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Chloe Gregg

Another Choice

Posted on March 1, 2018

Written by Chloé Gregg, Staff Writer

It’s the middle of January and champagne is flowing across the swampy fields of Notre-Dame-des-Landes, an agricultural commune outside the city of Nantes, France. The government’s project to construct a new airport on the West coast of France has been abandoned, putting an end to over 50 years of heated debate. Environmentalists and local farmers cheer and welcome the announcement as a new victory over the exploitative force of current-day globalization. Amongst them, a group of anarchists who have illegally occupied the land in protest against the airport. The ‘Zadistes’ (activists for the ZAD, Zone to Defend) see this as an opportunity to introduce a new project – a social, environmental and agricultural experiment for people who wish to stay on the Notre-Dame-des-Landes or NDL.

The demand for new forms of communal life is no revolutionary phenomenon. Since the first peace movements of the 1970s swept across Western societies, a growing number of people have involved themselves in a variety of projects seeking to re-build eroded social ties by living in small, close-knit groups.

Some groups have established what is called ‘egalitarian’ or ‘intended’ communities, such as ‘Twin Oaks’ in rural Virginia, USA, where land, labor, and income is shared equally between all members of the community. Working tasks are structured, but in no way imposed. Instead, it is the sense of common responsibility and belonging that encourages members to carry out their duties.

Another expression of collective living that is flourishing today, in response to housing shortages and expensive accomodation; is co-housing. With private rooms and houses arranged around common spaces and facilities, these small networks offer closer ties between neighbors, while maintaining a larger degree of individual agency and privacy. Unlike the former example, its members aren’t pressured to share a common ideology or philosophy.

With the principles of sustainability and cooperation at their core, these alternative communities can take on many forms. They may reject any sign of organizational hierarchy out of due consideration for social equality. They may prefer a semi-autonomous status in order to maintain bonds with the wider economy, e.g. by selling the surplus of their production on local markets to finance agricultural equipment or land rental costs. Whatever their structure they aim to show an example of a functioning and fruitful life outside the current societal paradigm. They can lead us to a shift.

Despite these trends, most political authorities and media outlets try to downsize these movements by depicting their adherents as ‘marginals’ or ‘rebels’. A defensive response to their centralized governments is being questioned, to a hint that their nation-state architecture is nearing its expiry date. For now, the status quo is protected by their longer history and the pluralistic ignorance of those who still conform to the idea that the current model is the will of the majority. Yet as shown in the case of Notre-Dame-des-Landes, where about 300 people were living on the occupied grounds, a longing for true social reconnection is present across many societal groups. The experience of loneliness is in fact so wide-spread, with 72% of Americans having reported it as occurring at least once a week, that medical doctors and physicians are calling it an “invisible epidemic”. This solitude has exacerbated the feeling of disenchantment within the system. A feeling that echoes across all levels of the social strata.

From freshly-graduated urban university students to third generation farmers, the opportunity to test a lifestyle outside the current neoliberal structure has attracted people from all walks of life. From emotional isolation emerges a desire to re-instigate new links with others. A desire to put an end to all the great evils of unregulated capitalism and prevent them from leading to further individual disillusionment and social alienation.

Photo by Elizabeth Lies

It might be decades-long exposure to capitalist propaganda that has convinced the vast majority of us that the return to a simpler life, with a less wide array of consumer choices, is too difficult to achieve or is simply undesirable. Not even Piketty’s bestselling Capital in the 21st Century managed to move us beyond the social destruction we have created in the pursuit of the current economic model. Whatever the reason for our stubbornness, it is time to think and act differently.

We must fight the system’s resistance to change by setting examples. We must grant the 300 adults and children demanding the right to remain on the Notre-Dame-des-Landes the opportunity to show us the worth of an alternative life. We must let them demonstrate its benefits and encourage them in their innovative attempts to happiness. Through examples, the so-called ‘outsiders’ may be able to convince even the most hardcore Black Friday shoppers that the simpler things in life do leave us feeling happier and complete. Through experience, they stand a chance of convincing us that their minimalist lifestyle is desirable.

Amongst the residents of the ZAD that celebrated the cancellation of the airport that foggy winter morning, few had imagined they’d be surrounded by such a large crowd of supporters. For many, their presence in Notre-Dame-des-Landes was intended as a mere visit. A brief glimpse at life without the constant soundtrack of YouTube advertisements and the endless queues of mass-distribution supermarkets. Yet quite rapidly, these visits became part of the permanent resettlement within a wind-powered self-sufficient community.

If the facts on youth unemployment, urban crowding, the soaring use of prescription medication and rapid environmental destruction are not enough to weaken your belief in the neoliberal dream, then let the alternative communities show us what we’re missing out on.

There’s a diverse set of sustainable community models out there, so take a look at some examples listed below (maybe you’ll find inspiration towards building your own):

https://ecovillage.org/

http://www.thefec.org/communities/

https://www.towards-sustainability.co.uk/issues/built/suscom.html

Below you can find a gallery of photos from an Emmaus community in Lescar, France, taken by our Head Editor:

EMMAUS – An Alternative Community in Lescar, France

Change the System, Not Your Brain

Posted on February 1, 2018

Written by Chloe Gregg, Staff Writer

Smart drugs, study aids, cognitive enhancers. They’ve taken over Madison Avenue and hacked the offices of Silicon Valley. If you’re studying at university or have a job in a competitive workplace, I bet that you’ve already heard of them. Maybe you’ve already tried them?

These little pills, also known as ‘nootropics’, are prescribed to treat neurological disorders such as sleep-deprivation, narcolepsy, Alzheimer’s, and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). One of the most prominent nootropics, Modafinil, was introduced to me through a legitimate prescription.

I had to use Modafinil during my high school final exams to counter the sedative effects of the sleeping pills I had also been prescribed. All I knew about them was that they helped me snap back from the fog my brain was kept in by the sleeping pills. The only times I took Modafinil were on the mornings of an actual test.

I suffered less and less from insomnia during the first year of my bachelor’s degree, so I decided to drop the sleeping pills, and naturally forgot about Modafinil. Then the second year came. Spending entire days with my classmates at the library, we came to discuss ways of keeping up with the workload. Ignorant as I was to the other uses of Modafinil, some mentioned they were using the medication to help them study. They didn’t suffer from sleep-deprivation or any other medical condition that would have allowed for a prescription, rather this was self-medicated, brain-boosting doping.

Scanning through scientific journals and opinion articles, I found that there was an abundance of substances out there that qualified as nootropics. I discovered a multitude of cognitive enhancers ranging from special herbal supplements, ADHD medications such as Adderall and Ritalin, to even legally prescribed methamphetamines. While certain articles warned against the consumption of the most recently developed drugs, for lack of research, many more articles touted a number of benefits which would appeal to the young university student or start-up entrepreneur.

For my fog lifting drug, the effects on reducing fatigue, and enhancing cognition were most noticeable in studies involving sleep-deprived doctors and military personnel, while research conducted in 2012 showed an increase in motivation and performance in completing tasks amongst perfectly healthy individuals. A more consistent and significant result has been the improvement of working memory, which supports the use of Modafinil in preparation for exams. Fewer studies also support claims of an increased sense of well-being and increased attention.

Even with the short-term side effects of using nootropics, like headaches, loss of appetite and insomnia, the potential gains of their occasional use to manage intense periods of work and study can easily outweigh the costs. Especially since the average price of a Modafinil pill sold online is lower than your ordinary take-away coffee.

So why shouldn’t you take it? I’m not here to lecture you on the moral objections against taking cognitive enhancers. Neither am I going to convince you that you should hold off using them because of the gap in scientific knowledge regarding their long-term side effects. Rather, I’d like you to look at the bigger picture. Imagine the way society would look if everyone were to become accustomed to using nootropics.

On the individual level, a person would no longer be able to identify the fruits of his or her labor, and those of the drug. It’s not much of a stretch to imagine this may lower self-esteem, and create a detachment from the self that could eventually lead to much greater alienation. Such an estrangement would only deepen the anxieties that have propagated under the development of Western capitalism.

On the social level, the concentration of nootropics among the academic and professional elite would only deepen the current social inequalities that traverse the industrialized world. Today, the academically privileged often hold an advantage over those left within the traditional education system; even without cognitive enhancers. This is exacerbated by the way smart drugs have infiltrated the lives of healthy human beings – through society’s elite. Their most prominent use is amongst students from high-ranking universities and cutthroat businessmen or entrepreneurs. Spheres that are already ahead of the game. These drugs risk widening the socio-economic gap that persists in post-industrialized societies. Smart jobs draw smart drugs. Giving everyone access to Modafinil would bring all people to a higher cognitive capacity, yet the gap would remain.

As our society becomes increasingly narcotized, it seems that we’re losing touch with our fundamental human nature, which may be tied to consequences we cannot even conceive of yet. In one of his blog entries describing the effects of a variety of cognitive enhancers Dave Asprey, a US entrepreneur who boasts of successfully hacked his own biology, states that “When you first start taking nootropics, sometimes you’ll feel like nothing is happening. That’s what I experienced. Then, a week later, I quit taking them, and noticed their absence immediately”. This statement is a chilling reminder of how close we are to the dystopian novel Brave New World, where most people are numbed and controlled through drugs.

Whether you decide to take ‘noots’ or not, you’re playing a part in defining what our society should look like.

With the intensifying pressure created by competition, it is only natural to seek better ways to keep up the pace. However, self-medicating doesn’t seem to provide a definitive solution. Rather it is a symptom of the neoliberal machinery that has spun out of control, a new tool for perpetuating the system that is compelling us to alter our brain chemistry to better compete.

So let us slow down a moment and imagine where we’re heading. Let us evaluate the consequences of using nootropics and determine whether they promise enough to make it worth exploring their potential. We cannot blindly accept them as another quick fix.