Personally, I don’t go in for the salvaging lark. I’m too squeamish and I’m skeptical about the economies. Nevertheless, I respect that many people find liberty in such activities.

I mention this because I just finished reading The Scavengers’ Manifesto.

The general idea of reusing or repurposing found objects is admirable. “Waste not, want not” is some fine inherited wisdom. Scavenging (if we must call it that: the authors are keen to reclaim the word) to save money and to minimise one’s impact upon the natural world are actions quite compatible with the Escapologist’s life.

Trouble is, scavenging is made redundant by minimalism: the system to which the more determined Escapologist would subscribe. As a minimalist, I’m aloof to the material world. Scavenging reduces want, but I’ve already surgically removed my want.

When the authors breezily list the treasures they’ve acquired through scavenging, I can only think “I desperately don’t want any of that crap. I don’t even want to think about any of that crap”.

It’s a shame that so much usable stuff is discarded in our wasteful society, and it’s admirable that the scavenger seeks to intercept some of that stuff and to extract extra value from it. But as a minimalist, I don’t contribute to such detritus, and I wish that other people didn’t either.

Minimalism trumps consumerism both financially and environmentally, but scavenging is just another form of consumerism and is wholly dependent upon big consumerism.

Scavenging focuses on the middle element of the three Rs of environmentalism: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. I’ve long felt that reusing and recycling are inferior measures to reduction: once a natural material has been converted into a commercial commodity, it might as well already be in the landfill. Reducing (through minimalism) is where we should focus our environmental efforts.

Liquid cash in the bank, instead of tied up depreciating in material commodities (scavenged or otherwise) is also, generally speaking, a preferable financial situation offered exclusively by minimalism.

“Waste not, want not” is a fine philosophy compared to blind consumerism. But “Want not, want not” is a far more dignified and productive maxim.

Cheer up, scavengers. Here’s a picture of dead billionaire Steve Jobs in his apartment. Look, he’s got practically nothing!

Her oeuvre basically preempts Escapology. She uses humour and philosophy and literary references to discuss the oft-shunned art of scarpering.

Here are Ms. Harris’ six categories of quitting:

- Job quitting. Leaving any labor, paid or unpaid.

- Person quitting. Giving up seeing, talking to, writing to, admiring, tolerating, wishing well, caring for, banking on, being amused by, being changed by, or loving any person or group of people.

- Thing quitting. Forgoing inanimate objects, food products, and anything animal, vegetable, or mineral.

- Locational quitting. Leaving a city, town, country, etc. Not the same as moving. (All locational quits are moves, but not all moves are locational quits. The locational quit does not necessarily have anything to do with the actual place the quitter goes, but it has everything to do with the place the quitter has left behind.)

- Idea quitting. Eschewing ideas, psychological conditions, or emotional states.

- Habit quitting. Eradicating the doing of something that you engage in as a matter of course on a regular basis. This generally involves quitting behavior that is bad for your health.

I greatly admire the clarity of this list: it probably took New Escapologist a little while to figure out these flavours of escape cumulatively and nebulously, through this blog and our six print issues.

New Escapologist focuses, perhaps disproportionately, on job quitting. I’d like to think and write more about the other areas of our manifesto.

Having said that, we also cover Thing Quitting (via minimalism), Locational Quitting (when we talk about things like location independence and internationalism), Habit Quitting (when we discuss overcoming soft addictions like television, driving, and coffee in order to maximise independence), and Idea Quitting (when we talk about critical thinking and escaping things like depression and psychological dependence).

The books don’t seem to be in print any more but you can buy second-hand copies at the usual online marketplaces. More immediately, here’s a 1996 essay extracted from the first book.

Buy the complete back catalogue of New Escapologist with a 10% discount today.

I admired it greatly, but always had a nagging doubt as to its political correctness and, for that matter, its accuracy. It’s a common enough thing in anti-work discourse, but is it not insensitive to liken professional drudgery (and commercial gullibility) to actual slavery?

I recently received The Wage-Slave’s Glossary as a thoughtful gift (thanks, Kristin and Chris!). Alongside other witty and rousing definitions, it gets to the nub of the wage slave matter:

Though similarities between chattel slavery and wage labor had already been noted by everyone from Cicero to Thomas Jefferson, 19th-c textile workers in Lowell, Mass., were the first to use the phrase wage slavery. The Lowell Mill Girls, as they were known, condemned the “degradation and subordination” of the emerging industrial system. [...] Their coinage called attention to the similarities between buying and renting a person; they denounced a social order in which you’re encouraged to believe you’re free to direct your own life, when, in fact, you are dependent on income derived from wage labor.

The similarities between buying and renting! Paid workers are free-range or self-employed slaves: rented rather than bought.

It’s important to remember though, that “wage slavery” is not a new incarnation of an old thing. Actual slavery still exists.

There are obvious parallels between white-collar mediocrity and actual enforced labour. As long as we have to work for someone else in order to pay for the modest spaces we occupy (on once-common land, forcefully confiscated by people who aren’t even alive any more), we are not free.

The Wage-Slave’s Glossary also points out that a lot of our current work terminology (and organisational techniques) actually has origins in the plantation.

Plantation work and office work are not the same thing. But it is worth remembering the connection.

1. I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.
2. I wish I didn’t work so hard.
3. I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.
4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.
5. I wish that I had let myself be happier.

Should we not snatch up this data – this existential feedback loop – and live accordingly?

The Deathbed Manifesto would have us live freely, idly, honestly, gregariously, and without cognitive dissonance. I think these commandments are very compatible with the life of the Escapologist.

Even if we don’t embrace this whole-heartedly, it’s probably worth thinking about our own deathbed regrets should we have to confide them to a nurse today.

I think mine would be simultaneously that I didn’t idle thoroughly enough (I’m all too often torn away from deep idling by guilt or obligation) and also that I didn’t achieve enough (my total sum of tangible project results are not numerous or excellent enough to justify all the fretting I do about them). Contradictory? Not really. I just need to throw myself into what I’m doing more thoroughly, whether idling or creating.

What about you? What would be your deathbed regrets of today?

Get 25% off New Escapologist by entering the LULUBOOKUK305 at checkout. This offer is valid until the end of the month.

I have chosen not to go to work anymore. That is, I no longer consent to being an employee. Instead, I fill my days with projects, capers, and a deep commitment to idling.

Here’s a quick review of my 2011: another full year of such indulgent ducking and diving.

The juiciest fruits of the year were the completion of my first book (due for publication this March); my finally emigrating to Montreal from Glasgow (the fruit of almost three years dicking about with the most amazing Brazil-like bureaucratic system); the launch of New Escapologist Issues 5 and 6 (our best issues to date in my opinion); and a thrilling stint at the Edinburgh Festival.

There were other performance spots, perhaps most notably a part in an amazing performance art event at the Traverse Theatre.

I recorded a bit for a film; and wrote for The Idler and SideStreet Review and Cactus.

With The Wireless Mystery Theatre, I co-presented a music and spoken-word cabaret event at The Voodoo Rooms in Edinburgh.

With much help from the local zine scene, my girlfriend and I organised a zine fair in a student-occupied university building in Glasgow.

For fun, I visited Bratislava, Budapest, Ljublijana, and Zagreb. Closer to home, I visited Paris, Bristol, Newcastle and London (where we conducted an informal New Escapologist field trip to The Idler Academy).

With my friend Tim, I walked 35 miles of the Lyke Wake Walk and completed another long-distance walk, solo, between Glasgow and Loch Lomond.

With my girlfriend, I travelled to Florida to fulfill her ambition of meeting a penguin.

There was a fair amount of being bone-idle on top of all this, consuming the finest pap that the Web, the public library, and BBC Radio have to offer. Collapsed upon our Montreal Chaise, I gobbled up the following books:

Soderstrom – The Walkable City
King – The Dark Tower
Gladwell – Blink
Dawkins – The God Delusion
Carter – The Magic Toy Shop
Brian Tracy – Eat That Frog!
Dawkins – The Greatest Show on Earth
Shrigley – The Essential Shrigley
Gray – A life in pictures
Calvino – Under the Jaguar Sun
Fry – The Fry Chronicles (Audiobook)
Thompson – Sunshine on Putty
Kurtzweil – Fantastic Voyage
Orwell – The Road to Wigan Pier
Hegley – The Adventures of Monsieur Robinet
Mignola – Hellboy Vol. 1-8 + ‘Abe Sapien’ Parts 1-2
Mignola – The Amazing Screw-On Head
Moor – More Trees to Climb
Randall – Disgusting Bliss: the brass eye of Chris Morris
Bennett – A life like other people’s
Murakami – Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman
Ronson – The Psychopath Test
Bryson – At Home
Smith – My Name is Daphne Fairfax
Wilkinson & Picket – The Spirit Level: why equality is better for everyone
Pirsig – Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance
Murakami – 1Q84 Books 1 & 2
Baker – Double Fold: libraries and the assault on paper
Momus – The Book of Japans
Vonnegut – Player Piano
Mayer-Schonberger – Delete: The virtues of forgetting in a digital age
Smith – Bone Vol. 1: Out from Boneville
Birmingham – He Died With a Felafel in his Hand
Pantanella – Typographie Inusuelle
Smith – Bone Vol. 2: The Great Cow Race
Morrison – Supergods
Smith – Bone Vol. 3: Eyes of the Storm
Lanier – Your Are Not a Gadget
Ames – The Double Life is Twice as Good
Gray – Straw Dogs
Partridge – I, Partridge: we need to talk about Alan (Audiobook)
Willingham – Fables Vol. 13: The Great Fables Crossover
Morrison – Vimanarama
Hitchens – Letters to a Young Contrarian
Willingham – Fables Vol. 14: Witches
Meltzer – Identity Crisis
Starrett – Seaports in the moon

And that’s that. It definitely pays not to work. For 2012, I plan to continue in this mode of being, and to embrace these words of Chrisopher Hitchens who died in 2011:

Beware the irrational, however seductive. Shun the “transcendent” and all who invite you to subordinate or annihilate yourself. Distrust compassion; prefer dignity for yourself and others. Don’t be afraid to be thought arrogant or selfish. Picture all experts as if they were mammals. Never be a spectator of unfairness or stupidity. Seek out argument and disruption for their own sake; the grave will supply plenty of time for silence. Suspect your own motives, and all excuses. Do not live for others any more than you would expect them to live for you.

Thank you, dear readers, for following New Escapologist in your various ways through 2011 and into 2012!

The house itself sat there in his imagination [ . . .] it looked like a gigantic millstone, requiring him to run and run and run just to stay level with the starting line. He knew people with houses. He had talked to them, with the same kind of detached interest he would talk to a person who kept snakes as pets or entered ballroom dancing competitions. Houses forced you into a certain lifestyle [...] it committed you to a whole lot of different things. There were property taxes. He knew that. There was insurance, in case the place burned down or was blown away in a high wind. There was maintenance. People he knew with houses were always doing something to them. They would be replacing the heating system at the start of the winter, because it had failed. Or the basement would be leaking water, and complicated things with excavations would be required. Roofs were a problem. He knew that. People had told him. Roofs had a finite life span, which surprised him. The shingles needed stripping off and replacing with new. Siding, also. Windows, too. He had known people who had put new windows in their houses. They had deliberated long and hard about what type to buy.

‘Are you going to get a job?’ Jodie asked.

He stared out through the oval window at southern California, dry and brown seven miles below him. What sort of a job? The house was going to cost him maybe ten thousand dollars a year in taxes and premiums and maintenance. And it was an isolated house, so he would have to keep Rutter’s car, too. It was a free car, like the house, but it would cost him money just to own. Insurance, oil changes, inspections, title, gasoline. Maybe another three grand a year. Food and clothes and utilities were on top of all that. And if he had a house, he would want other things. He would want a stereo. He would want Wynonna Judd’s record, and a whole lot of others, too. He thought back to old Mrs Hobie’s handwritten calculations. She had settled on a certain sum of money she needed every year, and he couldn’t see getting it any lower than she had got it. The whole deal added up to maybe thirty thousand dollars a year, which meant earning maybe fifty, to take account of income taxes and the cost of five days a week travelling back and forth to wherever the hell he was going to earn it.
[. . .]
‘I don’t know,’ he said again. ‘I’m not sure I want to think about it.’

A ‘normal’ working week of 21 hours could help to address a range of urgent, interlinked problems: overwork, unemployment, over-consumption, high carbon emissions, low well-being, entrenched inequalities, and the lack of time to live sustainably, to care for each other, and simply to enjoy life.

It’s still too many hours for my bone-idle liking, but it would certainly be a step in the right direction for the overworked Parkinson’s Law-afflicted cube farm world.

One minute, you’re being passive-aggressively dressed down by a boss half your age, and the next you’re on top of your desk declaring “No More! Not another minute of this!” and demanding your P45.

There is, of course, the risk that once you’ve quit your job and moved to your woodland hermitage, you discover that squirrel meat doesn’t agree with you and you don’t really like writing poetry after all. Can you turn back?

“Dear Jeremy” is a Guardian advice column and forum, which addresses work- and career-related issues. This week, it addresses the desire for sudden escape from a crap job. Somebody writes in, reporting that tedium vitae has got the better of them and that they want to flee their current job and even the country. Naturally, the reader worries that such a move would damage their career and that future employers would see them as a quitter.

Jeremy responsibly suggests caution and advises that the correspondent completes their current contract if only to buy more thinking time. The same advice is offered by a concerned HR Manager. A third voice, however, offers:

I spent eight months in a job I detested, three months of which I was applying for an escape, any escape, which I found in a temporary contract back at my old firm. My CV now reads that I was “headhunted back to reintroduce stability”. I’ve almost convinced myself it’s true, and I’ve definitely convinced all the recruitment agents I have lined up for when this contract expires.

Whatever rash choices you make, you can always work some propaganda into any future attempts to rejoin the workforce. Unless the alternative is homelessness or starvation, I don’t know why anyone would stay in a job they detest so much. All those early rises and self-deceptions aren’t worth seven quid an hour.

The more responsible advice offered by the first two voices is very career-orientated. The third voice speaks for freedom and personal satisfaction (even if this person’s idea of escape is into another job). There are risks (which can be minimised by using my career gym idea before escaping), but as Konrád said, lived freedom will compensate you for a few losses.

Pity the houseproud. For they are proud of their houses. Why? Did you build them? No! You paid for them with money you earned doing something you’re ashamed of.