Activism is something that has always troubled me. From my experience, most protests (both from the right and the left) never get beyond the surface level of certain policies or issues. Instead of protesting various symptoms by haphazardly making signs and chants, perhaps it is better to first ask: “What is the true foundational disjointedness of our society?”

If I were forced to pinpoint this disjointedness, one area that I would want to examine is consumerism. As Baudrillard says, consumption is the axis of our culture. Consumption has laid hold of every aspect of human life leading to the commodification of our culture. Americans, who never cease to pride themselves on being “the land of the free,” are in truth enslaved to a tyrannical system whereby human meaning is codified by the level of ones consumption.

How then would I protest this current state of affairs? One of my concerns with most protest is that they are often nothing more than reactions against aspects of the culture while still remaining within its overall system of self-understanding. People have been protesting things for centuries, only to have their causes reabsorbed into the collective. For instance, a group of people cry out for food that is not poised by pesticides and preservatives. A few years later you get Whole Foods. Yes, it is good to be eating healthier but now this has become subsumed under the aegis of capitalism. A larger example can be seen with the hippies. The hippies claimed to be "counter-cultural." They sought to bring about a new way of living onto the earth. Hippie ideology however, which sought to create a lifestyle whereby one could fully "express" themselves, quickly accommodated itself to consumerism. I now express myself by buying certain items. Today, most ex-hippies own suburban homes with two car garages and drink grande mochas from Starbucks five times a week. Quite the revolution!

I admit I’m pessimistic about our society and of the possibility of changing it. Nevertheless, if I were to attempt this it would require nothing short of a radical re-organization of my lifestyle. How would it be possible to protest consumerism while still being a slave to its ideology? The horizon within which I understand the world is rooted in the dominating ideology of capitalism. Our current economic system is so insidious and we have no way of knowing how much of our lives are controlled by the ceaseless craving for “more.” “Homo economicus” is the dominating myth of our day and to break out of one’s current myth, is nearly impossible. To step outside of our self-understanding may be as difficult as it would have been for a 12^th century peasant living in England to abandon Christianity.

To honestly protest a way of life which the collective experiences as “normal,” one must choose to be “abnormal.” In other words, one's abnormal way of life would itself become a protest. What would this life/protest look like? Perhaps this would take the form of living a life of austerity or simplicity shared with others of a similar mindset. Perhaps it would manifest itself in a radically different relationship to nature. Perhaps it would it would mean weaning oneself away from dependency upon institutions. To fully carry this out would require intelligence, discipline and true self knowledge.