Moving from consumer to citizen

On feeling weird, less important or less valuable to the wider world because I don't consume in certain ways.

Scafell Pike in the Lake District.

You know those people who are so confident in the world–in the systems we find ourselves in today? In their belief in the myth of modernity, in the idea that our world issues are something that other people will sort out? 

I’m not talking about people who are generally positive about the climate crisis, or even the techno-modernists who think something to do with AI will save us all. I mean the ones who don’t feel responsible for carrying the world’s issues on their shoulders, those kinds of people?

I am incredibly jealous of these people. 

I’m not trying to insult or look down on them because I’m sooo smart to be able to understand a small percentage of the intricacies of the world. Genuinely, I am envious of them. 

Whether it was being brought up with a general distrust in the system, a love of sociology and social analysis, or some innate need I’ve always had to figure out the world–I can’t remember ever feeling so much confidence that things will sort themselves out. 

In my teen angst, I would often say “UGH! Why can’t we just be normal!’ and my mom–sorry mom–would say “What is normal? There is no normal.” Which, looking back, perhaps she was right, as she was about most things. But I think I meant something more akin to “No one else I know worries about these things, avoids certain actions, or obviously struggles to exist in a system everybody seems to be thriving in.” None of these were original or very accurate complaints–I was a teenager after all–but it’s something I still feel now, from time to time. 

“Why haven’t you gone on holiday?”, “Why aren’t you buying a car?”, “Why won’t you go to xyz place with me?”, Uhhhhhh, climate change? Ecosystem collapse? Human rights violation? You have no idea what I’m talking about? Okay, cool, I’ll shut up now. 

I know I should tell them about it–to impart my hard-to-swallow wisdom–I really should. But I just don’t want to.

My friends end their sentences with recognition of my morals that they don’t quite share. “Omg, we went to this place and it had the BEST *insert meaty meal here*, uhhhh, sorry Iz”, “I got this cuuutest jumper, fast fashion, I know, but it’s so SOFT”. Despite the fact I’ve cemented myself as the sustainability girl, I barely even talk about climate with my non-sustainability friends, perhaps I'm doing them a disservice, but sometimes I just like to pretend the world’s not on fire for an evening.  

Embarrassingly, I’ve tried to get around my morals, I really have. If I get new clothes as a gift then I’m not supporting fast fashion, right? If I don’t check whether this product was tested on animals, and just assume it’s not, that’s fine, right? It doesn’t work. I feel guilty when I wear the clothes and sick when I spray my perfume. I can’t be this so-called “normal” I want to be. 

I know, these shaky morals are a privilege to have. Kim, there’s people that are dying. But I’m coming to accept these silly little thought spirals is life as a working-or-middle-class Western person. 

Kourtney to Kim when she lost her diamond earring in the ocean—something I would also be quite upset about.

Morals and capitalism don’t mix, I’m not the first to say this. As I’ve been told by many communism bros online ‘there's no conscious consumption under capitalism’, which seems to be taken by many to mean that you can consume to your heart's content. But unfortunately–see: morals–if you can’t do it that way, where does that leave you?  

I have landed in the thought that I would still like to partake in society somewhat. There are people I love here, and I quite like my little life in my apartment with blankets and an internet connection. Which means I still have to consume things somewhat. 

I know I’m comparing existing in a state of confidence in the system to consuming but to be alive in Western society is to consume. You gotta eat, you gotta pay for things, you gotta consume.

So where does that leave me, can I balance out my footprint on the planet by simply doing good actions? Probably not. But can I work to stand as a question mark to society, to show people that you don’t have to live a certain way to be content, be happy, or be an active member of the community? I’m still testing the waters, but I believe so. 

Jon Alexander’s book Citizens explores what if we stopped viewing ourselves as consumers, and instead as–you guessed it–citizens. Collaborative, caring, and creative creatures who can shape our communities, organisations, and nations for the better. With the loss of third places and community over the past century, it’s incredibly hard to exist without being an active participant in all things consumption, but that doesn’t mean this has to be the only way we see ourselves. 

I realised I was associating the fact that because I don’t act in certain ways as expected in society I felt weird. I felt less important or valuable to the wider world–just because I didn’t buy certain things or act in a specific way. Mmmmm, tasty internalised capitalism. 

I want to be this citizen, I want to proudly be and do something different, I want to exist as this living question mark. In her book Cultural Emergence, Looby Macnamara talks about ways we may already be transforming and building new cultures, implicitly or explicitly. Her list includes things like ‘questioning and shifting your own thinking’, ‘trying out new patterns of behaviour’, ‘clarifying and articulating your own ethics, ideas, and values’, and ‘building community based on cooperation, trust and co-creation’. This speaks so strongly to me as someone gently trying to build community in a city so focused on hyper-individuality, on consumption, on following the norm. 

Creating a new culture isn’t as easy as deciding to live a certain lifestyle and simply doing it. It’s a task that will have to be imagined, co-created, broken down, and brought to life over and over again. And we can all be a part of this. 

I don’t have confidence in the system as a whole, but what I do have confidence in is people. People who are spending their lives creating better worlds for us to live in, carving new paths for us to get ourselves there, and building new cultures for us to emerge ourselves in. 

P.S. If you enjoy my writing, you can buy me a coffee to fuel my work.

In a similar vein, it’s Black Friday today. A day of eye-watering consumption. Consumption that is driving our planet to the brink of extinction. This was one of those human events I felt pretty helpless to. How am *I* gonna get the entire world to stop buying shit? 

Well, you know what has brought me new hope? PEOPLE DOING GOOD THINGS!

Re-Action, a very incredible social enterprise that helps its members rescue products, revive them through repair, and ultimately repurpose them. 

They’ve started #CitizenFriday, an antidote to Black Friday. In their own lovely words, Citizen Friday involves “us using our agency as humans to connect with each other. It’s about using the power of the individual for the collective good. Citizen Friday is about sharing skills, learning crafts, swapping items, building community and reconnecting with the natural world. And, because it fosters positive action (unlike Black Friday), it doesn’t have to be limited to one day per year. Every Friday can be Citizen Friday.”

I love love love campaigns like this because it’s a straightforward and easy way to take real action. It makes me think what would the world look like if we dedicated one day a week to building our new future? If we were all part of the process, actively engaging in creating this new world? 

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Inspirations:

Cultural Emergence: A Toolkit for Transforming Ourselves and the World — Looby Macnamara

Citizens: Why the Key to Fixing Everything Is All of Us — Jon Alexander