Freegan Hilarious!

[Meta Blog]

By Gus Van Horn from Gus Van Horn,cross-posted by MetaBlog

Drop everything you are doing right now, go straight over to the New York Press, and read this freegan article! You can thank me later.

Apparently, dumpster diving has become (or more likely, become known as being) a leftist lifestyle, and its practicioners call themselves "freegans".

Almost every week, [Adam] Weissman organizes an event commonly referred to as "dumpster diving," where he leads an open tour among the various trash heaps and dumpsters of Manhattan to gather discarded food. The activity is part of a larger social movement known as freeganism, which views capitalism as the primary force in destroying the environment and avoids the capitalist structure through such practices as eating discarded food, squatting in abandoned buildings instead of paying rent and refusing to hold a job. Just as vegans are vegetarians who avoid animal products, freegans subsist only on free food found in the garbage as consumer waste. In Manhattan, there is plenty to go around. [bold added]

Normally, I'd make a snarky comment right about now, but not only can you not tell these idiots to eat s--- (being how they're already practically doing that already), you can't do a better job of pointing out the sheer absurdity of their position than they already do!

Weissman assembled those who were still present for a final stop back to Daniel's Bagels. As expected, an enormous bag filled with bagels was waiting on the curb. Weissman grabbed a bagel from the bag and a mushy avocado from his backpack. He began dipping the bagel into the soupy avocado and looked around at the surrounding neighborhood.

When asked whether he viewed living so close to a beacon of unfettered capitalism such as New York as contradictory to his ideals, he quickly denied it.

"This is exactly where we need to be," he said. "If there's any one place on the planet where there's a vital need for people to be suggesting that capitalism is not a sustainable system, where people need to be demonstrating that we can create alternative ways of living to capitalism, then I think New York is that place."

Pausing to dab at the gobs of avocado stuck in his beard he said, "I couldn't think of another place in the world that would be more appropriate to what we're doing." [bold added]

"This is exactly where we need to be?" Well, you've got that right, bud! Might that, perchance, be due to the fact that the whole lot of you would freegan starve unless you hung around the very system you're trying to destroy?

What really blows my mind about the story, though, is that this isn't even the greatest irony. That honor goes to Weissman's hatred of school because "They promote obedience, they promote conformity, they promote the idea of unquestioning acceptance of authority and they promote the idea that we should accept daily boredom and misery and enforced banality as simply the way that life is."

As if picking through garbage and droning on about "resources" on a daily basis isn't banal. As if his political ideals aren't the logical extreme of what he was indoctrinated with while he was in school. As if the only way to be an individual is to act like a hippie, spout socialist nonsense, and sponge off everyone else -- just like all the other "non-conformists". This is one kid who was right to drop out, but unfortunately did not do so soon enough.

Freegan idiots!

And what's worse, they're turning the rest of us into freegans by providing us all with ... free entertainment!

God help us all!

-- CAV

http://ObjectivismOnline.com/blog/archives/000963.html

[KevinD]

A month ago, I posted this response to a pro-freegan blog entry:

Freegans decry "consumerism," while being the ultimate consumers. Who and what do they think makes possible all of the things they scavenge for, eat and use?

Lucky for freegans, we do live in a capitalist society, which produces such a surplus of valuable products that stores cannot possibly sell it all — hence why so many things end up in the trash.

In Communist countries such as Cuba, you're lucky if you can find food on a store's shelves, let alone dumpsters filled with recently-expired freebies out back.

If you actually enjoy scrounging through garbage, living off the refuse of others — if you don't find it abjectly humiliating to "squat" in somebody else's building, or hitch rides from strangers capitalistic enough to own cars — maybe freeganism is the lifestyle choice for you. Only don't use phony terms: you're not a "freegan," you're a freeloader, bumming off the very free market system you claim to despise.

[thejohngaltline]

Wow, I've never heard of anything like it! Thanks for the laugh!

We really need to work on getting a head-shake emoticon...

And, Kevin, nice response.

[Spano]

You can't make this stuff up.

South Park needs to use this in an episode soon. To quote Cartman: "They're not people...they're hippies!"

[Groovenstein]

Mr. Van Horn, that is among the funniest things I have ever seen. It would be the funniest thing I saw this week were it not for another poster who linked to wholesomewear.com. Plenty of comedy this week. Bless you all.

[Inspector]

Gus inspired me to write a quick reply.

[Myself]

This is actually old news. I remember watching a 20/20 segment on Freegans several months ago.

Freegans - 20/20