The best things in life arefree
Imagine, theres no money. Thats what the Freeconomy movement is about: the joy of being a cashless community …..Shobhan Saxena | TNN
As a honcho at a dotcom firm rolling in cash, Mark Boyle seriously believed in the power of money. In this phase of his life, time flowed in a linear direction and life was all about money. Then he had a few chance encounters with a few men who altered the way he looked at the world around him. Boyle bumped into Hermann Hesses Siddhartha one day and saw the tortured mendicant taking a flying heron into his soul, slipping into a dead jackal on a sandy shore, turning into a skeleton, becoming dust mingling with air, and bouncing back to life in a new body. Boyle began to have doubts about his beliefs. Then Boyle met Richard Attenborough Gandhi and he cried like a baby. As he saw the Mahatma walking and talking and living his ex periments with truth, the techie began to look for a way out of the web of his existence. Then he came across The Prophet of Khalil Gibran and he cracked the problem of his one-dimen sional life: money was an illusive veil before the eyes. Boyle decided not to waste his time making money. And his brain began to buzz with a mil lion imaginations.
Born in a society where money talks big time and people talk about money all the time, this 28 year-old Irish lad from London began to work on a hypothesis: Imagine, theres no monies. Imag ine, thought Boyle, what will happen if tomor row all the money in the world evaporates? Noth ing, people will live as usual, he guessed. Imag ine if one could travel around the world, meet people, and make friends without spending a sin gle penny from your pocket? Wonderful, if you could do it, he imagined. But the crucial question was: how to go about it? The answer was simple just dont carry any money, offer your skills to people in exchange for food and drinks and shel ter, and just walk. Boyle got this answer from the Freeconomy Movement, a group that plans to cre ate a moneyless society based on community liv ing. He had walked into this movement after chucking his job at the firm he used to work with
Taking small steps for Freeconomists, Boyle set out on a 9,000-mile-long journey from Bristol in England to Porbunder in Gujarat on January 30, 2008, the 60th anniversary of Gandhis assas sination. To prove his point, he decided not to car ry any money in cash or credit cards or travellers cheques. With just some T-shirts, a few pairs of sandals, sunscreen bottles, a knife and some band ages, Boyle began to walk to Gandhis birthplace planning a journey through Europe, Turkey, Iran Afghanistan and Pakistan before finally arriving in India. I will be offering my skills to people. If I get food in return, its a bonus, Boyle said as he took his first step on his two-and-year-half journey on foot the longest walk ever on this planet to prove the basic philosophy of the movement: its possible to live without money.
As people offered him food and lodging in Glas tonbury and several other places in England, it seemed the Freeconomists were right about their contempt for the modern world and its useless money. But then, Boyle crossed the English Chan nel, walked into Calais in France, and his way was blocked by a huge wall of people who still be lieved in money. As he went from door to door of fering to work in peoples gardens in exchange for some food, harsh invectives like freeloading hippie and asylum seeker smashed into his ears. Out of food and water, without sleep and tired of staying in the cold, Boyle gave up his march and went back to England, using money to buy a ticket home.
Though Boyles mission failed, the Freecono mists have not given up. Now, as Boyle prepares to walk around the coast of Britain, the move ment is determined to prove that it is possible to make the transition from a money-based com munityless society to more of a community-based moneyless society. Born in the US a few years ago, the movement believes and preaches that people can actually live by sharing skills, tools space and land. A kind of green movement Freeconomists believe that the problems of grow ing poverty, oil crisis and climate change cannot be addressed unless we look at the root cause of all the problems cash, credit and profit and create a society based on sharing.
And the movements website (www.justforth eloveofit.org) promotes its values in a unique way The members are not expected to post their pho tographs because we live in a society where peo ple are judged by their appearances; they get only three chances to email a community mem ber because this movement is not about making virtual contacts, its about making real contacts and there are no chat rooms because if you want to chat, go and do some gardening together. For get the money part, for some people the idea is quite charming, something you could actually do just for the love of it. But it isnt easy. I offered to repair my neighbours leaking roof in exchange for using his terrace for gardening and he thought I wanted to grab his house. Some other people thought I was some kind of a freak, when I of fered to work for them without money, says a young man who is trying to create a community of Freeconomists in India. People are so used to thinking in terms of money that an idea like this makes them look at us as freeloaders.
Freeloading is the last thing on Freeconomists mind. Boyle calls his journey to India a pilgrim age. Though his cashless venture failed, Boyle succeeded in proving a point: you really don need too many things or tonnes of money to get by. A man or a woman, the Freeconomists believe can travel anywhere in the world by planting trees, chopping wood, butchering a hog, pitching manure, making pizzas, fixing electrical gadgets or teaching kids in a village without a school Maybe its a good idea which is not yet ready to walk. Till then, money talks.
ON GANDHIS PATH
I could spend a year writing about what Gandhi means to me and about how he showed us the ultimate solution to all of the negative manifestations of this world. And I emphasise the word showed he didnt tell us, he showed us… All I want to do is bring the man to your attention at a time when his message and life is more relevant than ever…. When someone asks me what motivates me to walk to India without money, I simply say Gandhi. To live for anything less than his ideals would be, to me, to strive for something less than my truth and I cannot do that anymore…. I do not walk alone. I carry His message in my heart and soul and when times are hard Ill remember the infinitely greater sacrifices the Great Soul made not just humanity, but for every creature that dwelt upon the soil he so loved. Mark Boyle, before his aborted march to India