The Moneyless Man (25 page)
Authors: Mark Boyle
I’ve been criticized for using my bike on roads, especially in interviews. I understand this; it looks like there’s an inherent hypocrisy. But you can’t gouge out a man’s eyes and then criticize him for being blind. I have to deal with the world I’m in, not an ideal world that doesn’t exist. I don’t want to maintain this world, but it is where I am. A bike is my way of finding balance between having as much impact through positive social change as I can
and as little impact on our natural environment as I can. If it were up to me, I’d happily sacrifice large asphalt-covered roads if it meant we could get back to a truly sustainable way of living. And you can apply the same arguments to anything we want to create, whether it be houses, bridges, hospitals, or schools. The more I live this way, the more I know another, more localized, way is possible.
I knew before I began my year that I could only plan for so much. The vast majority of stuff, I felt, I’d have to work out day by day. It’s an old adage, but necessity truly is the mother of invention.
I didn’t learn the wild fennel and cuttlefish bone toothpaste trick until a month into the experiment; the thought of horrifically bad breath forced me to investigate my options. I didn’t use my hand-turned vintage Singer sewing machine until the crotches went in two pairs of jeans. I’d never heard of the concept of unpunctureable tires until I wondered what I was going to do if I got a lot of punctures. I had no idea how to change my bike’s brake pads without money, until I realized that bike stores throw out half-used ones and there were people in the local Freeconomy Community who could show me how to fix them.
The experience of my year has given me a lot of hope. Environmentalists pose post-peak oil apocalyptic scenarios about how it is all going to end really badly. I can understand the fear and skepticism; I share it sometimes. I agree that we need to start making the transition to redesign society for a time when our meteorological and economic climates are not so stable. If we can start making that transition now, I know that we will be able to work on whatever is thrown our way. Humans are an incredibly
resourceful species; when things have been tough, we have worked together to come up with solutions. During the Second World War, the British worked together in the ‘Dig for Victory’ campaign. While times were different then, when people knew their neighbors and fellow townspeople, and communities were smaller, I know that if we set about rebuilding resilient communities today, by reconnecting with the people in our local area, we would be able to cope with whatever the future holds.
Massive factories, supermarkets, hyper-stores, and their ilk have completely changed our perception of the fair price of things. I notice this acutely whenever I work in the little organic food co-op in Bristol. People who say there is no way in hell they are paying $2.50 for a pound of zucchini have no experience of the amount of effort needed to grow them organically without huge fossil fuel inputs. A grower working on a minimum wage, as the vast majority do, has about five minutes to do all the work required to break even on that pound of zucchini. On average, the grower receives only about half of the retail price. From that half, they must apportion part for overheads and other direct costs. How much more quickly can we expect growers to work, if they are using their hands rather than energy-intensive machinery?
The more I have become responsible for producing my own stuff, or at least got closer to those who produce it, the more I realize the real value of things. My buddy Josh makes magnificent chairs from willow he grows himself. I know how long it takes him to do it, from planting the setts to fixing the rods together. I know the real value of that chair and it goes beyond money. For Josh, it symbolizes his respect for the earth and represents everything he stands for.
I’ve come to realize that large organizations who offer low prices only do so because they exploit people and benefit from economies of scale. Are they eventually going to strip this planet bare of every natural resource? Do their prices include the cost of the destruction of everything that we have been given? What price would their products have if they did?
We’re at a crucial point in history. We cannot have fast cars, computers the size of credit cards, and modern conveniences, while simultaneously having clean air, abundant rainforests, fresh drinking water, and a stable climate. This generation can have one or the other, but not both. Humanity must make a choice. Both have an opportunity cost. Gadgetry or nature? Pick the wrong one and the next generation may have neither.
Learning to live without money – to change the mentality and habits that you’ve formed throughout your life – isn’t something you can do, or probably would want to do, overnight. For me, it started seven years ago, when I read the book about Mahatma Gandhi and began what I believe will be a life long endeavor to put his philosophies – mixed with my own – into practice in a modern context.
Since I started the Freeconomy movement in 2007, I’ve been looking for ways to take money out of the equation in all aspects of my life, from how I get my food, to how I have fun, to how I get from A to B. I’ve been looking for ways to replace money with real relationships with the people of my local community and with the natural environment. This takes a lot of time. Much of the information I needed came through experience and through meeting the right people at the right time. That’s one thing I have noticed: the further down this path I go, the more
people who are striving to live the same way enter my life. I am not sure if they were always there and I’ve only recently become aware of them, or whether the idea of living without money, an idea as old as the hills, is becoming more relevant as critical issues like climate change, banking crises, peak oil, environmental destruction, and resource-depletion emerge. Who knows? It’s clear that, for a plethora of reasons, moneyless living is a movement whose time has come and one that is growing rapidly.
Walking the path to moneyless living is like walking into a virgin forest at midnight without a lantern. You sense it might be a fantastic place to live, but it seems daunting; sometimes overwhelmingly daunting. You have no idea what lies ahead or how far you must walk. Nonetheless, you walk. Inevitably, you stumble, fall over, hurt yourself, but get back up. A few hours in, you meet a stranger, trying to reach the same place by another path. You help each other. That someone else wants to find the same place as you not only makes you feel more physically secure, but it also reinforces your belief that this is a place worth going to. You feel less alone and more sane. At four in the morning, as the darkest part of the night is losing its stranglehold on your perception, you see a group of people ahead, all looking for the same place. You join up and walk with them. You note landmarks, jot down directions and hang flags as a guide for others who may want to explore the forest themselves.
The closer it gets to sunrise, the more people you meet and the less frightening the forest becomes. The wild monsters you’d feared hadn’t materialized. Suddenly, you reach a small clearing. It looks as though someone lived there many generations ago. You, and all the people you met along the way meet, at exactly the same moment, lots of other people coming to this place from totally different directions. Like you, they’re looking for what their intuition told them might be paradise. As every seeker converges on this one spot, the sun rises over the clearing’s
horizon. Its light shows this place to be as magnificent as everyone ever imagined it would. There is abundance. Everyone helps each other pick fruits and nuts and shares their harvests. People build shelters together and there is more than enough for everyone’s needs. How everyone managed to converge at the same time, from different directions, without a map, is one of life’s mysteries. Some didn’t even know why they walked the path into this forest. They just knew the path they’d been walking until then wasn’t as enjoyable as they’d first thought it would be. Everyone’s reasons were different, yet all found paradise in the same place.
Entering the world of moneyless living can be pretty scary. But what real adventure isn’t? Did humans make their biggest discoveries by staying comfortable? The good news for anyone who wants to explore is that more and more people are walking this path, putting up signposts, laying stepping stones, writing guidebooks. All anyone has to do is to decide that they want to go. That is the most difficult part.
This book is a very rough map of the forest. The money-free life is an adventure; and like any adventure, you should put the map away every now and again and see where the path leads. I recommend, if you are interested in exploring this way of living, that you find your own way. Every one of us is different and we live in different communities. There’s no one solution for all; our solutions must be locally driven to meet the needs of people and the environment in which they live. Living without money was how we all lived once, but that was a long time ago.
None of us are teachers; we are all students, learning from each other’s experience. I hope you find something in mine. Take what you find useful and stick the rest in the recycling bin of ideas.
BookHopper (
www.bookhopper.com
)
Book Crossing (
www.bookcrossing.com
)
Couchsurfing (
www.couchsurfing.com
)
Carshare (
www.carshare.com
and
www.nationalcarshare.com
)
Fergus Drennan (
www.wildmanwildfood.com
)
Free text messages: (
www.cbfsms.com
)
Freecycle (
www.freecycle.org
)
Freegle (
www.ilovefreegle.org
)
Freelender (
www.freelender.org
)
Global Freeloaders (
www.globalfreeloaders.com
)
GROFUN (
www.grofun.org.uk
)
Gumtree (
www.gumtree.com
)
Hospitality Club (
www.hospitalityclub.org
)
LETS (
www.letslinkuk.org
)
Liftshare (
www.liftshare.com
)
Money Saving Expert (
www.moneysavingexpert.com
)
ReaditSwapit (
www.readitswapit.co.uk
)
Selfsufficientish.com (
www.selfsufficientish.com
)
Skype (
www.skype.com
)
Streets Alive (
www.streetsalive.net
)
SUSTRANS (
www.sustrans.org.uk
)
Swishing (
www.swishing.org
)
Swaparamarazzmatazz (
www.myspace.com/swaparamarazzmatazz
)
The Freeconomy Community (
www.justfortheloveofit.org
)
The Ramblers Association (
www.ramblers.org.uk
)
Timebank (
www.timebanking.org
)
Transition Culture (
www.transitionculture.org
)
UK Freegans (
www.freegan.org.uk
)
INDEXWorld Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms (WWOOFing) (
www.wwoof.org
)
accommodation
see
shelter
acorns,
159
Adams, Chris,
34–5
Age of Stupid, The,
175
art exhibitions,
140
bachelor party,
88–9
bank runs,
6–7
BBC Radio Wales,
51
benders,
124
Bicyclette,
175
bills
see
no pre-payment of bills, law of
blewits,
158
blogs,
64
,
118
,
127–8
,
164
,
166
,
168
,
178
Book Crossing,
75
BookHopper,
75
Bristol Food Hub,
175
Buddhafield Festival,
144–8
carbon dioxide,
30
,
33
,
37
,
92
,
108
,
118–19
Carshare,
92
cell phones,
19
,
34
,
37
,
44–5
,
48
,
165
chanterelles,
158
Christmas,
88–93
cider,
134