Some guy in the guardian:
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
I thought what he did was an interesting exercise but this article has smug guardian readers up in arms about who is the biggest arsehole of their entire ilk!
Some more details: He loved Ghandi
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.
The story progressed to working on an organic farm and one afternoon coming to a revelation which led to him going off the grid (people found that admirable).
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.
..
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
The ‘social homeopath’ forraged food and used newspaper to wipe his ass. The problem is that you see extremes of lefties on the comments section. It reminded me of the spectrum of people on tv with the Green party. Some guardian readers thought it was a great idea at the start. Then people start whining about the smell of his breath and how the newspaper he used for toilet paper was not his to take. There is not enough rubbish in the bins for everyone either. How could he have done this without vulcanised rubber and bronze age tools. What would happen if he got sick and had no money.
I didnt venture to page 2 of the comments, I could’nt take any more.
guardian.co.uk
