Free: Coming of Age at the End of History

by Lea Ypi

My teenage years were years of hyper-activism in civil society. Like many others, I was not blind to the benefits. Those were both spiritual and material. With the debating teams of the Open Society Institute, for example, you could discuss such motions as: ‘Capital punishment is justified’ and learn about the Eighth Amendment of the US Constitution. Debating ‘Open societies require open borders’, you could learn about the function of the World Trade Organization. With the Action Plus information campaigns about AIDS, you could kill an afternoon eating free peanuts and drinking Coca Cola in the former ping-pong room of the Palace of Sports. With the Friends of Esperanto, there were promises of travelling to Paris. With the Red Cross, one could hang around when distributing groceries to families in need and get a free packet of rice. This was different from the rice we used to borrow from our neighbours; firstly, there was more of it; secondly, it came from the West; and thirdly, it contained a ‘use-by’ date which informed you of when you were supposed to eat it, usually the week before.