Normalcy, freedom and choice

Reflections on Servants and travel choices.

On a surface level, we live lives of greater freedom and choice than our ancestors could ever have imagined. We can travel much further, choose from a wider variety of careers, eat food from around the world (in or out of season), pursue a dazzling array of recreational activities, decide who we want to be friends with and who we don’t. Freedom is a cherished value; the notion that, as individuals, we have the power to choose our life-course is enshrined in Western culture and philosophy.

Yet at the same time as we, the global wealthy, have an unprecedented level of freedom, our poor neighbours continue to face severe constraints to where they live, what work they do, who they marry, what services they can access. This is the irony of Servants: a globalised, growing economy gives us the freedom to fly around the world and live in slums where most of our neighbours have far less choice in their life. A huge question remains: how deeply can we empathise with our neighbours when we have chosen to be there, and they haven’t. There is a deep chasm between us, who have so much power over our own lives, and the poor, who have so little.

Or is there? How free are we really? Beneath this exhilarating level of freedom is an uncomfortable undercurrent of choices being made for us. Explicitly and implicitly, there are numerous interlocking systems which shape our behaviour and supposedly ‘free’ choices. When we try to swim against the current, we face awkwardness, danger, inconvenience, and sometimes even ridicule. Servants is one such attempt to buck the way the system forces us to exercise our ‘freedom’ to pursue wealth and power, and instead voluntarily relinquish it.

I was travelling recently and got the chance to first-hand experience the constraints within which my freedom operates. I left from a hotel near the Delhi airport, to travel across the city and visit my friends. I wanted to go by metro, and decided to walk the 2km to the nearest station. It soon became apparent, however, that walking was not an approved form of transport around here. I found myself trudging along the side of a 5-line highway, with no footpath. Ironically, I was overtaking cars and motorbikes, as the traffic was totally clogged.

Eventually I needed to cross this highway, and since there was no other means, I simply picked my way through the traffic. There was a small barrier, which I easily stepped over, and then a 1.5 metre wide ditch, which I also cleared comfortably. Crossing the other side was harder: the traffic was flowing quickly here, with cars swerving in an effort to get home quickly. Nevertheless I managed it. The metro station was now just a stone’s throw away.

However, after walking for some time along a substantial fence, I came to a gate and realised that this was a defence colony area. Non-military personnel were not allowed in here, even to use the metro station. But I was not yet ready to accept defeat and order an Uber (which was clearly what I was ‘supposed’ to do in the first place). So it ended up taking me two hours and three buses to travel 20km across a clogged city.

This is one tiny instance of a broader phenomenon: physical infrastructure locking us into a world of cars and planes, rather than cycles and trains. It seems to work well for those who have cars, and can afford to fly. But what about those who can’t? Or those, like me, who don’t want to? The freedom to drive and fly seems to trump the freedom to not have to drive or fly.

From Delhi I flew to Hyderabad. It takes two hours by flight, compared to 24 hours by train. I told my boss I would prefer to catch the train, but she overruled me, as both transport modes are similarly priced, and she wanted me to have one more working day in Hyderabad. When I arrived in Hyderabad on Wednesday morning at 9am, I was really tired as I’d woken at 4am to catch the flight. But throughout the day, one thought nagged me as I went around meeting government officials and literacy teachers: “this had better be a really productive day to justify the 100kg of CO2e emissions it took to get here”. This thought troubled me deeply and probably made me more agitated and a worse listener than I would otherwise have been. This is the egotism involved in flying over land: it is a statement to myself, and society, that my time is more valuable than the planet. I find this a heavy load to bear, an unhelpful pressure obscuring the truth of my smallness in the God-scheme of things. Yet flying is the ‘freedom’ that ‘highly productive’ people are supposed to use.

I caught the train back from Hyderabad, and took public transport from the train station home. The time was not wasted: I prayed, played chess, and watched 2 movies. As a bonus, I got to have a conversation with some co-journeyers about why I carried around & refilled an old water bottle, rather than getting new ones. Being out of phone coverage for much of the trip was a blissful reminder that the world runs without me, too.

Do you feel overwhelmed by the appearance of freedom in your life? Pressured by the weight of self-importance which the world teaches us to have? Constrained by the under-the-surface systems which push us to exercise freedom selfishly, to the detriment of the poor and the planet?

Consider exercising your freedom to take the rail less travelled: the slower, less fashionable, less convenient options. I think you’ll find, as I have, that while you sometimes meet exasperation, judgement and even patronising reactions; the freedom and joy you gain from swimming against the norm is worth it – as in my train trip home. Even when the inconvenience seems to outweigh environmental gains – my bus trip across Delhi – there is a strange comfort in knowing that you are voluntarily experiencing discomfort which billions of others have no choice in. So let’s use our freedom not to gain further wealth and power for ourselves, but to make unusual choices that benefit the poor – and the planet.