The Moneyless Man

by Boyle, Mark

  Most people claim to want ‘peace’, without really knowing what that means. Peace isn’t going to fall down on us from above; it is a mosaic whose pieces are our daily interactions with each other and the planet. My personal interactions were, all too often, far removed from the true meaning of peace. I moaned about being too busy, complained about people buying stuff I didn’t agree with and generally acted less positively than I could wish. Moneyless living had begun as a means to a more peaceful way of living, but had become an end in itself, just like money started as a means to easier transactions but became an end in itself. Paradox’s workshop helped me check myself and get back to my original intentions.

  The second festival I managed to get to was Sunrise Off-grid, the little sister of a much bigger festival, Sunrise Celebration. This was the off-grid festival’s first year. It grew out of Dan Hurring’s desire, the founder of Sunrise, to take issues such as climate change and peak oil seriously and to show other festival organizers how to put on a really fantastic festival, have a lot of fun, yet cause very little impact to the environment. Dan had gotten in touch in May to ask if I would do a couple of talks on living without money and I gladly agreed. A couple of two-hour talks was much easier than the five days’ work I did at Buddhafield, although I helped in the alternative economics section in my spare time.

  Sunrise Off-grid was four days of workshops on every aspect of society, from economy to ecology, education to energy, food to friendship, and politics to pottery. In the evenings, it was all about music and dance.

  That is a point in itself. We’ve never had more money or cheaper energy. If environmental destruction made us happier, that would be something. Frying the planet would have some justification if it made us joyful. But why haven’t we become happier as we’ve become financially wealthier? Richard Easterlin, an economist at the University of Southern California, believes that a large part of the problem is the consumerist treadmill we are on; never satisfied and always wanting more. He says:

  People are wedded to the idea that more money will bring them more happiness. When they think of the effects of more money, they are failing to factor in the fact that when they get more money they are going to want even more money. When they get more money, they are going to want a bigger house. They never have enough money but what they do is sacrifice their family life and health to get more money.

  The Austrian millionaire businessman, Karl Rabeder, realized this simple fact and gave away everything he owned, including his $4.5 million fortune. Asked why, he said:

  Money is counter-productive – it prevents happiness to come. For a long time I believed that more wealth and luxury automatically meant more happiness. I come from a very poor family where the rules were to work more to achieve more material things and I applied this for many years. But more and more I heard the words: ‘Stop what you are doing now – all this luxury and consumerism – and start your real life’. I had the feeling I was working as a slave for things that I did not wish for or need.

  I had the privilege of meeting a few of the people who’ve really inspired and influenced me. One, Patrick Whitefield, Permaculture guru and author of The Earth Care Manual, came to one of my talks. Knowing someone in the crowd knows significantly more than you about almost everything you are talking about can be a little unnerving, to say the least, but thankfully he was entirely supportive.

  I also went to an interesting talk by the founder of the ‘Transition’ movement, Rob Hopkins. Rob’s talks are always intriguing, but this one was particularly fascinating. He had to limit his presentation (for which he used a data projector) to just an hour. If he hadn’t, the band due to play a little later on the same stage wouldn’t have had enough power for amplification. This highlighted the implications of taking responsibility for your own energy needs. When his talk ended and questions began, Rob turned off his wind-powered laptop, whereas ordinarily, plugged into mains electricity, he’d have left it on. Whenever you produce your own of anything, you don’t waste a drop.

  I went to a workshop led by Theo Simon, lead singer and lyricist of Seize the Day, one of the bands I’d been delighted to see at Buddhafield. Theo has spent twenty years writing and performing songs that have inspired activists in the UK and beyond to keep campaigning for social justice. Constantly on the frontline himself, Theo had spent much of the summer of 2009 campaigning with the workers of the Vestas Wind Turbine factory, on the Isle of Wight, who had lost their jobs because their bosses, who’d made a profit of $114 million in the previous three months, realized they could make more if they moved their operations to the US. Workers who’d joined just months earlier, advised that their jobs were safe, had taken out mortgages, only to be given barely any notice and just $300 as compensation for their job losses. Others had lost jobs they’d spent their working lives committed to. That’s green capitalism for you: a symptom of a system based on competition instead of co-operation.

  Theo’s workshop was called Conscious Activism. Over the years, he has seen a lot of brutality, mostly from police ordered to defend the interests of those who bring millions of pounds into the UK economy. As anyone who has been on a protest, direct action or non-violent demonstration to stop an incredible injustice knows, some police officers can be very heavy handed. During the workshop, Theo described many of the incidents he’s witnessed and it wasn’t easy listening. Every single person in that workshop was touched to their core by how he talked about the police, despite his harrowing experiences of them. Activists often talk like they ‘want to save the earth’. The earth will be fine, in time; it’s humanity that may need saving. But who do they want to ‘save’ it for? Only other activists? Only for activists and the working classes? Or for everyone: executive bankers, environmentalists, police officers, human rights activists, and politicians alike?

  ACCOMMODATION FOR FREE

  The way we live today means we often have to travel. But you don’t need to pay for accommodation when you get there!

  In the country, there is always the tried and trusty tent but in the city this usually isn’t an option (though I did wake up on urban soccer fields a few times during my year!). And depending where you live, camping may be just a summer option.

  A number of great websites look after this department of the moneyless movement. I’ve found the best to be Couchsurfing (www.couchsurfing.com), which matches couches available to people who need them, in almost every town on the planet. Not only does this mean accommodation for free, you get to make new friends and access local knowledge of where to go in whatever part of the world you find yourself. I met one of my closest friends, Sarah, when she came to stay on the couch of my old houseboat for a few weeks.

  I love couchsurfing, because it is based on a ‘pay-it-forward’ ideology. It has proved hugely successful but, like Freeconomy and Liftshare, it depends on you helping a stranger for free when your turn comes round.

  Others sites include Hospitality Club (www.hospitalityclub.org) and Global Freeloaders (www.globalfreeloaders.com), which both work in a very similar way to couchsurfing.

  If we are genuinely interested in preventing the worst repercussions of climate change and depletion of resources, we need to engage with and have compassion for everyone, not just those who have similar views to our own. Turning things around environmentally will have to involve everyone, including the police officers ordered, by their bosses, to prevent such change happening, but who, for the most part, do a fantastic job of cleaning up the mess that society creates.

  This was particularly relevant to me. I wanted people from all walks of life to get involved in the Freeconomy Community, not just the usual suspects. Again, I realized that my thoughts were no more right than anyone else’s; merely another opinion to throw into the melting pot of life.

  The festivals were a time of fun, friendship and change, but they also reminded me of a number of important lessons I’d forgotten along the way. And they gave me a great chance to promote the Freeconomy Community. I was a
mazed at how many people approached me, after the talks I gave, with stories about how they’ve used it and the friends they met through it.

  USING THE LOCAL FREECONOMY COMMUNITY

  The Freeconomy website took quite a lot of my time that summer; writing about my year had given it a lot of exposure. But it wasn’t all one-way traffic. I used it myself both for giving and receiving: I shared camping equipment with a girl who was going cycling for four weeks in August and built an integrated cash flow forecast and profit and loss account spreadsheet for a member who worked for a local charity bidding for funding to continue its work. This case was particularly important for me. Ironically, I was helping the charity acquire financing, but I’m a realist as well as an idealist; I knew the charity couldn’t survive without money at this stage and, without it, wouldn’t be able to continue its great work for the children of Bristol and Bath.

  I also received a number of times through Freeconomy. I learned how to use a cut-throat razor, which by summer was an essential skill: the beard that had kept me warm through the winter had long since outlived its usefulness. And notable help came when my laptop broke down. Unless I’d found someone willing to give me an old one, I wouldn’t have been able to continue to raise awareness of the issues that laid the philosophical foundations of what I was doing or administer the Freeconomy website. But it just so happened that the following week’s Freeskilling evening was on ‘How to make a computer’. Ben Smith, the Freeskilling teacher for the evening, offered to put one together for me. He also showed me how to install Linux as its operating system. He didn’t just offer this help to me, he offered it to everyone in the class, together with continuing, free, support for those who needed it. Ben wasn’t really anti-Microsoft, just very enthusiastic about people using free and open source software. Thanks to Ben, I got back part of my ability to communicate with the world.

  Without the support of the Freeconomy Community, it would have been much more difficult to complete a year without money. But that’s exactly the point; it shouldn’t have to be something you do alone or a life that must be difficult. As new projects like Freeconomy, Couchsurfing, Freegle, Freecycle, and Liftshare emerge every year, living without money is getting easier and easier. And if I can do it, anyone can. I am, genuinely, one of the least talented people you are ever likely to meet.

  I had a fantastic time during the summer. Though I was usually on the go from five in the morning to midnight, almost every day, it really didn’t feel like work and play were two different things. I loved what I did during the day and had an even greater appreciation of the time I managed to share with friends at night. Many evenings, a bunch of my musically inclined friends gathered around the campfire. Alex played the fiddle, Wally strummed the guitar, and we all sang and danced until the temperature told us it was time to cover the embers and get into bed. It did make me think how much easier my experiment would have been in a country like Spain, with more sunshine all year round. But running off to continental Europe would have slightly missed the point; models of sustainable living are needed in the UK just as much as anywhere else.

  The summer solstice passed. While many people celebrate this day, I absolutely hate it. After the solstice, the days get shorter and shorter, and I had come to love the warm evenings that seemed to go on forever. But, though my first moneyless summer had come to an end, some of the best days were yet to be.

  13

  THE CALM BEFORE THE STORM

  My tiny collection of eight CDs, nestled in a nook above my bed, had gathered a thick layer of dust. I could never quite work out why I continued to hold on to them. Most were albums that featured in the soundtrack to my teenage years; I guess I kept them to cling to a time when all that mattered was that gorgeous girl down the road and who Manchester United were playing at the weekend. I also suspected I was holding on to them until the time I might re-enter the world of outlets, those unlikely gateways to the beautiful realm of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars.

  It had been nine months since I’d played those discs. Nine months since I’d bought my friends a drink or taken a train ride to the coast. But there was a strange sense of comfort in the dust. It was a sign of time passing. Every tiny layer added meant another week closer to accomplishing what I’d set out to achieve.

  It was fall. The longer it went on the less I cared about making it to the end. The finishing line wasn’t so appealing. In fact, the thing that weighed most heavily on my mind was the thought of going back. I had let go of so much mental and physical baggage and never felt so liberated or so free. What would I do? Would I go back to a job in the city, get a nice new apartment and slowly drift back into a ‘normal’ life? Or were the slopes I had climbed for nine months merely the foothills of an entire mountain range?

  After a coolish summer, the sunshine eventually came towards the end of August, which pleasantly coincided with a brief lull in the chaos of my life. Although I appreciated the gift of life a bit more every day, I was tired. While my friends took their summer vacations abroad, I kept the weeds down. For rest and quiet time, a couple of days away in the woods was as good as I’d got. I decided to make the most of the fantastic fall weather that England enjoys and take some time out. The end of my year was rapidly approaching and I had a feeling that the slow life I was advocating to journalists would suddenly become the fast life again. I had to make big decisions about what I was going to do after my year was up; I needed thinking time, which thus far had proved elusive.

  Fall is, without doubt, my most cherished time of year. The sunsets in September are wonderful; on clear evenings, my entire valley looked incredibly rusty. The birds too seemed to realize it was their last chance to have some fun; the swallows that lived around my trailer spent the last few hours of light immersed in a ritual dance only they understood. One evening, out for a short pre-dinner walk, I had to stop in my tracks, as hundreds of these little creatures flew chaotically around me, sometimes just inches from my body. The swallows’ dance seemed to go on for hours. At moments like this I really appreciated how privileged I was to live this way, in stark contrast to a commute through inner-city Bristol on such an evening.

  And fall is the perfect time to go adventuring. My love of both camping and foraging meant that, for the next month, there would be many more days when work and play remained one indivisible whole.

  WILD FOOD FORAGING ADVENTURES

  I’d decided to pack in as much camping and foraging as I possibly could. In September, every possible gap in my diary was filled, heading off with one friend or another on a long walk or ride into the English wilderness, armed with baskets and bags for gathering food. This also proved to be a refreshingly successful alternative to going to bars or restaurants on dates. I was surprised by my rate of success in asking women out to take a break from the norm. This was strangely life-affirming, reassuring me that not everyone was interested only in how much I owned or earned. It gave me hope that somewhere out there, amid the fields of mass consumption, stood the Moneyless Woman, searching the horizon for her Pauper Charming. I wasn’t convinced many of them would be interested in it other than very part-time, but the hope sustained my weeding.

  One of my September foraging trips was a completely last-minute decision to go camping with fifteen friends for a long weekend of food, fun, fire, and friendship. We grabbed a map and spun a bottle to see what direction we’d take. It pointed us west. This particular short break wasn’t about the destination, in the way that previous vacations abroad had been. The journey itself was the vacation; where we decided to rest our heads for the night was almost irrelevant. The journey’s beauty lay in its effortlessness. Because it was so spontaneous, we had little time to get any food together, though I harvested as much as I could carry to share with the others. But the experience wasn’t really about getting the food together before we went; it was about gathering it as we went. We picked food as it appeared along the hedges and fields that enclosed the paths we wandered.

 
; Many of the group really wanted to find out about the varieties of edible fungi. When you speak to people about foraging, the first thing that usually comes into their heads is mushrooms. Mushrooms, in some respects, have a terribly unjustified reputation; the vast majority of fungi are safe to eat. Having said that, pick yourself a handful of Ivory Funnels instead of Scotch Bonnets (both often grow in the same place) and you’ll have an uphill battle to survive. Just a forkful of Death Cap mushrooms (a fungus I threaten Fergus with weekly if he doesn’t teach me a new skill) can kill an adult. This sounds a bit scary, but it shouldn’t be. I have very little idea what I’m doing and I am still alive. So it made a lot of the crew very happy when we stumbled on a giant puffball among a field of nettles. For many it was their first puffball and because of its size – as big as a soccer ball – everyone was really excited. It was big enough to feed all of us for lunch; absolutely delicious fried with olive oil and garlic.

  Another much-loved fungus we found along the way that weekend were chanterelles, a yellow mushroom that smells ever so slightly of apricots. Our experience of finding these was much the same as Dorothy Hartley’s, in her book, Food of England: ‘You find them suddenly in the autumn woods, sometimes clustered so close that they look like a torn golden shawl dropped amongst the dead leaves and sticks’. Chanterelles can be hard to see, camouflaged in the leafy carpet of the forest, but their taste makes it well worth keeping a careful eye out. We also found field mushrooms and blewits (a common fungus in grassy pastures), adding even more flavor and texture to our evening’s meals. But we didn’t plan to live only on mushrooms for four days. They wouldn’t have sustained us for the twenty-five miles we walked each day. We also needed to look for anything with a high protein content: the most obvious source was nuts.