My own personal little joke – that I rarely voice because I do not desire to be tested on the radicalism of my beliefs, amongst other reasons – anyway, my own little joke is that the letter A in my name stands for ‘anarchy’. And if you spell out my name in full, you get it trifold. And my mama wanted to call me ‘Anastasia’ first; I only ended up being Alexandra as a nod to my grandfather, I think.
So.
I am not a fan of revolutions, but I’m a big fan of being a slightly off gear in the system, preventing it from grinding us all into dust. Covertly subvert, quietly overload. Step out and do your own thing.
Of course it’s very hard to reject capitalism and overwhelming consumerism, because this system is simply not designed to be left or rejected. For the economy to keep growing, for people to be fed, we need a higher GDP, we need more work places, we need greater demand, we need to consume more, to buy more, to work more, so that the economy can grow, and the GDP can grow, and the per capita income can grow, and we get more work places, bigger demand, stronger consumerism, more work hours, so that the economy can get healthier, so that we can work more, so we can make more, so we can consume more, and I guess you got the point.

All of us who have access to a computer with the internets enjoy the bountiful results of industrial revolution, post-industrial society, automation, globalization and the beautiful term “human capital”. Whether we give it much thought or not, we prefer the convenience of going to the supermarket and unloading foods into a basket for the service person to ring them through for us, for us to pay for it with the money that we got from a similar, harder or easier, service, retail, or office job. Better yet, door dash it or instacart it or what have you. It’s much easier than exiting it all and moving out to a piece of land, where your carrots might not sprout and your chickens might get sick, and you might be faced with a cold and hungry winter, and your main interest in building a family would lie not in your need for human connection with a kindred spirit, but in the production of more helpers to man your farm or whatever.
Buying three t-shirts from H&M on your lunch break to throw out at the end of the season is much easier – and, disgustingly, cheaper – than making just one on your own.
And between marathoning Netflix and doomscrolling social networks, nobody got time to tan leather and make shoes. Put pestle to the mortar and grind grains. Plus we age, and most of us leave radical thought in our teenage bedrooms and on our parents’ porches, together with heavy boots, granny sweaters, and edgy costume jewellery.
So capitalism stays. And it becomes deeper, wilder, angrier, and more aggressive as time goes by. Even when we refer to some of the initiatives in the European countries, for example, as ‘socialist’, we mostly mean that teachers finally get a decent wage. Cue fireworks and hardcore mccarthyists somewhere raising pitchforks at commies.
Back in my day *shakes walking stick* there was a thread on then-Twitter that asked, “What radicalised you?” Can you pinpoint the moment that planted the seed? or maybe even brought the first harvest? moved you to the point of no return? And whilst there are some brighter moments of my own radicalisation, for the most part it’s been very gradual. A book here, a documentary there. A talk with a street vendor, a conversation with a parking lot guard. Uncouth commentaries of my coworkers, stupid pranks of my private school classmates. My mother’s small business tanking, unable to compete with a chain restaurant. A bright realisation that my grandmother’s pension is not even enough money to bury her, let alone to give her a graceful old age existence. The rising prices of potatoes and eggs as I myself became an adult and lived through a 50% inflation in one year. The state says it’s 30, but I think “the state” hasn’t paid bills and got groceries in quite some time.

And really, from where I stand there’s nothing radical in my thinking and the way I want to live my life. Pretty sure a bunch of armchair internet activists would call me a hypocrite, because I still buy products ~madE In chINa sOLd on JoOM~ and occasional fast fashion chain jeans. I still buy from Amazon (books and ebooks), and I enjoy the supermarkets, and most of my produce is not unpackaged organic, but simply what I can afford/ what I think will go bad quicker so should be bought out faster. I also get both my coffee and my lunch to go. And when I don’t, I rely heavily on capsules for coffee and heat-up meals. Not exactly self-sufficient and anti-capitalist. I also drive in my older model but still luxury car, take long showers and occasional baths, use plastic loofahs and an ungodly amount of shower gel that smells more like apricots than the actual apricots, I really enjoy makeup and often buy way more than I need (”need”), and my home library probably rivals some of the branches of the local municipal ones. I’m also not a big fan of minimalism, because I see it, Lord forgive me, as what it really is – the all-conforming erasure of individualism and culture.
Yet there are others who view my (quite simple and quite natural, in my opinion) actions as radical and unnecessary. I collect bottles for recycling. I don’t throw out what I can’t finish out of that take-out lunch – I take it home to eat for dinner, or repurpose for breakfast with eggs, or feed the street dogs, ffs. I use two sides of a piece of note paper. I keep chocolate bar foils for baking small things. I reuse egg cartons to buy unpackaged eggs. I keep individual aluminium cat food containers to bake preportioned brownies and banana breads. I sew the buttons back on. I switch off the lights. I reuse old planners. I make junk journals using things that otherwise would’ve gone to the landfill. I wear clothes and shoes for a really long time. I buy second-hand where I can. I try to take good care of everything that I own, whether it’s new or new-to-me. I donate to animal rescue, and I’ve rescued quite a few animals myself – all my cats but one are rescues. The one that is not is the fourth generation of a once-rescue.

And, the crown jewel, the cherry on top, something I do that makes others foam at the mouth the most – I DARN SOCKS.

I always try to make something outta nothing. Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without. Reduce, reuse, recycle – that’s ingrained in me, it’s the “refuse” part I find hard.
In someone like me, with an estranged sense of self and a really fragile ego, it’s easy to write these things up to disguising covert narcissism with altruism, as the song goes. And I guess in part that’s true. I’m doing these things with the sole egotistical purpose of feeding the soul and proving to myself that I’m still human, and not “human capital”. All the efforts of my individual anti-conglomerate-capitalist and environmentalist action will be erased the moment a new oil or coal plant is open somewhere to power the textile industry for yet another sweatshop to process and yet another brand to package as “luxury” and sell to us so we could have a sense of social status and belonging.
Not that I’d stop doing it because, soul, but yes. Gotta keep that in mind as I darn another sock I bought five years ago.
