Is it possible to live without spending any cash whatsoever? After becoming disillusioned with consumer society, Mark Boyle decided to give it a try.
I suppose the seeds of my decision to give up money were sown seven years ago, in my final semester of a business and economics degree in Ireland, when I stumbled upon a DVD about Gandhi. He said we should "be the change we want to see in the world". Trouble was, I hadn't the faintest idea what change I wanted to be back then. I spent the next five years managing organic food companies, but by 2007, I realised that even "ethical business" would never be quite enough.
I believe the key reason for so many problems in the world today is the fact we no longer have to see directly the repercussions of our actions. The degrees of separation between the consumer and the consumed have increased so much that people are completely unaware of the levels of destruction and suffering involved in the production of the food and other "stuff" we buy. The tool that has enabled this disconnection is money.
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 decor. If we had to clean our own drinking water, we wouldn't waste it so freely.
As long as money exists, these symptoms will surely persist. So I decided, last November, to give it up, for one year initially, and reconnect directly with the things I use and consume.
I got myself a caravan, parked it up on an organic farm where l was volunteering and kitted it out not to use normal electricity. Mobile and laptop would run on solar energy; I'd use wood I either cut or scavenged to heat my humble home; cooking would be on a rocket stove. You can't use the rocket stove indoors, so this meant that for the next 12 months, I was going to have to cook outside.
I was touch overwhelmed by the thought of cooking in the snow, rain and northerly winds of a British winter. But, surprisingly, it has become one of the joys of my life. While using the stove, I watched the moon rise in winter and the sun set in summer in the time it took to prepare my evening meal. Birds in the trees ......... become my new source of music. If I still lived in my old house, I wouldn't have learned so much about nature and wildlife.
Food was the next essential. There are four legs to the food-for-free table: foraging wild food, .......... Most of the year I ate my own crops.
what I soon realised is that, in a moneyless world, everything takes much more time. Hand-washing my clothes in a sink of cold water, using laundry liquid made by boiling up some nuts on my rocket stove, can take two hours, instead of 10 minutes using a washing machine. Finding stuff in skips – such as the steamer I cook with – takes far longer than popping out to the shops for one, and sorting out the compost toilet is a lot more hassle than flushing it "away".
Cycling the 36-mile round-trip to Bristol also takes a lot more time and energy than driving or catching the bus or train, but it's also an economical alternative to my old gym subscription, and I find cycling much more enjoyable than using motorised vehicles.
The point is, I'd much rather have my time consumed making my own bread outdoors than kill it watching some reality TV show in a so-called "living" room. Where money once provided me with my primary sense of security, I now find it in friends and the local community. Some of my closest mates are people I only met because I had to build real relationships with others based on trust and kindness, not money.