‘Free Range Dysorganization’

The trap of ‘organization’

What we are interested in is sharing our skills and resources, in order to address the economic and political contradictions within technological society that obstruct real, physical change.

It’s this latter objec­tive which, over the last thir­ty years, some­times makes our ap­pr­oach rather con­tro­ver­sial.

Today ‘mainstream’ public move­ments have, like the political parties of most nation states, been cap­tur­ed by the Neo­liberal econ­omic dia­l­ogue. With pres­sure groups, how­ever, that econo­mic dia­logue is fur­ther com­part­men­tal­ized around the stru­ctures of lobby­ing and mar­ket­ing that define how these deba­tes take place in the mass media.

Mainstream campaign groups have become trapped, unable to act against the modern ‘suicide cult’ of economic growth because they cannot elucidate the ideas at the heart of the opposing contention – of ecological limits, lifestyle change, and, as the most direct route to achieving that, economic degrowth and adopting a more natural lifestyle. One of the main reasons for that is their need to utilize a large amount of resources to keep their organizations functioning – making them dependent on revenues or sponsorship from the very same affluent individuals, corporations, or governments, whose essential purpose is to maintain this destructive system.

The Free Range Network are a ‘network’ because that enables co-operation without the need to maintain an organization. By lending our individual resources to the Network, we create the capacity to undertake work in common. At the same time, this gives us freedom as individuals to work on the issues which drive our own interest and creativity.

If the world has problems how do we, as individuals, create change?

This is the question we see asked in the media every day – with a variety of answers depending upon the political persuasion of those making the point. This question is also a trap, since it replicates the individualist conception of society and social change – excluding the idea of collective action to achieve fundamental change.

True change is not ‘a physical thing’: Change is a dif­fer­ence in human con­scious­ness, the under­stand­ing of which cre­ates phys­ical change in the way humans act to­wards each other and the world around them – and which creates phys­ical change as this change in con­scious­ness redefines our relationship to ‘the things’ attached to our lives.

Putting that another way: The every­day cons­umer pro­cess of im­posed or mind­less con­sump­tion con­tin­ues to be ‘mind­less’ even if those pro­ducts are ‘green’ or ‘ethi­cal’; changing a brand or supplier might have a marginal physical impact, but does not question the reasons or motivations for why we consume in the first place, giving us the option to avoid those impacts totally; and thus, the ephemeral consumer choices we are offered do not create the kind of fundamental change that bene­fits us as con­scious, liv­ing beings.

Change hap­pens when we real­ize that we are able to do some­thing, or we are con­vin­ced that what we have been doing is wrong and must do things dif­feren­tly. But for this change to hap­pen the idea has to pre­cede the deed; and the deed must be prac­ti­cal if it is to manif­est as real, phys­ical change.

You could, for example, create major changes to your life by doing nothing, if ‘doing nothing’ broke you out of the cycle of harmful actions within which you were trapped. Unfortunately, as this usually means not consuming or undertaking expensive activities, the media or public policy rarely focus on this option except as a means of selling alternative forms of consumption (e.g., buying electric cars instead of fossil-fuelled ones, rather than doing without private transport altogether by reducing the need to travel or using public transport – primarily by adopting a lifestyle which made those alternative options far easier).

The diffi­culty is that so much of the change that is talk­ed of today is built around ‘things’ – either: Build­ing them or build­ing some­thing to re­place them; or buy­ing them or buy­ing some­thing to re­place them; and even ‘green’ ideas have largely become a con­struc­tion or con­sump­tion ag­en­da, rather than mini­miz­ing our use of re­sour­ces by chang­ing our life­style.

Rarely do we ever see an argu­ment about ‘not hav­ing’ growth or dev­elop­ment, and in­stead dis­mant­ling sys­tems or tech­nolo­gies which are crea­ting prob­lems in the world today.

That’s because, irrespective of whether you're a right-wing capitalist or a left-wing trade unionist: The only conception of change in society is built around the production, acquisition or possession of ‘stuff’ – and doing so at an ever-faster rate. The only measure that governments have to measure improvement is ‘growth’ – expressed as throwing more money at a problem, or arguing we need ‘more’ or ‘bigger’ actions to solve the problem, rather than changing the way that policy is enacted to cease or scale-back human actions that create negative consequences.

In a world which primarily values material or economic goods, unless we change the fundamental metrics used to value human existence, society will only measure change in terms of a change in ‘stuff’, and/or striving to ‘have more’ of it, rather than focusing on a broader set of measures based around health, well-being, and ecological and social quality.

Those values change when we as individuals start to change our personal values, and then express this change in perspective politically and economically; accepting that the simplest solutions may be ‘less’, or even more simply, to ‘do nothing’ because we no longer value those activities.

What the la­test re­search around ecological limits tells us is that the ‘stuff-based’ model for a happy life is deep­ly flaw­ed; the whole thing, not just the ele­ments within it. Con­se­quent­ly en­capsu­la­ting change as a con­sump­tion or devel­op­ment agenda fails to ad­dress the root causes of the ‘crisis of consumption’ – which is why mean­ing­ful change can­not be achie­ved today.

Even the green move­ment has been caught up in this vac­uous debate. In­stead of argu­ing for changes in the level of over­all con­sump­tion, the green move­ment generally lobbies for ‘sus­tain­able’ or ‘green’ con­sump­tion – des­pite the evi­dence that shows this will not create suf­fici­ent change to ad­dress the prob­­lems they are con­cern­ed about.

Change has to be a process of consciousness; a process of accessing the objective information on the state of the world around us, and then finding ways to express that new understanding through change in our own lives – and where our desire for change is obstructed or prohibited, working collectively to circumvent those obstacles.

The (R)evolution Between Your Ears

Change happens when people act differently: not ‘think’; not ‘lobby’; not ‘petition’; but physically ‘do’ the alter­natives. The greatest strength the current system has to overwhelm demands for change is making people believe that ‘repre­sen­tative’ politics can deliver funda­mental change – when in fact any change must only be cosmetic in order to preserve the core values of the current economic process.

The strength of collective action for radical change is that ‘change’ can be more wide-rang­ing, interconnected, and thus more per­ma­nent, when arising organ­ical­ly from people’s own choice and actions.

The Free Range Net­work and the Free Range Acti­vism Web­site exists to com­muni­cate the skills and in­forma­tion – which build to create a broad­er under­stand­ing of the modern world – re­quir­ed for people to de­fine their own solu­tions; and from that pro­cess of per­sonal radical action, to create more wide­spread change from the grass­roots.

How we do that depends on the context:

• We run the ^ZFRAW site, and its library of technical information and research, to provide the in-depth information required to understand the technological world around us;
• As a collection of individual activists and researchers we produce occasional ^Nnews bulletins, a more ^Wlengthy journal, and run workshops and lectures which promote the core themes of the Network; and
• As a group, the Network creates and runs our ^Eexhibition stall, where we work together to promote the materials produced by the members of the Network.

Fundamentally then, the Free Range Net­work aims to create ‘change’ not di­rect­ly, but through ena­bling others to ex­press their own desire for change using the in­forma­tion or mater­ials which we sup­ply to them. We do not en­force what the nature of that change is; our aim is to sup­ply the means where­by people are able to ex­press them­sel­ves to de­mand change, or bet­ter still, to di­rect­ly create those changes within their own lives.