freedom.

If politics are understood most narrowly as the parliamentaristic practices of making up and disagreeing about the laws of nation states and deals between same, freedom from politics is pretty much the case for many if not most, and defiantly an opportunity for all in western society. As a matter of fact you do not even have to vote, even though most people do so occasionally. On the other hand they do talk a lot about politics and politicians on TV. They even broadcast live from the pseudo-debates in the chamber of the Danish parliament on national television, but if it bothers you or you are just not into politics, you can always change the channel and will most likely find a nice and entertaining program about celebrating celebrities or real-life cops on patrol between commercial breaks. This is without doubt some sort of freedom, but even though a concept of freedom which is defined negatively is necessary it is simply not enough. To phrase it polemically: What good is it to be free to leave if you have nowhere else to go?

 
When all this is said, I don’t believe that the legitimate possibility of not giving a fuck about the doings of our representatives is what comes first into the mind of postmodern man when asked about his desire for freedom. To unblatantly put my prejudices on display I am afraid that many of my peers link the idea of a higher degree of freedom directly and intimately with the task of obtaining and then spending more money: accumulating items, frequenting cafes and the like. The thing I find most stunning about this, is how rarely the people I meet seem to reflect upon how expensively they buy their money, so to say. For instance, the cash needed to acquire a pair of brand jeans from a firsthand-shop would cost me 16 hours of washing dishes or calling strangers about newspaper subscriptions. Of course not all jobs are as lousy as the ones I have had, but I think a lot of the smartphone and flat screen consumption of western society would vanish if everybody made these kinds of calculations before reaching for their credit card. Furthermore I do not believe it is only when it comes to the process of mentally linking the numbers on their bank statements with the labour for with they were traded that leaves many estranged. The other part of the bargain – the objects you receive when performing the ritual of giving away the pieces of colored paper and metal disks we usually refer to as money – are equally strange to us. An IPod, for example. How did this object come into existence? How and why did it end up on this shelf with hundreds of identical twins right next to it? Most of us know when asked, but few seem to be conscious when navigating in everyday life. Never the less we a living in the midst of a remarkably short period of human history in which technology enables us, and the decreasing amount of natural resources allows us, to produce, transport and consume at this astonishing level. This also takes us to the heart of the present day question of freedom. We are, in western society, so wealthy that my grandmother (living in preindustrial rural Iceland) would simply not be able to understand our way of life. My generations fight for emancipation is not the struggle to overcome our need and poverty, but the struggle for freedom of people we might never meet. Amongst others the people who builds our items.