Policy, personal choice and polemics: why I am a dole bludger

At a personal level this meant avoiding anything that might help the economy grow. This entailed avoiding any paid work, primarily because this reduced my ability to spend; the dole is barely enough to survive on. In addition it would mean I was not producing anything of value, which might tempt another into consumption.

I was an economic ascetic. I did it, as only the young can, in order to save the world.

Nineteen years later it seems no one has noticed. There are too many on the economic scrapheap for anyone to notice the sacrifice, let alone care. Indeed some may argue that the scrapheap exists as an incentive to others to work harder and consume more, in which case I portray precisely the opposite example to that to which I have aspired. My message is lost in the market hubbub of fear and desire.

Nineteen years later and there is no getting off the dole even if I want to. No one can employ me as a bright young thing like they might have, but did not, ten years ago. No one can employ me as a 30-something experienced professional, because experience in the workplace is something I do not have. All this and more despite the fact I am not particularly stupid and surely I could help the economy grow if I was industriously employed. But there seems to be no process to include those who cannot or (as it was in my case) will not compete in the labour market.

In a more organic hierarchic feudal past those who desired less of this world could join a religious order. The deal was you helped others, whipped yourselves and looked otherworldly as much as you liked so long as you did not breed. Then the Order or Parish looked after you. The lack of sex involved in restraining from breeding became an additional way to self-flagellate. Necessity becomes virtue.

These days there is no such broadly supported ascetic option and the no-breeding clause is available in a much more enjoyable way. The closest we get is Green Corp, and while here the khaki worn by staff is a habit of sorts, management still wear suits - no cassocks there, so how is anyone to know the depth of your values? How will anyone know or judge you by your deeds?

Which is the worst thing for an ascetic on the dole. Nobody knows. At least if people knew it might make up for the failure of the anti-economic growth part of the plan.

The worldview I have just described in my young self has been called "dissident or egalitarian enclavist" by anthropologist Mary Douglas in a collection of essays entitled Thought Styles: Critical Essays on Good Taste (1996 London, Sage). There are three other thought styles. Each is a reflection or response to their perception of Nature. They are: -

• Dissident or Egalitarian Enclavist - Nature is Fragile;
• Conservative Hierarchist - Nature is Robust within Limits;
• Rugged Individualist - Nature is Robust; and
• Isolates - Nature is Unpredictable.

Mary Douglas looks at these thought styles through the lens of artefacts and consumer choice, in particular the rejection of what other groups choose. It is important to note the object of choice and rejection can swap groups through the generations. Recently, hippies rejected shaving, and a century before so did Victorian moralists. The cultural artefacts are less important in themselves than their symbolic usage in a particular time.

What this means is that to a Rugged Individualist Texan Oilman, whatever the reality of Global Warming, they must reject "Global Warming", as it is an artefact currently given meaning by another thought style where nature is fragile, and "dammit, they're not getting into my head". It must be rejected even if it is true. This is because one's identity, one's sense of self, one's actual person might be extinguished if this thing, "global warming", is not rejected. There is nothing rational about this process. But it is this process that creates the bodied and ego-ed identity, the encultured individual, even as it shops with an economically rational hip-pocket nerve.

One may respond that the oil industry's views are primarily determined by its economic interests, and that is not an unimportant factor. But what about the 'redneck' with no real economic worth and only their identity to foist upon the world? What about the hippie who refuses to work for the oil industry in the first place? These people are what they are, and not what they are worth. They are what they reject.

Yes, oil companies are juggernauts riding along on the entitlement born in job provision and energy supply, but most people are not rich. Most people are poor. Poor in things, but everyone can always reject what's on offer. "Global warming" included.