What dropping out means to me
Posted on September 25, 2007
Filed Under - leaving the rat race, Ideas & Philosophy |
I’ve just come across a very thoughtful essay about “dropping out” by a chap called Ran Prieur. It chimes with a lot of things I have been thinking about in recent days. I don’t always agree with or entirely understand everything in the essay but it is so good (and all too rare) to be able to read a piece on this topic that is insightful, honest and very well written. This passage gives an idea of where the author is coming from:
“The main thing I was doing during those years was de-institutionalizing myself, learning to navigate the hours of the day and the thoughts in my head with no teacher or boss telling me what to do. I had to learn to relax without getting lethargic, to never put off washing the dishes, to balance the needs of the present and the future, to have spontaneous fun but avoid addiction, to be intuitive, to notice other people, to make big and small decisions…
…A friend says, “This world makes it easy to toe the line, and easy to totally fuck up, and really hard to not do either one.” But this hard skill, not quitting your job or moving to the woods or reducing consumption or doing art all day, is the essence of dropping out. When people rush it, and try to take shortcuts, they slide into addiction or debt or depression or shattered utopian communities, and then go back to toeing the line.”
This has been nagging at me recently, the notion people have that dropping out is about dramatically packing it all in and flouncing off into the sunset. How often does that really work? I’ve used that rhetoric myself as a joke, but it was never part of my plan. I always thought it would be a long journey, in fact it is one I’ve already been on for some years.
Anyone who knows me, looking back, will probably see the signs. I started off in the venal world of film & television, caught the internet wave in the late nineties and rode that one for a while. I was there when companies started wipeing out too! I loved the creativity, brilliance and drive of the industry at that time, but all too soon it became more about the bottom line and the share price than about creating something amazing and shaping a new technological age.
In despair I turned to the public sector for opportunities to really make a difference to society but that too was a frustrating process. I found that I lacked some of the skills to bring people along with me, make compromises and bury my own ego to get a workable solution. Public organisations are full of bright, enthusiastic people who end up banging their heads against brick walls because they simply can’t get things done.
So I got to a point where I realised that, in my current configuration, I’m not equipped to achieve something I’m really proud of and I’m just spending my time fighting the system and wasting huge amounts of energy on actions that lead nowhere. I needed space, sky, room to develop, freedom to do my own thing and time to understand the world around me.
“To drop out is to become who you are. Do not feel guilty about using strengths and advantages that others do not have. That guilt is a holdover from the world of selfish competition, where your “success” means the failure or deprivation of someone else. In the dropout universe, your freedom feeds the freedom of others — it’s as if we’ve all been tied up, and the most agile and loosely tied people get out first, and then help the rest.”
It’s reassuring to read those words as I do have that guilt nagging away at me. I’m still not entirely convinced that this isn’t just a very selfish thing to do. The act of blogging tends to encourage this feeling, I find. It’s quite arrogant to put your personal life out there on the internet and expect people to be interested. So I want to do my best to give people something real to read. This is how I felt when I read this essay, that here was someone who is giving away for free something very valuable and personal and I was really happy to read it.
Stumble it!
Comments
One Response to “What dropping out means to me”
Leave a Reply
-
Subscribe in a reader
About this site
Find out how to leave the rat race and get the life you want. Read my story and others, learn from our mistakes and be inspired by our successes!
[…] What dropping out means to me […]