The Golden Rule’s Gettin’ Freaky

[This post is part of the SUMMER JUSTICE SERIES. You can start with Part 1 here.]

(Final) Part 7: Make Justice Personal

One of my crunchy friends recently told me about Freegans.  I am officially fascinated.  As I began to learn about these folks, my mind felt like someone had sawed open my head and sprinkled pop rocks amidst the brain tissue up there.  I believe there is hope for the future while simultaneously wondering how long our civilization could possibly go on.  We humans are capable of making absolutely anything unhealthy, including virtue.

This week’s finale to our summer justice series is all about making justice personal by creating rhythyms of social awareness and focusing on caring for those we are most compelled to help.  I suppose there’s all sorts of levels to this type of living.  And then there are Freegans. 

When I read about Freegans, I see a group of people that has decided to fight social injustices like poverty and societal decay by creating a system of poverty and societal decay.  Lewis Black once said he saw the end of the universe, and it was a Starbucks across the street from another Starbucks.  Well, there are people rooting through the dumpsters behind those Starbucks, and those people are Freegans.

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Remarkably, I don’t even need Wikipedia here because Freegan.Info says it all.  Take a look and you’ll see this stuff writes itself.  According to this mother ship page, “Freegans embrace community, generosity, social concern, freedom, cooperation, and sharing in opposition to a society based on materialism, moral apathy, competition, conformity, and greed.”  I’m almost with them so far except for the part where they pretend human nature doesn’t exist.

Let me see if I can sum up the basic philosophy here.  Freeganism combines freedom and veganism.  These folks once believed in all the possibilities of being conscientious in a society run by businesses that consistently hurt people.  They tried all the things we’ve discussed here over the past few weeks only to find that no matter what they did they just ended up supporting some other evil company.  So basically they’re socialists; no surprises there.

Now let’s look at their principle based “strategies for practical living,” or as I like to call it, acid candy in my brain matter.

1) “Urban Foraging”

Let’s get right to it: what we’re talking about here is dumpster diving for whatever you need including food.  I’m not making this up.  Take it from their own site.  “Despite our society’s sterotypes about garbage, the goods recovered by freegans are safe, useable, clean, and in perfect or near-perfect condition…”  Am I the only one who didn’t realize we had societal stereotypes about garbage?  I mean, garbage earned its reputation without being attacked by organized groups.

"Can you believe someone would throw this away?"

So you shouldn’t eat food unless it comes from a dumpster or has been discarded.  Oh yeah, anything else you want must never be purchased at a store, but if you find those products in the trash then have at them.  So shopping at Ikea is evil, but owning Ikea furniture is fine.  Sound principles there.  I could say so much here but my brain is really starting to sizzle.

2) “Rent-Free Housing”

The real word here is squatting, to live in a building where you have no legal claim.  It’s not just about residences either.  (Remember this actually comes from their site.)  “…squatters often convert abandoned buildings into community centers with programs including art activities for children…”  I know you were probably thinking children weren’t involved, but who else is gonna squeeze into all those tight corners where the good potato chunks fall?