When I was a kid, my brother, after perusing too many history books, used to speculate about which period and place he would have preferred to live in if he had had a choice. Depending on his mood, he would choose the Roman empire, New Zealand before the arrival of European settlers, Victorian England, etc. Sometimes, he would inquire what my choice would be. My answer was always ‘here and now’. Maybe I lack imagination. Or somehow I felt that life had never been so fine, at least around here. Food, health, democracy, justice, knowledge, comfort, leisure: it was impossible to find a time in history when even the most powerful emperor could have had such an easy life as that we were having.
Now that I am gradually changing my lifestyle and my project of life, I sometimes play the same sort of game and wonder if such a change could have been easier before, for instance in the late sixties. And the answer is no.
It has never been so easy to change one’s life, because the surrounding mentalities have probably never been so open. Nobody is going to come and lynch me because I dress differently, or because I worship another God, or because I am eating less meat, or because I ride a bicycle, or because I have unclassifiable economic activities, or because I take a nap on weekdays. I cannot imagine how a black, lesbian, hippie, unemployed, communist single mother could have managed back in the seventies. I am almost sure she could come to my village now, and at least half the people would stand up for her if she came into trouble with the closeder-minded minority. This trend is the delayed effect of the big mentality change of the sixties and seventies - human rights, civil rights, women rights, sexual freedom, freedom of speech - now getting new momentum from environmental concerns.
However, there is a strong opposing trend: the buildup of conservative ideas, probably associated to a wealthy and aging dominant culture. People who see terrorism as a greater threat than global warming; people who believe one molested old lady or one abused child is a motive for putting surveillance cameras everywhere and everybody’s life into electronic databanks, while cutting on education spending because we need to reduce taxes; people who say we have to work more and earn less because this is globalization, idiot.
So my take is that now is the best of times to choose to do something different, to choose an uncommon lifestyle, or even to go against mainstream cultural habits (before it’s too late). Maybe not for artists or intellectuals - the golden age of total freedom was probably twenty years ago for them. But for ordinary people, now is probably the right time.
In fact, even if we feel there are still too many shackles in our lives, I guess the word ‘freedom’ in the declaration of human rights and our (French) constitution has probably never been so meaningful than here and now. I can travel, I can work or not work, I can live with whomever I want, I can say whatever I think and read whatever I like, I can vote or even run for President, I can get a divorce, I can make friends with whomever I choose, I can go out after hours, etc. So many things I can do that were impossible a hundred years or even fifty years ago.
Conversely, there are few things I have to do. In fact, contrary to what some people will say, today’s western lifestyle is not only negotiable, but mostly optional: I do not have to watch TV; I do not have to buy stuff in a supermarket; I do not have to own a car; I do not have to have a full-time job; I do not have to have a large house with central air, three bedrooms, a living-room, a kitchen, a bathroom and a garage; I do not need a lawn or a swimming pool; I do not even have to have a phone or a computer or the internet.
Once I decide I can let go of some of these (maybe I’ll keep my internet connection, though…), then comes a breath of fresh freedom that makes everything possible.
