weirdo kids running shit

My dad likes to tease me now when I talk about money and starting ethical businesses. ‘The punk has turned into a capitalist’ he says, I like it though cause I have a sneaking feeling he’d be disappointed if I stopped ranting and raving about changing the world.

In the various music scenes you can always find a person who is a total diehard fan of a certain band, but once that band hits mainstream popularity, they get sick of them. It’s as if we have been outcasts and different for so long that we cling to it. Not wanting to ‘join the herd’ but to remain one of the enlightened few.

We might never think of it consciously but it’s true enough. We are drawn in because we are different from the other kids and people and the counter-culture and sub-cultures offer us a community, strength to be different. So when the mainstream that rejected us comes clawing at what we have helped create, we get pissed off.

That is the purpose of a counter-culture though. Some people realise that they don’t agree with the models and ideas of mainstream culture, so they remove themselves from it and build up their own ideas. More and more people are drawn to these communities, building better ideas and more humane structures. Until eventually we eclipse the old mainstream culture and become ourselves the dominant one.

There is little point in realising society is fucked up and peoples lives are being destroyed, then simply exiling yourself to a mohawked hermitage, mumbling that you don’t have the answers or the right to tell people what to believe. The governments and corporations have much less scruples and morals than you do, and right now they are calling the shots.

People seem to be waiting for permission to change the world. No one gave the capitalists permission to overtake the world and no-one from their world is going to give us permission to fight them. But fight them we must, with our weapons and their own.

Sometimes I talk to the anarchists and the socialists, and while I like a lot of their ideas I don’t believe in either of their final goals. I like Australia and I like the way I live, more than a new governmental system we just need to build up around the old one. With an active population and a counter-culture that is confident and not self-sabotaging , we can rescue thousands of lives from misery.

The average person is not a sheep or hard hearted, they are just preoccupied. In Naomi Kleins book ‘No Logo’ she spoke about talking to classes of high school kids and getting the tags from their clothes and showing on a map where it was produced and under what conditions. The kids were suitably shocked and asked ‘what brands aren’t made in sweatshops?’ she was forced to reply that almost everything you could buy in a mall was made this way.

This is not good. Not many people have the time to track down non-slave wage clothes. Even people who are militantly against sweatshops would own some clothes made in them, it’s practically unavoidable. Then if you’re a vegan, that’s more hours out of your life to check all the ingredients in the food you eat. Environmentally friendly? Not tested on animals? Genetically modified? There is not enough time in the day to do the right thing, right now. So a lot of people will agree with your politics but they will say ‘it’s just to big a hassle to care’ and right now it is.

This is the reason we must start businesses that are full in all the ways the current ones are empty. If Naomi Klein could turn to that room full of kids and say ‘well, there is this company, that make this stuff, and this company that does this stuff’ people would support them. We must make doing the right thing as convenient and cost effective as doing the wrong thing. Then people will have no choice but to make an ethical and moral decision.

In Germany for instance 9 out of 10 consumers say that they are against battery cages for hens, yet only 3 out of 10 actually buy the non-battery alternative. Why? The reason is the 20% price difference, if they were the same price battery farms in Germany would have no choice than to bend to the vote of the consumer dollar.

A business person like Phillip Knight of Nike, lives and breathes for his company. His cause. He has made the oppression of his fellow man into a lucrative day job. Most activists on the other hand are still working shitty day jobs to pay their rent, and are left trying to save the world on the weekend. So political struggle becomes more like a hobby than a life.

There are many fair ways to make rent and money while fighting for a valid cause. This is not selling out, it’s smart. If you do a zine, have you ever thought about trying to turn it into a proper publication that is widely available? why not? I think the thing most of us hate about glossy magazines is the terrible content, we are all aware that they are very potent weapons in pushing a viewpoint. If you are against sweatshops have you thought about starting a political and ethical clothing line? There are plenty of people, including myself, who would love to be able to walk into a cool shop and not have to worry about where it all comes from.

Enough of the self-sabotage ‘they sold out’, enough of mindless slogans like ‘eat the rich’ and ‘smash the state’. Sitting in your lounge pissing and moaning about ‘the man’ and all the bad things out in the world achieves nothing unless you are ready to build an alternative and actually fight against them.
The reason humanist politics are disrespected and people laugh when they see images of protesters getting beaten by the police is because we are not succeeding. They don’t laugh that business people spend their whole lives worrying about marketing shoes, even though it’s so petty, because they are winning.

Everyone has noticed the way the mainstream fashion/music/media (a.k.a pop culture) industries co-opt movements and sub-cultures and reduce them to a multi-million dollar fads. This is because they have absolutely no ideas of their own. We are, as individuals and as a whole, much more creative and inventive. It’s time that we steal a few techniques from big business, as they do from us. Simply we must take what we do seriously.

One good example of what I’m talking about is a punk music magazine called ‘Beanz Baxter’. It’s fantasic because it is in the new agent racks next to Spin and juice, looking just as good, only $ 3.30 and it is still the same good quality local punk zine it has always been.
If you’re in a band I know that you all sit around, like we do too, and talk about shows and record deals and getting more well known. About being able to do it full time, as your life. You know what your idea are and they are good, so what’s stopping you? If you are talking about a doing a full length, then take the plunge and bring it out. If you are talking about a tour, book it. ‘The man’ is a myth, there is only fear and a feeling of inadequacy that has been instilled in us to hold us back. But the threat is hollow.

I know that we think we are just weirdo kids and no more fit to lead the charge than anyone. But we are a better alternative to the current corporate arseholes. So until someone better comes along, it is our fight. Self –confidence and organization are weapons. Arm yourself.