and cycling over the continents, and peddling across the seas in the specially-constructed boat described above.
The idea holds great appeal to me because of the walking element, the epic travel element, and fact of it being an entirely self-initiated folly. The thing that has most captured my imagination though, is their peddle boat Moksha.
Maybe this is because of my own transatlantic woes: constantly flying back and forth between Glasgow and Montreal, and navigating the infuriating immigration process. The idea of building a peddle boat capable of crossing the Atlantic without airlines or bureaucracy is extremely exciting. For me, it’s just a liberating fantasy, but these adventurers actually did it.
Perhaps most appealing to the Escapologist is the metaphor of the Moksha (which actually means ‘freedom’ in Sanskrit). You can have freedom and you can build it yourself. It won’t be easy, but that’s part of the point.
And you may have to eat a lot of porridge and chocolate bars along the way.
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Commuting
Commuting is surely the most annoying middle-level frustration of conventional working life (a minor frustration being a badly-designed waste-paper basket; a major frustration being the act of having to be present in a particular place against your will for eight hours a day).
Does anybody actually like to commute? Whether you do it in a bus or a car or a train or a plane, chances are you probably find it completely infuriating or depressing. It’s a time sink, it’s a stress, it’s a lot to tolerate for practically no gain. Especially given the fact that the Internet exists and your office – ostensibly a desk, a computer, a telephone and a filing cabinet – is pretty much a replica of your own spare room.
I’m reading Help! – a paperback collection of Oliver Burkeman‘s Guardian columns about the crazy world of self-help – and enjoying it tremendously. There are far too many gems to share here, but I couldn’t resist posting this little thing about commuting:
People commute reluctantly … because they can’t afford to live closer to work – yet if they get rich, they’re liable to do it to an even greater degree, presumably because they think living in the countryside [or suburbs] will make them happier [but] it often doesn’t … People chronically underestimate the downsides of a long commute, while overestimating the upsides of (say) a bigger house.
The original article is online by the way.
It’s weird, isn’t it? That people continue to commute in this day and age. And so far at that. Escape it! Work from home, move within walking distance of the office, or just give up working altogether. And however you work, for goodness sake, resist the siren song of the suburbs with all of your might. There’s nothing there! It’s all pampas grass, conifer trees, middle-aged swingers, and white dog shit. Fact.
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Pie in the Sky
I always thought the expression “pie in the sky” meant “unrealistic thinking”. Belief that aliens will come and save humanity from environmental collapse would be an example of “pie in the sky thinking”.
But it doesn’t mean that at all!
I learned the other day that “pie in the sky thinking” is when we defer our rewards or pleasures until a later date, possibly never to collect them at all.
It comes from the Calvinist/Protestant idea that if we work hard today and embrace toil and discomfort, we’ll be rewarded with our delicious pastry-based treat when (and only when!) we’re safely in the afterlife. Our time on Earth, the sky-pie advocate would say, is for work, toil, effort, seriousness, abstention. Something delicious like a pie can wait until we’re in the cloud kingdoms (and presumably won’t actually have bodies anymore and won’t be interested in sensory, gastronomic pleasures such as eating a pie). What a scam!
A more secular example of “pie in the sky” is retirement. Work today, relax tomorrow. What we mean by ‘tomorrow’ in this scenario is a variable feast: an ill-defined distant lazy time kicking in around the age of 65 (if you’re lucky), or 80 (if you’re less lucky), or in your 50s (if you’re fairly clever or accept a redundancy package), or 33 (if you’re Jacob Lund Fisker) or never (if you die first).
So “pie in the sky thinking” is something we need to escape. As Atheists or Agnostics or otherwise skeptical individuals, we can assume there is no “sky” and therefore no “pie” and no reason to delay our gratifications for so long. Escapologists can (and do!) have our pie today.
Bring on the pie, I say, before we’re too rheumatic or wrinkly or cremated to appreciate it.
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Want not, want not
Since the creation of New Escapologist, I’ve met a number of people with passions for dumpster diving, junk reclamation, and food foraging.
Personally, I don’t go in for the salvaging lark. I’m too squeamish and I’m skeptical about the economies. Nevertheless, I respect that many people find liberty in such activities.
I mention this because I just finished reading The Scavengers’ Manifesto.
The general idea of reusing or repurposing found objects is admirable. “Waste not, want not” is some fine inherited wisdom. Scavenging (if we must call it that: the authors are keen to reclaim the word) to save money and to minimise one’s impact upon the natural world are actions quite compatible with the Escapologist’s life.
Trouble is, scavenging is made redundant by minimalism: the system to which the more determined Escapologist would subscribe. As a minimalist, I’m aloof to the material world. Scavenging reduces want, but I’ve already surgically removed my want.
When the authors breezily list the treasures they’ve acquired through scavenging, I can only think “I desperately don’t want any of that crap. I don’t even want to think about any of that crap”.
It’s a shame that so much usable stuff is discarded in our wasteful society, and it’s admirable that the scavenger seeks to intercept some of that stuff and to extract extra value from it. But as a minimalist, I don’t contribute to such detritus, and I wish that other people didn’t either.
Minimalism trumps consumerism both financially and environmentally, but scavenging is just another form of consumerism and is wholly dependent upon big consumerism.
Scavenging focuses on the middle element of the three Rs of environmentalism: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. I’ve long felt that reusing and recycling are inferior measures to reduction: once a natural material has been converted into a commercial commodity, it might as well already be in the landfill. Reducing (through minimalism) is where we should focus our environmental efforts.
Liquid cash in the bank, instead of tied up depreciating in material commodities (scavenged or otherwise) is also, generally speaking, a preferable financial situation offered exclusively by minimalism.
“Waste not, want not” is a fine philosophy compared to blind consumerism. But “Want not, want not” is a far more dignified and productive maxim.
Cheer up, scavengers. Here’s a picture of dead billionaire Steve Jobs in his apartment. Look, he’s got practically nothing!
Cute
This Buttersafe strip draws attention to the white-collar predicament. Thanks to Tom for sending it in.
A predecessor
I recently discovered the work of Evan Harris. She published two books: The Quit and The Art of Quitting: When Enough is Enough.
Her oeuvre basically preempts Escapology. She uses humour and philosophy and literary references to discuss the oft-shunned art of scarpering.
Here are Ms. Harris’ six categories of quitting:
– Job quitting. Leaving any labor, paid or unpaid.
– Person quitting. Giving up seeing, talking to, writing to, admiring, tolerating, wishing well, caring for, banking on, being amused by, being changed by, or loving any person or group of people.
– Thing quitting. Forgoing inanimate objects, food products, and anything animal, vegetable, or mineral.
– Locational quitting. Leaving a city, town, country, etc. Not the same as moving. (All locational quits are moves, but not all moves are locational quits. The locational quit does not necessarily have anything to do with the actual place the quitter goes, but it has everything to do with the place the quitter has left behind.)
– Idea quitting. Eschewing ideas, psychological conditions, or emotional states.
– Habit quitting. Eradicating the doing of something that you engage in as a matter of course on a regular basis. This generally involves quitting behavior that is bad for your health.
I greatly admire the clarity of this list: it probably took New Escapologist a little while to figure out these flavours of escape cumulatively and nebulously, through this blog and our six print issues.
New Escapologist focuses, perhaps disproportionately, on job quitting. I’d like to think and write more about the other areas of our manifesto.
Having said that, we also cover Thing Quitting (via minimalism), Locational Quitting (when we talk about things like location independence and internationalism), Habit Quitting (when we discuss overcoming soft addictions like television, driving, and coffee in order to maximise independence), and Idea Quitting (when we talk about critical thinking and escaping things like depression and psychological dependence).
The books don’t seem to be in print any more but you can buy second-hand copies at the usual online marketplaces. More immediately, here’s a 1996 essay extracted from the first book.
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Wage Slavery
When I attended university in Wolverhampton a decade ago, I would daily see an accusatory piece of graffiti near The Mander Centre shopping mall. It said, “PⒶY CHEQUE SLⒶVES”.
I admired it greatly, but always had a nagging doubt as to its political correctness and, for that matter, its accuracy. It’s a common enough thing in anti-work discourse, but is it not insensitive to liken professional drudgery (and commercial gullibility) to actual slavery?
I recently received The Wage-Slave’s Glossary as a thoughtful gift (thanks, Kristin and Chris!). Alongside other witty and rousing definitions, it gets to the nub of the wage slave matter:
Though similarities between chattel slavery and wage labor had already been noted by everyone from Cicero to Thomas Jefferson, 19th-c textile workers in Lowell, Mass., were the first to use the phrase wage slavery. The Lowell Mill Girls, as they were known, condemned the “degradation and subordination” of the emerging industrial system. […] Their coinage called attention to the similarities between buying and renting a person; they denounced a social order in which you’re encouraged to believe you’re free to direct your own life, when, in fact, you are dependent on income derived from wage labor.
The similarities between buying and renting! Paid workers are free-range or self-employed slaves: rented rather than bought.
It’s important to remember though, that “wage slavery” is not a new incarnation of an old thing. Actual slavery still exists.
There are obvious parallels between white-collar mediocrity and actual enforced labour. As long as we have to work for someone else in order to pay for the modest spaces we occupy (on once-common land, forcefully confiscated by people who aren’t even alive any more), we are not free.
The Wage-Slave’s Glossary also points out that a lot of our current work terminology (and organisational techniques) actually has origins in the plantation.
Plantation work and office work are not the same thing. But it is worth remembering the connection.
