As life grows more austere and precarious, here’s a few handy tricks to self-improve, study and thrive even in adversity.
A steeple of this tradition are the British Mods, short for Modernists. They were young working class people growing up in the shadow of the Blitz, in a place recovering from the terrible war.
“Clean Living Under Very Difficult Circumstances” was the motto of the mods.
Their history is remembered by the vogue of high fashion magazines, chart topping bands, and timeless fashion, but the early mods were far more modest in their lifestyles.
Mods rebelled against the class system by refusing to be what they were expected to me: Lowly uneducated workers. Instead they rebelled by inventing style, culture, and community. The mods became a core of working class culture in Britain, and branched off in all manner of directions. Such as the hard mods, who became skinheads and influenced the punk movement.
Mind you these skinheads were the skinheads of the 60s, who were mostly young working class people from England who would associate with Jamaican rude boys, hence the shaved heads. Their music of preference was reggae, ska and rocksteady, and were the polar opposite of the 80s skinheads, who were genuinely horrible.
Mods lived on low wages, often having industrial or low skill jobs with long hours and bad pay, so in order to develop a dignified and productive lifestyle, they focused on introspection, self-criticism, study and discipline. They were in many ways like the Greek stoics.
So, let’s talk about clean living, and a few ways in which you can become a better communist through simple practical advice.
As for sources, all of this is based on my own education as a certified psychosynthesis therapist. Psychosynthesis focuses a lot on personal growth, willpower and self-discipline, and is often seen as inverse Freudianism. Psychoanalysis looks at the “basement of the psyche”, but psychosynthesis is about the whole house, so to speak.
1: Build a stockpile.
Communists are a bit like doomsday preppers, except instead of preparing for the end of the world, we prepare for the beginning of history. When we see crisis, we see the glass as half full, as a chance to get involved with our community and try to show people a better way.
So, build a stockpile, prepare yourself for crisis. This is a long term project, and as such, requires minimal costs. Perhaps invest 5% of monthly income into non-perishable foods, drinks, first aid supplies and similar things. Overtime, especially with some bargaining, you will have an ample surplus. Perhaps it can be donated to workers during the next big labour strike, or maybe it will prove useful in a flood or bad storm. You never know.
It will also provide you with a stimulating task as you organise and take stock of everything, as well as a bit of legwork in acquiring the supplies. Nothing feels better than feeling in control.
2: Destroy your television.
I will, without a single hint of irony, now try to convince you to pull the plug from your television and throw it in a skip. Generally speaking, we all know the television is mental poison, but that at the end of the day when you’re tired, it’s a good way to unwind and relax. This is a lie.
The television, in its capacity to provide overstimulating and at the same time vapid content, is constantly exhausting you mentally, whilst making you crave more intellectual stimulation, so you’re trapped in a kind of weird daze. Your mind goes on autopilot as you keep waiting for the TV to actually entertain you. This is why 10 minutes of television can quickly become 2 hours. The TV makes you tired.
On top of that, it constantly lies to you, and fills your head with pessimism and irritable adverts and all manner of psychological garbage. By destroying your television you are basically commuting yourself of a lifetime prison sentence in the amount of hours you will free from your day.
I absolutely guarantee, that if you sit still for 10 minutes with no TV, music, or anything like that, then you will become bored, and crave stimulation, and suddenly feel your mental energy return to you.
You can still watch programmes on the internet, but at least then you don’t have them running non-stop as you’re basically hypnotised into sitting still and letting it happen, on some level you can snap back into consciousness after the episode is finished and ask yourself if you still want to stare at a screen for another half hour.
There’s also plenty of natural stimulants in most supermarkets if you need a pick me up, such as guarana, taurine, ginseng and ginger. All very effective at permitting you to reclaim your precious few hours of free time.
So please, take a break from reading this, and actually destroy your television. This is not a joke, I am not being funny or over the top, I am telling you that it is, without any ambiguity, in your best interest to destroy your television right now.
3: Pick up a hobby.
Now that you’ve destroyed your television and taken back your mind from the clutches of mental exhaustion, you will have the focus, drive and freed up time to pick up a hobby. Follow your passions on this one. Learn a language, play an instrument, do some crafts, whatever might work. One good way I’d pick out hobbies when I was living below the poverty line was by going to thrift stores and see what they had. Harmonicas, sewing kits, card decks, you name it. There’s all manner of nigh-gratis things that can provide new talents and hours of entertainment.
4: Investigate your home.
I have never seen anyone give this advice, but it really is psychology 101, assuming you enjoy studying BF Skinner, which I do since he’s basically the non-science fiction answer to mind control.
Turns out that we are in a constant feedback loop with ourselves. We define our environment, and then our environment defines us. We can’t actually change ourselves inwardly, but rather, we can change the outward conditions which then change ourselves inwardly. But nobody ever talks about that.
So investigate your home, psychologically speaking, it’s a rat’s maze, and you’re the rat. Look at how things are furnished and organised, look at how the environment guides you to do things. Ask yourself if there’s room for improvement and re-organise your home in a way as to make it regiment you into becoming a better person.
Supermarkets do it all the time, they carefully place products and shelving and all manner of things to get people to unconsciously buy the high value products, and the same is true for you. For instance, do you want to become a better cook? Maybe throw away the microwave. Microwaves are the televisions of the kitchen.
Trying to cut down on smokes? Maybe store the cigarettes on the opposite end of the room from where you usually sit.
That little walk from your favorite chair to the cigarette packet is an opportunity to ask yourself “Do I really need another one right now? Can I wait another half an hour?” it’s an excellent way to cut down on smokes.
All these things will amount to who you are over time.
5: Make time for idleness.
Idleness is the wonderful art of doing nothing, where you make yourself intentionally bored. Why? Because it gets you thinking. It makes you examine yourself and the things around you. It permits you to ponder on plans, choices, and ideas. Idleness invites moments of constructive self-criticism, planning and coming up with new ideas. By doing nothing, you can actually make yourself more productive.
6: Do difficult and unpleasant things
I should clarify this point by saying, do difficult and unpleasant things you want to do.
So don’t say, eat a raw bird from the side of the road, but do, for instance, read that book you always thought you could never make it through. Do stuff you wish you could do, but feel as if you can’t. By constantly testing the limits of your mental and physical ability, you develop a powerful skill: Stubbornness.
You know how Einstein said that the definition of insanity was doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results? He was wrong. He was a physicist. You don’t see me telling you about light and mass over here, so maybe Einstein should stick to his corner of the market.
Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results is what us in the psychology business call practice, and you should absolutely do it. Constantly exhaust yourself with stimulating and interesting work, constantly push your mind to its limit until you feel like just sitting still and doing nothing because you’ve actually challenged yourself to the point of needing respite, expand your mind by tirelessly bouncing against its boundaries, and watch as they begin to bend to your will. There’s nothing like it.
7: Always, always, follow your curiosity.
A good rule I imposed upon myself is that whenever I don’t know something, no matter how trivial, I always look it up. Wikipedia, Merriam-Webster, Stanford Philosophy Encyclopedia, CIA World Facts Book, you name it, doesn’t matter the source, I just look it up to get a basic idea of what it is. I never let curiosity go to waste.
Just earlier today I checked the dictionary for what gadfly means. Turns out it refers to an irritating critic, I had no idea until now. I do that every single time inquiry enters my mind, and you’d be surprised at how often this pays off in the most unexpected of situations. It is such a small and effortless thing, It builds up overtime, and eventually you become one of those weirdly smart people that can answer a question about literally anything.
If you do all these things, especially destroying your television — 100% serious — then you will learn the true meaning of clean living.
Seriously, televisions reduce people’s lifespans more than smoking does, get rid of it.
