Notes on the illusion of freedom

Neoliberalism, the plastic life and the aesthetic over experience culture

It starts with a rejection, a refusal to believe this is freedom - because that’s what we are told: capitalism is freedom.

Full-time workers forced to pick an extra job to survive. Students living below the poverty line, working when they should be learning. Families evicted under section 21 ‘no-fault eviction’.¹ The spreading number of food banks in the UK, from 35 Trussell Trust food banks in 2010 to 2.800 in 2024². Homes flooding and burning while governments pour on gasoline. Private water corporations polluting rivers and poisoning citizens, the shameless transport companies cutting their services across the country, all while raising their prices and making record profits.

But thank god we have the freedom to buy plastic clothes online.

It starts with a rejection, then it moves into a question: Do we have any meaningful freedom in capitalism, or do we live in an illusory plastic realm?

art installation: White Bouncy Castle by William Forsythe (1997). “The choreography that appears, led by Joel Ryan's encompassing soundtrack, is the result of complete physical destabilisation and the resulting social absurdity. The inadvertent euphoria that results from the situation is infectious and, in some cases, addictive.”

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The neoliberal dream

“The idea of freedom is inspiring. But what does it mean? If you are free in a political sense but have no food, what's that? The freedom to starve?”

― Angela Y. Davis³

I feel disjuncted, as if something was pulling me apart and ripping me from my free will. I know that, in theory, I could do everything and anything I put my heart to, and I am haunted by dreams wishing to come true. A vision of what I desire so clear it feels like I am looking in a mirror, a reflection of what could be if only money wasn’t the freedom maker. Yes, if only I had money - even better, if only money was no longer the key determinant of our choices. Capitalism is pulling me apart, neoliberalism is ripping me from my free will, and I am finding ways to pick up the pieces.

Capitalism is the freedom to consume, we get to pick our poison as long as we can afford it. It is a convenient illusion to believe that we are building our lives the way we want, that we are free to attempt a class escape and climb climb climb the money ladder and consume more. Neoliberalism is the system that traps us into believing that making money, sometimes at the expense of the other, is our life goal. We can be better, we can feel better if we own more things, if we consume more stuffs. Neoliberalism wraps each of us in a plastic bubble and renders everything outside of the bubble meaningless. We have to grow grow grow and never be satisfied.

In The Invisible Doctrine, George Monbiot and Peter Hutchison explain how a doctrine promising choice and freedom came to prevent us from gaining either. Indeed, freedom in the case of neoliberalism is “Freedom from trade unions and collective bargaining means freedom for bosses to suppress wages. Freedom from regulation means the freedom to exploit and endanger workers, to poison rivers, to adulterate food (…)”.⁴ Freedom is for those in power, those who own the capital, but even with all the money in the world, I am not sure the richest of us have meaningful liberty.

Hear me out, I am not going to cry for a Bezos or Musk any fucking day of the week, but when I see how they use their money I truly wonder how content they feel.

Here they are, at the top of the pyramid, living easier lives than most of us; they are still part of the same system. One that favours individualism, brutal domination, impossible beauty standards, constant self-improvement, and the imperative to consume and own more. The power their money gives them is used to influence governments in their little quest of self-aggrandising: it’s vanity at the end of civilisation. Not to quote the Communist Manifesto, but “In bourgeois society, capital is independent and has individuality, while the living person is dependent and has no individuality”.⁵

and the plastic life

“Is this freedom? / Is this the life you chose? / If this is living the dream, we’ve hit an all-time low.”

― Architects, All Love is Lost

The plastic life is how I describe our state of freedom.⁶ On one hand, it refers to our relation to plastic as an element: the more plastic we own, the more we mean. On the other hand, it is the plasticity of what freedom is in relation to neoliberalism, what we consider to be freedom. Is it to own a lot of things, is it to have a job that does not feel like a prison, is it the ability to vote and consider it a fair contribution to democracy or the freedom to be and/or love whoever? Is it to write yet another half-baked theory? No one knows, but one thing is sure: we are all alone.

One of the aims of former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher, arguably the architect of the society we live in now, was that there should be more self-reliance. Since the 1980s state support and regulation have gradually been stripped back in favour of private enterprise and individual initiative. This has given rise to the philosophy of individualism.

However, far from being an idea that resides only in politics textbooks or debates, individualism seems to be becoming a necessary survival tactic.

-You’re Thinking About Yourself Too Much, Refinery29

According to Byung-Chul Han, real freedom occurs in fruitful relationships. In Psychopolitics, he argues that neoliberalism leads to utter isolation and therefore does not free us at all. Freedom relies on community and not possession. Not only that, but neoliberalism has transformed us into projects condemned to reinvent and rebrand ourselves to stay relevant. Being satisfied with ourselves is risking obsolescence, to fall into irrelevance. As if oneself could ever be irrelevant, as if being wasn’t enough.

As humans, we have the capacity and the need to reinvent ourselves, to evolve and to keep floating. In neoliberalism, that’s not enough. In neoliberalism, we are products. What would one be if they didn’t follow the latest plastic trend, if they didn’t update themselves, if they asked for help?⁷ Uniqueness and community? That’s for the punks outside the system.

Neoliberalism made citizens into consumers. We vote thinking as consumers and not with an interest in shaping the community: thinking about the price of eggs above fellow citizen-consumers’ rights.

The world of possession and consumption isn't freedom but it's the idea we've been sold by capitalism: the more you own, the more you mean and you must own to be and belong. Our identity is built on our belongings and how we showcase them to the world through our clothes, our houses, our habits. Freedom is having the ability to grow our capital and claim social relevance, as written in this Guardian article, “our economies are based around social mobility rather than the ability to live in dignity without it, while ever-higher barriers to prosperity are erected and our public infrastructure is inadequate at almost every level.”

As long as we have the freedom to climb climb climb the social ladder, who cares if we drink shit flavoured water?

The aesthetic over experience culture

“Our society puts a premium on beauty, common in declining cultures”

― Bones, season 2 episode 7 “The Girl with the Curl”⁸

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This brings me to the last point, and it may sound like a stretch, meh I’ve been feeling sore anyway.

In her video essay ‘goodbye fillers’, the brilliant

Mina Le

mentions the morning shed trend, which involves the removal of layers of products people (mostly women) attempt to sleep in, because there is no way you could get a good night of sleep with a taped mouth and hair rollers… “This behaviour is the result of an aesthetically-driven culture over an experience-driven one”: we want to look our best and are in a constant quest to improve our looks rather than enjoying life experiences, and in this case, sleep. Men have their version too, in incredibly ridiculous morning routines starting at 3 am, often involving weird skincare routines, hours in the gym and solitude.

People want to look like they live in a farm cottage court, Le explains. We want our life to reflect, to mirror this ideal without experiencing it: experience is for those who have the privileges. You can look the part by buying polyester in exchange for a few quids. “Maybe we have become more used to the idea of no longer experiencing life thanks to a lack of good places, social anxiety technology dependence.” We can only hope to look the part because doing anything would require means: money, help, community, dedicated place… and to actually engage.

The purpose of these routines is not wellness, health or self-care; it is the aesthetic, it is to stay relevant. In the same way, our direct environments have become sterilised and plastic. Everything must look good, it doesn’t matter if it is unsustainable, has no real benefits, is fake or made of plastic as long as it is aesthetic.

In this quest for aesthetics, we are all alone. Self-improvement for the sake of beauty is the peak of the individualist mountain, the summit of loneliness - we solely look at ourselves, we can only afford to be on our own. There is no money or energy at the end of capitalism, just individualistic vanity in a room full of fake stone and plastic wood.

Final notes

Are we just bouncing in a plastic castle with no escape?

Although the art piece above was not created with the intention of being a doubtful metaphor to my thoughts, I found a new interpretation (and isn’t this what art is for?). White Bouncy Castle, like our plastic life, showed a certain social absurdity and even an addictive euphoria. The artificial fun of consumption, an instant release of dopamine when we buy things, the convenience of a life void of meaning. It is easy, simple, it feels good for a while - it feels good as long as we don’t look deeper.

How would we live if money wasn’t the be-all of life, if sustainability was the focus instead of abundance and growth, if we had the real freedom to choose how we live?

/ in parallel /

• More than half of UK students working long hours in paid jobs, the Guardian

• Starmer promises ‘long-term strategy’ in business-friendly Labour manifesto, the Guardian

• Who should hold the next prime minister to account? Our best hope lies with the Green party, the Guardian

• Labour’s big majority is fragile and it has weak mandate for change, says report, The Guardian

• I regret none of the climate policies we pushed in Ireland. But we underestimated the backlash, The Guardian

  Unfreedom at the Washington Post

  

• Woe’s Hollow, Leigh Stein

1. Tenants, Vicky Spratt ( Profile Books).

2. Including independent ones

3. Taken from How Everyone Could Become Feminists, unknown canon

4. The Invisible Doctrine, p. 28.

5. The Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels (Capstone), p. 43

6. Apologies, dear reader,r but I will need to sit a bit longer with this idea and let it cook, this is a little taste.

7. This made me think of the great animated film Robots and this fantastic Mike’s Mic video

8. Not me with the combo Bones + Architects, I need new references.