Many people wonder how to counter the matrix we all find ourselves in.
More and more have given up the illusion that voting for this or that candidate within the structure will change anything, others have focussed on activism tirelessly for years and decades to call attention to issues dear to their hearts, and many have started to despair over the seeming giant that is the system and it's apparent inconquerability.
And maybe it's essential that people who want to improve the world find out through experience that the grand scale can rarely be changed by the individual. If you are curious about the reasoning behind such ideas you may want to read up on "Why things Can't Be different" even if at first it may sound bleak. It's probably not what you first assumed it means...
Anyways, one of the things I have found really useful in this pursuit is aiming for incremental immediate changes in our day-to-day life, rather than trying to change anything grand on the spot outside of our sphere of influence. Tiny little steps. If we all did our part in our immediate surroundings we can surely affect the trend as a whole. Like a fractal. The whole is reflected in the minute, the vast is built from the tiny.
So what then is it we can do?
Stop feeding the machine - plain and simple. In all the ways we can think of.
One of my favorite ways is to stop generating so much demand all the time. As we all learned in school demand drives production. Even though I see it a little differently today it's still true enough for us to make a good approach. After all, what we buy and consume will be gone off the shelves and will have to be rebought by the store, ordered at the factory or manufacturer.
When I started to think about my purchases that way I was amazed to see how many things I really don't need to buy as "new" but can instead either make myself or get second-hand.
Some electronics are perfect for it, as you often get a good deal, especially with universally available products like - say - dj equipment, instruments, computers. You can always find a good offer by someone who took good care of his equipment and you - in addition to saving cash - will not generate any new order in said factory.
The same train of thought can be applied to food. Naturally, producing your own food is a great idea regardless of how you do it, but you could also simply aim to buy less supermarket veggies and instead go dumpster diving. Yes it's still the same stuff, shipped around half the Earth, geared for shelf-life more than for taste BUT: Taking dumpster veggies does not generate new demand for them. There is also quite the revelation to be had once you have a great dumpster diving round and realize you are now pulling home a lore of food that you would have paid a good 50 dollars for less than an hour ago when the supermarket was still open.
Another great idea is to start getting some skills in repairing things and getting some competency on basic electronics. Often when an older piece of equipment fails it can easily be fixed by welding some wires back together or swapping a single piece, rather than having to rebuy the whole thing. If not you could still buy second-hand.
Some classes of items have gone out of fashion so much that you get a lot of them for next to nothing. You can buy mp3 players today for 1 dollar and up because so many people have started using their phones for the job. But this means you can get a little used, dedicated 16 gb player with its own battery basically for free. Use an online auction portal and just bid on things - a great option if you have some patience for getting what you are after.
Same with phones in general. Where some people are so hellbent on always getting the best new model, you can easily get a slightly older one for very little money. There are that many phones on the second hand market available that it's quite questionable whether anyone reasonable would actually buy a new phone voluntarily. Again patience is key: you will find the phone maniac who basically used his phone for a week before he got the better one for his birthday and whose mom is simply putting his old stuff up for auction without caring much for what is paid.
The more we look around the more examples we can find for replacing the "NEW NEW NEW" compulsion with a more grounded "let's use what works". It also allows us to not get too attached to material things as you will not care as much if a cheap used phone breaks as you would care if your brandnew factory phone broke down.
In the grand scheme of things reducing the generation of new demand in the supply chain is a great start to a more conscious way of living. The side effect of saving money will help free you of additional shackles to the system - less monetary pressures - less need to trade in your lifetime for earning huge sums of money ultimately wasted on redundant things that are overpriced and tax the resources of the Earth while making a few companies all the richer...
That saved money can instead be spent elsewhere - ideally where your passion resides and more (financial) energy is waiting to be flowing.
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