Don't ask Mark Boyle for a (monetary) loan
Courtesy of Oneworld
Just about anyone will tell you how the best things in life are free but how many really try to prove the point? One such adventurer is Mark Boyle, author of the new book The Moneyless Man: A Year of Freeconomic Living and the kind of human who says stuff like this:
There's got to be more to life than carbon footprints, climate change and peak oil. The new design for society many of us want shouldn't just be better for the environment, it should be a shedload more fun into the bargain. As Emma Goldman, a hugely influential early 20th-century political philosopher and activist, once said: "If I can't dance, I don't want to be part of your revolution."
He adds: "If life doesn't inspire me to get up and do a little Irish jig every morning before breakfast, what the hell is the point of it?"
Mark Boyle spent a year living without money and spent a few minutes telling me about it. Our interview is below.
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Living Off the Land and Freebies
My Conversation With Mark Boyle
PG: How did you manage shelter?
Mark Boyle: I got a caravan for free from Freecycle. Two years earlier I sold my own home (a converted yacht in Bristol harbor) to pay the development costs of creating the Freeconomy Community website. I kitted the caravan out to be off-grid—compost toilet, rocket stove for a cooker, a solar shower, wood-burning shower, hot-tub at river for washing depending on the weather and my mood, a wood-burner for heating, solar panels for my limited energy needs.
PG: Food?
MB: I grow my own, forage food from the wilds, barter for grains which I haven't been able to grow yet, and do a bit of dumpster diving, though the latter makes up only about 1-5% of my diet, the majority of it I give away to others who need it more than me.
PG: Transportation?
MB: A bike, a bike trailer, un-puncturable tires, and a dynamo for lighting.
PG: What surprised you most about this experience?
MB: How little I now miss all the stuff I previously thought I could never life without. In fact, letting go off my addiction to it has been incredibly liberating.
PG: Is there a question no one has asked you yet about all this? If so, what is it and what would be your answer?
MB: How does it feel to be a man, conditioned like every other by social culture in western countries, without money? My answer: It certainly does bring up male ego stuff to begin with, stuff that I thought I had worked through many years ago, but obviously hadn't. I grew up in Ireland, where people battle at the bar to be the first one to be able to buy a drink. Everywhere we have a culture where one of the most accepted ways of 'giving' is by buying presents and cards, bringing dates out for dinner and so on. I could now do none of this, and it was difficult in the first few months. But I worked through my issues and now it no longer bothers me. I feel the more each of us can recognize, and be aware of, our own personal issues, and work through them, the more chance we have of living in a caring, peaceful, and respectful world.
