The Man Who Lives Without Money
Sunday, October 6, 2013 16:05
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By Mark Boyle
Irishman Mark Boyle tried to live life with no income, no bank balance and no spending. Here’s how he finds it.
If someone told me seven years ago, in my final year of a business and economics degree, that I’d now be living without money, I’d have probably choked on my microwaved ready meal. The plan back then was to get a ‘good’ job, make as much money as possible, and buy the stuff that would show society I was successful.
For a while I did it – I had a fantastic job managing a big organic food company; had myself a yacht on the harbour. If it hadn’t been for the chance purchase of a video calledGandhi, I’d still be doing it today. Instead, for the last fifteen months, I haven’t spent or received a single penny. Zilch.
The change in life path came one evening on the yacht whilst philosophising with a friend over a glass of merlot. Whilst I had been significantly influenced by the Mahatma’s quote “be the change you want to see in the world”, I had no idea what that change was up until then. We began talking about all major issues in the world – environmental destruction, resource wars, factory farms, sweatshop labour – and wondering which of these we would be best devoting our time to. Not that we felt we could make any difference, being two small drops in a highly polluted ocean.
But that evening I had a realisation. These issues weren’t as unrelated as I had previously thought – they had a common root cause. I believe the fact that we no longer see the direct repercussions our purchases have on the people, environment and animals they affect is the factor that unites these problems. The degrees of separation between the consumer and the consumed have increased so much that it now means we’re completely unaware of the levels of destruction and suffering embodied in the ‘stuff’ we buy.
Very few people actually want to cause suffering to others; most just don’t have any idea that they directly are. The tool that has enabled this separation is money, especially in its globalised format.
Take this for an example: if we grew our own food, we wouldn’t waste a third of it as we do today.
If we made our own tables and chairs, we wouldn’t throw them out the moment we changed the interior décor.
If we had to clean our own drinking water, we probably wouldn’t shit in it.
So to be the change I wanted to see in the world, it unfortunately meant I was going to have to give up money, which I decided to do for a year initially. So I made a list of the basics I’d need to survive. I adore food, so it was at the top. There are four legs to the food-for-free table: foraging wild food, growing your own, bartering and using waste grub, of which there far too much.
On my first day I fed 150 people a three course meal with waste and foraged food. Most of the year I ate my own crops though and waste only made up about five per cent my diet. I cooked outside – rain or shine – on a rocket stove.
Next up was shelter. So I got myself a caravan from Freecycle, parked it on an organic farm I was volunteering with, and kitted it out to be off the electricity grid. I’d use wood I either coppiced or scavenged to heat my humble abode in a woodburner made from an old gas bottle, and I had a compost loo to make ‘humanure’ for my veggies.
I bathed in a river, and for toothpaste I used washed up cuttlefish bone with wild fennel seeds, an oddity for a vegan. For loo roll I’d relieve the local newsagents of its papers (I once wiped my arse with a story about myself); it wasn’t double quilted but it quickly became normal. To get around I had a bike and trailer, and the 55 km commute to the city doubled up as my gym subscription. For lighting I’d use beeswax candles.
Many people label me an anti-capitalist. Whilst I do believe capitalism is fundamentally flawed, requiring infinite growth on a finite planet, I am not anti anything. I am pro-nature, pro-community and pro-happiness. And that’s the thing I don’t get – if all this consumerism and environmental destruction brought happiness, it would make some sense. But all the key indicators of unhappiness – depression, crime, mental illness, obesity, suicide and so on are on the increase. More money it seems, does not equate to more happiness.
Ironically, I have found this year to be the happiest of my life. I’ve more friends in my community than ever, I haven’t been ill since I began, and I’ve never been fitter. I’ve found that friendship, not money, is real security. That most western poverty is spiritual. And that independence is really interdependence.
Could we all live like this tomorrow? No. It would be a catastrophe, we are too addicted to both it and cheap energy, and have managed to build an entire global infrastructure around the abundance of both. But if we devolved decision making and re-localised down to communities of no larger than 150 people, then why not? For over 90 per cent of our time on this planet, a period when we lived much more ecologically, we lived without money. Now we are the only species to use it, probably because we are the species most out of touch with nature.
People now often ask me what is missing compared to my old world of lucre and business. Stress. Traffic-jams. Bank statements. Utility bills. Oh yeah, and the odd pint of organic ale with my mates down the local.
Mark Boyle is the founder of the Freeconomy Community www.justfortheloveofit.org. ‘The Moneyless Man’, a book about his year without money, is out in June.
NOTE: This article is originally published at this website:
Source: http://usuryfree.blogspot.com/2013/10/the-man-who-lives-without-money.html
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Yea, that is totally wonderful….
When do you go back to the lavish lifestyle of being waited on?
Since your security is in the bank….you really don’t need to worry…if this is a lifestyle you are going to stay with….
What will you do with the money you make from this book?
If having no money has opened your eyes…why not simply give your book away? Or at least have it at cost so no one makes any money from it…
Btw .. I take it you have not had any dealings with the Feds about how ur paying taxes, or the farm your on..
If you have no address…that makes you homeless…and homeless in this country right now…is going to change considerably.
Just some thoughts after reading your story
no matter if this man remains with his moneyless lifestyle or if it is only a thing for a period of his life, it is one aspect of the Right Path. A kind of monkhood.
Namaste brother. You did it perfectly right – do not grief if this is only possible for some time.
And Namaste to all you people out there on WWW
who try at least to grow your own food,
and who counteract the constant mindless throwing away of items which are still usable only for changes of apartment, or fashion…
by not throwing away mindlessly yourselves,
and by buying or swapping secondhand items.
Our ancestors had the tendency to esteem an old, inherited piece of furniture, or dishes, very high. Old things contained history. And if one managed to keep things usable for a very long time, he or she was esteemed as careful, as someone who respects his property, according to the conservative tradition that “property is duty” (Eigentum verpflichtet).
We on the contrary get constantly nagged at by ads in the media to buy and buy and throw away and throw away,
and the unconscious part of the populace repeats the slogans and judges each other from the brands of clothing they wear or which brand of beer they drink,
ugh
what a mindless, flat atmosphere…
it is getting on people´s nerves, it is FELT as nonsensical –
why then not EXPRESS one´s dismay for this “culture” as a rationally-thinking human being
by no longer taking part in the consumeristic rat race
and instead go back to your human instinct which is a feeling for your odds and ends as our ancestors had,
“old but intact is best”…
and
“first eat what grows on your acre of land”
?
Follow your bliss, and resist nothing whilst doing it!