More people are exploring the potential of living
without money as they realise that it is the systems surrounding money
itself that may be at the root of many problems in our culture. From the
‘60’s ‘turn on, tune, in drop out’ which had ‘hippies’ living on the
dole in tents, to the demonised ‘travellers’ and other alternative
cultures, people struggle to cast-off dependence on money.
Heidemarie Schwermer
In her early 50s, Schwermer decided to see what it’d be like to leave
her cushy job as a psychotherapist and live money-free, a journey that’s
been documented in the film “Living Without Money.”
Sixteen years later, she hasn’t looked back. Schwermer, now pushing 70,
recently took a pause during her stay in Hamelin, Germany to chat with
Business Insider about why she decided to leave everything behind.
WWII refugees, Schwermer’s family fled from Prussia to Germany in the
1940s. Her father had owned a successful coffee roastery and kept a
nanny and full-time gardener on his payroll. “We were well-off but ended
up as riff-raff,” she says. “Then we became rich again and (we) had to
defend it. I’ve always had to myself, whether we were rich or
poor.”
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Throughout her life, she became fascinated with finding ways to live
without money. A former teacher and psychotherapist, Schwermer formed
Germany’s first exchange circle, “Give And Take Central” in 1994. The
group helped locals exchange simple services like babysitting or house
cleaning for tangible goods. “I noticed that I needed money less and
less,” she told Business Insider. “And so I thought, I can try to live
one year without money.”
Schwermer attempted to live without money at least four times, she says,
but it wasn’t until a friend asked her to house sit for three months
that she finally took the plunge. “I said, ‘The time is right. Now I’ll
do it.’ I gave everything away.” That included her apartment, which she
sold first, and everything that wouldn’t fit into a small suitcase.
What was only meant to last 12 months became her life for the next 16
years. “I only wanted to try to do an experiment and in that year, I
noticed a new life,” she said. “I didn’t want to go back to the old
life.”
Family and friends weren’t on board when she pitched the idea. She only
sees her two children and three grandchildren a few times per year, but
says they’ve warmed up to her come-and-go lifestyle. “Now they’re proud
of what I’m doing. It’s enough for us,” she says.
Daniel SueloDaniel Suelo lives in a
cave. Unlike the average American—wallowing in credit-card debt,
clinging to a mortgage, terrified of the next downsizing at the
office—he isn’t worried about the economic crisis. That’s because he
figured out that the best way to stay solvent is to never be solvent in
the first place. Nine years ago, in the autumn of 2000, Suelo decided to
stop using money. He just quit it, like a bad drug habit.
His dwelling, hidden high in a canyon lined with waterfalls, is an hour
by foot from the desert town of Moab, Utah, where people who know him
are of two minds: He’s either a latter-day prophet or an irredeemable
hobo. Suelo’s blog, which he maintains free at the Moab Public Library,
suggests that he’s both. “When I lived with money, I was always
lacking,” he writes. “Money represents lack. Money represents things in
the past (debt) and things in the future (credit), but money never
represents what is present.”
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On a warm day in early spring, I clamber along a set of red-rock cliffs
to the mouth of his cave, where I find a note signed with a smiley face:
CHRIS, FEEL FREE TO USE ANYTHING, EAT ANYTHING (NOTHING HERE IS MINE).
From the outside, the place looks like a hollowed teardrop, about the
size of an Amtrak bathroom, with enough space for a few pots that hang
from the ceiling, a stove under a stone eave, big buckets full of beans
and rice, a bed of blankets in the dirt, and not much else. Suelo’s been
here for three years, and it smells like it.
Night falls, the stars wink, and after an hour, Suelo tramps up the
cliff, mimicking a raven’s call—his salutation—a guttural, high-pitched
caw. He’s lanky and tan; yesterday he rebuilt the entrance to his cave,
hauling huge rocks to make a staircase. His hands are black with dirt,
and his hair, which is going gray, looks like a bird’s nest, full of
dust and twigs from scrambling in the underbrush on the canyon floor.
Grinning, he presents the booty from one of his weekly rituals,
scavenging on the streets of Moab: a wool hat and gloves, a winter
jacket, and a white nylon belt, still wrapped in plastic, along with
Carhartt pants and sandals, which he’s wearing. He’s also scrounged cans
of tuna and turkey Spam and a honeycomb candle. All in all, a nice haul
from the waste product of America. “You made it,” he says. I hand him a
bag of apples and a block of cheese I bought at the supermarket, but the
gift suddenly seems meager.
Suelo lights the candle and stokes a fire in the stove, which is an old
blackened tin, the kind that Christmas cookies might come in. It’s
hooked to a chain of soup cans segmented like a caterpillar and fitted
to a hole in the rock. Soon smoke billows into the night and the cave is
warm. I think of how John the Baptist survived on honey and locusts in
the desert. Suelo, who keeps a copy of the Bible for bedtime reading, is
satisfied with a few grasshoppers fried in his skillet.
Mark Boyle
“I live without cash – and I manage just fine
Armed with a caravan, solar laptop and toothpaste made from washed-up
cuttlefish bones, Mark Boyle gave up using cash.
In six years of studying economics, not once did I hear the word
“ecology”. So if it hadn’t have been for the chance purchase of a video
called Gandhi in the final term of my degree, I’d probably have ended up
earning a fine living in a very respectable job persuading Indian
farmers to go GM, or something useful like that. The little chap in the
loincloth taught me one huge lesson – to be the change I wanted to see
in the world. Trouble was, I had no idea back then what that change was.
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After managing a couple of organic food companies made me realise that
even “ethical business” would never be quite enough, an afternoon’s
philosophising with a mate changed everything. We were looking at the
world’s issues – environmental destruction, sweatshops, factory farms,
wars over resources – and wondering which of them we should dedicate our
lives to. But I realised that I was looking at the world in the same way
a western medical practitioner looks at a patient, seeing symptoms and
wondering how to firefight them, without any thought for their root
cause. So I decided instead to become a social homeopath, a
pro-activist, and to investigate the root cause of these symptoms.
One of the critical causes of those symptoms is the fact we no longer
have to see the direct repercussions our purchases have on the people,
environment and animals they affect. The degrees of separation between
the consumer and the consumed have increased so much that we’re
completely unaware of the levels of destruction and suffering embodied
in the stuff we buy. The tool that has enabled this separation 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 probably wouldn’t contaminate it.
So to be the change I wanted to see in the world, it unfortunately meant
I was going to have to give up cash, which I initially decided to do for
a year. I got myself a caravan, parked it up on an organic farm where I
was volunteering and kitted it out to be off-grid. Cooking would now be
outside – rain or shine – on a rocket stove; mobile and laptop would be
run off solar; I’d use wood I either coppiced or scavenged to heat my
humble abode, and a compost loo for humanure.
Food was the next essential. There are four legs to the food-for-free
table: foraging wild food, growing your own, bartering, and using waste
grub, of which there is loads. On my first day, I fed 150 people a
three-course meal with waste and foraged food. Most of the year, though,
I ate my own crops.
To get around, I had a bike and trailer, and the 34-mile commute to the
city doubled up as my gym subscription. For loo roll I’d relieve the
local newsagents of its papers (I once wiped my arse with a story about
myself); it’s not double-quilted, but I quickly got used to it. For
toothpaste I used washed-up cuttlefish bone with wild fennel seeds, an
oddity for a vegan.
What have I learned? That friendship, not money, is real security. That
most western poverty is of the spiritual kind. That independence is
really interdependence. And that if you don’t own a plasma screen TV,
people think you’re an extremist.
People often ask me what I miss about my old world of lucre and
business. Stress. Traffic jams. Bank statements. Utility bills.
Well, there was the odd pint of organic ale with my mates down the
local. |