At the moment money has been on my mind as I try to overcome a rather strange dilemma.
The dilemma being 'Is money worth it?'
Money was created to organise trade, to organise the value of products being traded, effectively making trade fairer.
The control of credit and debt.
Now to the western world, money is everything. If you don't have money, you're on the streets begging for your survival. You push yourself as far as you can to obtain the highest paid job and live with more money.
The only problem I seem to see is how humanity is with it. To be more specific, people are enslaved by it, to the point where it can actually control your mind.
Think about it, money has been the cause of murder, suicide, depression, greed, poverty, war; it can drive a man to do anything, when in reality, it's a piece of paper. You give a five pound note to someone in a primitive tribe, they pay no mind to it, it means nothing to them.
As a Marxist, I find it mind baffling how people can be so greedy to watch a third of the world starve whilst idly and ignorantly sitting playing 'Angry Birds' on their new iPad. The selfishness of the wealthy drives me mad to the point where I have come to despise the very thing they are obsessed with. For ideal world, the higher class need to abandon this petty sense of greed so that all of humanity can obtain the very basic of necessities, but after seeing wealth provoked greed in first person, this level of altruism is just an idealists' dream.
However, I'm on this rather unfamiliar subject as I recently have come across a few people that have grabbed my interest, people who have abandoned money. People such as Mark Boyle and his followers, an English fellow named Mhee and Daniel Suelo, whom has not so long ago been in the spotlight of the media for his financial decisions. They have all decided to live freely, growing their own food, living in the wilderness and fending for themselves; due to many reasons including modern consumerism, a despise for western, obsessive, materialistic lifestyles and the corruption money causes worldwide. One thing they all support is the act of freely giving and receiving. Now, you could almost say I idolise them for leaving all of their first world comforts in their past and making such a daunting decision, a decision 99% of society would find nothing less than ludicrous or extreme.
The question is, are they happy?
After watching many interviews with each of them and even emailing Mark Boyle arranging to meet him in person, I'd say yes, they are. They live freely and aren't weighed down with the, at times painful, aspect of money.
In 'Moneyless in Moab,' Suelo is heard saying:
"Do you really think that I'm suffering more than you are? Or that I'm suffering at all? They're the ones that are popping anti-depressants just to get through their day so that they can be a cog in the machinery,''
and I think he raises a perfectly valid point.
People in the Western World are encouraged to hold a dream which they wish to accomplish in their lifetime, exaggerated by the media's idea of the 'Ideal Life.'
This dream is always the same; flashy cars, luxurious holidays, mansions and enough success for them to abandon labour and spend the rest of their lives with the cash they have rolling into their bank.
The problem being, only a small percentage of the population only fulfil the dream they have held with them their entire lives, spending the rest of their lives working away their debt and struggling to earn enough cash to keep them warm in winter.
These levels of dissatisfaction are something these moneyless members of society do not know.
Mark Boyle was the centre of the media's spotlight a few years ago when he decided this style of life was the one for him. At first, it was just a trial, until he found he enjoyed this lifestyle and describes it as stress free and practical, not luxurious, but enough comfort to keep him satisfied. He lives in his caravan, grows his own food, barters with city people for grains, washes in rivers and lives generally isolated from civilisation. Unpredictably, he seems to have set a trend. He has enough followers joining him in this way of life that he is actually opening up a village named 'The Freeconomy Village' in Devon, where money is forbidden and they work together freely for survival. There's just something about living this way that seem to I idolise.
The thing which has raised my awareness is the public's opinion on these people. The majority of people consider decisions like theirs to be radical and 'stupid.'
My question being, Why are the modern world so cynical of their instincts?
I mean, literally to the point where they think their very use is daft.
Surviving in the wild within the natural Eco-system is something ancestors of ours did for thousands of years, without that we wouldn't be at the level of civilisation we are today, yet people still frown upon it.
Take for instance an apple, you eat an apple and throw away the core, though inside that very core are the seeds to build an apple tree, effectively, if grown well, giving you an unlimited supply of apples. Yet people don't have the patience nor the required effort necessary for this to work. Instead they choose to throw away the core and go and buy another portion of processed apples. To me, it just seems illogical.
Should one aspire to work their way up the capitalist chain in hope that one day they'll reach the materialistic life of luxury; ignorant towards the world and focussed only on personal wealth? The chance being extremely unlikely, yet possible and happiness not being definite in the end.
Or should one give up this dream early and live consuming little and involving themselves even less with the obsessive ways of self-obsessed first world consumers; living peacefully, more freely but focussing mainly on survival?
I have a constant admiration for arts and making a career out of them would be a dream; music, film, theatre, art. If I had wealth, I'd be certain to share it with those in need and I'd love to travel the world to places less fortune and help to make a difference. Only problem being money is key to a travelling lifestyle. (From the type of travel I would have in mind.) Or would keeping one to oneself, plodding through life seeing the world for what it is, not for materialism, and worrying little of financial stresses be more appropriate in the journey towards happiness? As it is of course happiness, not wealth, that every man and woman wishes to obtain. The myth of a correlation between money and happiness is just another unreliable tale told by the media to get you working as a ''cog in the machinery.''
