Tom Hodgkinson "The freedom manifesto"

"The consumer age offers many comforts, but few freedoms"

Through school and work, we encourage each other to believe that we are not free and we are not responsible. We great a world of obligations, duties and things to be done. We forget that life should be lived with spontaneity, joy, love.

Paul Rafalgue "The right to be lazy"

A strange mania governs the working class of
all countries in which capitalist civilization rules, a
mania that results in the individual and collective
misery that prevails in modern society. This is the
love of work, the furious mania for work, extending
to the exhaustion of the individual and his
descendants. The parsons, the political economists,
and the moralists, instead of contending against
this mental aberration, have canonized work. Blind
and limited human beings, they have wished to be
wiser than their God; weak and unworthy
creatures, they have sought to honor what their
God has damned.


Now, if the mania for work is rooted in the laborers, if it smothers all other
natural instincts, and if, on the other hand, the amount of work demanded by
society is necessarily limited by the consumption and the quantity of raw material,
why devour in six months the work of the whole year? Why not rather equalize it
during the whole twelve months, and compel every worker to content himself with
five or six hours’ daily work the year through, instead of getting indigestion by
working twelve hours daily for six months? When their daily portion of work is
secured to them, the workers will no longer be jealous of one another; no longer will
they tear the work out of each others’ hands and the bread from each others’ mouth;
then, no longer exhausted in body and soul, will they begin to practice the virtues of
laziness. What the workers themselves refuse to perceive manufacturers have
demanded in the interest of capitalist exploitation: a legal limitation of working
hours

When the working class shall have thoroughly liberated itself from the vice that
governs it and degrades its nature, and shall have arisen in its giant strength, not
to demand the famous “Rights of Man” which are but the rights of capitalist
exploitation, not to proclaim the “Right to Work” which is only the “Right to
Misery,” but to forge an iron law forbidding every one to work more than three
hours a day, will the old earth, trembling with bliss, feel a new world stir within it.
But how can a manly decision be expected from a proletariat corrupted by
capitalist morals!
Like Christ, the embodied suffering of the slavery of ancient times, our proletariat, men, women and children, for a century has climbed the rough Mount
Calvary of suffering. For a century compulsory work has broken their bones,
martyred their flesh, destroyed their nerves; for a century hunger has tormented
their stomachs and stupefied their brains.
O, Laziness, have thou mercy upon this eternal misery! O, Laziness, mother of
the arts and the noble virtues, be thou balsam for the pains of mankind!

Proletarians, made stupid by the Dogma of Work, do you hear the language of
these philosophers, which is hidden away from you with jealous care? A citizen who
gives his work for money lowers himself to the rank of slavery; he commits a crimeThe Right To Be Lazy
Socialist Labor Party 27 www.slp.org
that deserves a whole year’s imprisonment!!

James Allan "Nii nagu inimene mõtleb"

Tegu on mõtte õis ning rõõm ja kannatused selle viljad, seega kogub inimene omaenda põlluharimise magusat ja kibedat saaki.

Inimene loob end ise või lõhub end ise, mõttearsenaliga sepistab ta relvad, millega hävitab end; samas kujundab ta vahendid, millega  ta ehitab endale taevalikud rõõmu-, jõu ja rahupaleed. Õigete valikute ja igete mõtete rakenamisega ronib inimene Jumaliku Täiuslikkuse poole; mõtete kuritarvitamise ja väära rakendamisega laskub ta aga loomast madalamale tasandile. Nende kahe äärmuse vahel on igasuguseid loomutasandeid ning inimene on nende looja ja valitseja.

Samamoodi nagu aednik harib maatükki, hoides seda umbrohust puhtana ja kasvatades endale vajalikke lilli ning vilju, saab ka inimene oma meelteaia eest hoolt kanda, rookides sealt välja kõik valed, kasutud ja ebapuhtad mõtted ning harides täiuslikkuse poole õigete, kasulike ja puhaste mõtete õisi ja vilju. Sellist protsessi järgides avastab inimene varem või hiljem, et ta on oma hinde aednik, elu juhtija. Ühtlasi paljastab ta oma sisimas mõtteseadused ja mõistab ühe täpsemalt, kuidas mõtteväed ja meele-elemendid vormivad tema loomust, olusid ja saatust.

Inimene kui arenev olend on seal, kus ta on selles, et ta saaks omandada tarkuse, et ta on võimeline edasi arenema; ning sedamööda, kuidas ta omandab igalt olukorralt vaimse õppetunni, mis sellel talle on pakkuda, möödub see olukord ning annab maad järgmisele.

Igale inimesele, kes on mõnda aega harjutanud enesekontrolli ja enesepuhastamist, on teada, et ümbritsevad olud arenevad välja mõtetest; sest ta on märganud, et muutused teda ümbritsevates oludes on seotud tema muutunud vaimse seisundiga. See on niivõrd tõsi, et kui inimene püüab kõigest hingest parandada oma lomuse vajakajäämisi ning saavutab kiireid ja märgatavaid tulemusi, läbib ta kiiresti terve rea elumuutusi.

Iga külvatud või meeltesse langeda lastud mõtteseeme, millel lubatakse mõtetes juurduda, toob kaasa oma, sellest kasvab varem või hiljem välja tegu, ning see kannab oma võimaluste ja olude vilju. Head mõtted kannavad häid vilju, halvad mõtted halbu vilju.

Järgides oma sisemisi soove, pürgimusi ja mõtteid, millel inimene laseb oma elus domineerida (järgides ebapuhaste kujutluspiltide meelepetteid või sammudes kindlalt tugevate ja kõrgete pürgimuste teed), jõuab ta lõpuks oma elu välistes ludes nende täidemineku ja teostumiseni.

Olud ei tee inimest- need ilmutavad inimest iseendale. Peale paheliste kalduvuste pole ühtki sellist olukorda, mis võiks viia pahedeni ning sellega kaasnevate kannatusteni, või tõusta voorusteni ja puhta õnneni, ilma et vooruslikke pürgimusi poleks jätkuvalt viljeletud; ning seega on inimene kui oma mõtete isand ühtlasi ka iseenda looja, keskkonna kujundaja ja vormija. Juba sündides on hingel loomus ja igal maisel teekonnal astutud sammuga tõmbab see ligi neid olude kombinatsioone, mis on tema enda puhtuse ja ebapuhtuse, tugevuse ja nõrkuse peegeldused.

Inimesed ei tõmba ligi mitte seda, mida nad tahavad, vaid seda, mis nad on. Nende tujud, mõttekujutused ja ambitsioonid nurjatakse igal sammul, kuid nende sisimaid mõtteid ja soove toidetakse nende endi toiduga olgu need siis nurjatud või puhtad. Meid kujundav jumalikkus on meis endis, see on meie mina. Inimest aheldab üksnes ta ise. Mõtted ja teod on saatuse vangivahid- need vangistavad, kuna on pahelised; ühtlasi on need vabaduse inglis- need vabastavad, kuna on üllad.

Inimene ei saa mitte seda, mida ta soovib ja mille nimel palvetab, vaid seda, mille on õiglaselt ära teeninud. Tema soovidele vastatakse üksnes siis, kui need on kooskõlas ta mõtete ja tegudega.

Head mõtted ja teod ei saa iial tuua kaasa halbu tulemusi; halvad mõtted ja teod ei saa iial tuua kaasa häid tulemusi. See tähendab, et viljast kasvab vili, nõgestest nõgesed. Looduses on see seadus inimesele arusaadav, kuid vaid vähesed mõistavad selle toimimist vaimses ja moraalses maailmas (kuigi siin on selle toimimine sama lihtne ja kaljukindel); enamasti ei toimita selle kohaselt.

Kannatused o nalati valede mõtete tagajärg. See viitab sellele, et inimene pole iseendaga ega oma olemuse seadusega harmoonias. Kannatuse ainus ja ülim kasu on puhastumine- põletada kõik see, mis on kasutu ja ebapuhas. Puhtal inimesel pole kannatusi. Kulda pole ju mõtet enam puhastada pärast seda, ku itemast on kõik jääkained kõrvaldatud, ning täielikult puhas ja valgustatud olend ei saa kannatada.

Olud, milles inimene kannatab, on tema enda vaimse harmoonia puudumise tulemus. Olud, milles inimene tunneb õndsust, on tema enda vaimse harmoonia tulemus. Õndsus, mitte materiaalsed varad, on õigete mõtete mõõdupuu- viletsus, mitte materiaalsete varade puudumine, on valede mõtete mõõdupuu. Inimene võib olla neetud ja rikas ja ta võib olla õnnistatud ja vaene. Õndsus ja rikkus ühendatakse vaid siis, kui rikkusi kasutatakse õigesti ja targalt, ning vaene inimene laskub viletsusse üksnes siis, kui peab oma koormat ebaõiglaseks.

Teatud püsivad mõtted- head või halvad - toovad paratamatult kaasa tagajärjed nii olemusele kui ka oludele. Inimene ei saa olusid otseslt valida, küll aga mõtteid, ja seega kaudselt, aga kindlalt, kujundada oma olusid.

Kui inimene lõpetab patuste mõtete mõtlemise, muutub kogu maailm tema vastu leebemaks ning on valmis teda aitama; kui inimene loobub nõrkadest ja pahelistest mõtetest, ilmuvad igal sammul välja võimalused, mis toetavad tema kindlaid otsuseid; kui inimene soodustab häid mõtteid, ei vii ränk saatus teda viletusse ega häbisse. Maailm on teie kaleidoskoop ja värvid, mida see eri hetkedel näha laseb, on teie pidevalt muutuvate mõtete täpselt reguleeritud pildid.

Toitumisharjumuste muutmine ei aita inimest, kes ei muuda mõtteid. Kui mtted saavad puhtaks, ei vaja inimene enam ebapuhast toitu.

Pole paremat arsti kui rõõmus mõte, et peletada keha haigused; pole paremat lohutajat kui heatahtlikkus, et hajutaa leina ja kurbuse varjud. Kuid elada pidevalt pahatahtlikkuse, küünilinuse, kahtluste ja kadeduse mõtetes, tähendab see, et olete vangistatud enda tehtud kongi. Kui aga mõelda kõigist hästi, olla kõigiga rõõmsameelne ja õppida kannatlikult kõigis head leidma, siis on sellised mõtted taeva väravaks; ning kui mõelda iga päev kõigele elusolevale rahumeelsete mõtetega, saab nende mõtete omanikule osaks rohkesti rahu.

Samamoodi nagu füüsiliselt nõrk inimene saab muuta end hoolika ja kannatliku treeningu tulemusena tugevaks, saab ka nõrkade mõtetega inimene muuta need õiget mõtlemist harjutades tugevaks.

Kõik, mis inimene saavutab ja mis tal ei õnnestu saavutada, on ta enda mõtete tulemus. Õiglaselt korraldatud universumis kus tasakaalu kaotamine tähendab täielikku hävingu, peab individuaalne vastutus olema absoluutne. Inimese nõrkus ja tugevus, puhtus ja ebapuhtus on ta enda, mitte kellegi teise omad- ta põhjustab need ise, mitte keegi teine, ning üksnes tema saab neid muuta, mitte iial keegi teine. Ka tema seisund on tema enda, mitte mõne teise oma. Tema kannatused ja õnn tulenevad temast endast. Ta on selline, nagu mõtleb, ja ta jääb selliseks, nagu jätkuvalt mõtleb.

Kui paljusid tunneme, kes mürgitavad oma elu, kes rikuvad plahvatava loomusega kõik, mis on meeldiv ja ilus, kes hävitavad oma olemuse tasakaalu ja tekitavad musta verd! Kas mitte suurem osa inimesi ei riku oma elu ja hävita oma õnne enesevalitsuse puudumisega? Kui vähesid inimesi kohtame elus, kes on hästi tasakaalus, kel on see oivaline tasakaal, mis iseloomustab küpseks saanud loomust!

Benjamin Hoff "Notsu ja Te"

Ehk teiste sõnadega: tänase inimese raskused, ohtlikud veendumused, üksilduse, hingelise tühjuse ning isikliku jõetuse tunnetamine tulenevad kõik pettekujutlustest ning sellest, et ollakse irdunud loodusest. Taoistid ennustasid kunagi, et hullud ajad saabuvad. Aga nad õpetasid ka, mida saab selle vastu teha. Meilgi on aeg vaadata, mida nimelt.

Õnnelik inimene rahuldub ka sellega, mis pealtnäha tundub kasutu. Ta võib leida endale tegemist metsades ja mägedes. Ta võib elada hurtsikus ning suhelda lihtsameelsetega. Ta ei vaheta oma kulunud ihukatteid keisri rõivaste ega koormat oma turjal neljahobusekaariku vastu. Ta jätab kalliskivid mägedesse ja pärlid merre. Kuhu ta ka ei läheks ja mida ta ka ei teeks, ikka on ta õnnelik, sest teab, millal on õige aeg lõpetada. Ta ei kummardu noppima ühepäevaõit ega kõnni ohtlikke radu. Ka kümme tuhat aaret on talle paljas tolm. Ta kõnnib lauldes üle roheliste nõlvade.

Tänu lihtsusele on tal Tao ja tänu Taole ka kõik muu. Ta näeb "pimeduses" valgust, läbi "pilvede" selgust, "aeglustades" kiirust, "sisutuses" sisu. Tema meelest väärib oma kätega toitu valmistav kokk samasugust lugupidamist kui kuulus laulja või kõrge ametnik. Tal pole võita ega kaotada raha, saavutada soosindut või kuulda kriitikat. 

Benjamin Hoff "Puhh ja Tao"

"Kui õpime toimima kooskõlas oma Sisemise Loomusega ning meid ümbritseva looduse seadustega, saavutame wu-wei seisundi. Siis järgime asjade loomulikku korda ja toimime minimaalselt pingutades. Loodus toimib just selle põhimõtte järgi ja tema ei eksi. Eksib- või pigem näeb kõikjal eksimusi- just inimene oma ülekoormatud Mõistusega, kes on end lahti kiskunud looduse seaduste tugepakkuvast võrgustikust, sekkub kõikjale ning üritab ülemäära."

"Paraku on inimese meel sajandeid arenenud selles suunas, mis viib teda eemale reaalsest, looduse seadustele alluvast maailmas. Inimmeelel on kalduvus liigselt pingutada, end asjatult kulutada, kuni ta muutub nõrgaks ja mannetuks. Selline meel- mõnikord üsna arukakski- on tegelikult saamatu. Ta hüpleb sinna-tnna, edasi-tagasi ega suuda keskenduda sellele, mis leiab aset ta enda silme all. Ta kihutab autoga mööda tänavat, ise aga mõtleb samal ajal sellele, et on juba kaupluses ja ostab seal kokku seda, teist ja kolmandat."

"Teadmised ja Arukus kalduvad tegelema hoopis valede asjadega. Teadmiste, Arukuse ja Abstrakstsete Ideede poolt segadusse aetud meel ajab tihti taga seda, millel pole suuremat tähtsust või mida pole üldse olemaski, kuid ei oska näha, hinnata ega ära kasutada kõike seda, mis on otse ta enda ees.

Miks näivad valgustatud inimesed kiirgavat valgust ja õnne nagu lapsed? Miks nad mõnikord isegi tunduvad lastena ja räägivad nagu lapsed? Sellepärast, et nad on seda."

"How to be free" Tom Hodgkinson

And there are new enemies of leisure today. Hunger and
God have been replaced in the consumer age by
possessions and status. The advertising industry leads us to
believe that life will be improved by the purchase of a
product. The purchase of a product requires money. Money
requires hard work. Or debt. We go into debt to chase our
desires, and then keep working to pay the debt. It's the
modern form of indentured labour

Newspapers aren't much help to those pursuing an idle
life. They present themselves as independent, but since
they are funded by advertising, they do much to promote
the work-and-consume ethic. Newspapers offer a problem
and a solution. The problem is presented in the news pages
and consists of stories of war, starvation, political
corruption, death, famine, scandal, theft, abduction,
paedophilia. In short, they promote anxiety. The solution to
this anxiety is presented in the magazine sections, and
consists of editorial about - and, of course, advertising for - fridges, lighting systems, cars, sex advice, burglar
alarms, loans, insurance policies, recipes, rugs, scented
candles and various cultural products such as music, film
and books. Problem: anxiety. Solution: money. Method:
work.

God himself, argues Paul Lafargue in 'The Right
to be Lazy' , set a good example: after working for six
days, he rests for all eternity.

But tell your 

boss that you didn't come in till lunchtime because you 

were dreaming up some great new ideas for product 

development and he is unlikely to be very sympathetic. 

g too much that 

society pressurizes us all to get out of bed. In 1993, I went 

to interview the late radical philosopher and drugs 

researcher Terence McKenna. I asked him why society 

doesn't allow us to be more idle. He replied: 

I think the reason we don't organise society in that 

way can be summed up in the aphorism, ' idle hands 

are the devil's tool'. In other words, institutions fear 

idle populations because an Idler is a thinker and thinkers are not a welcome addition to most social 

situations. Thinkers become malcontents, that's 

almost a substitute word for idle, 'malcontent'. 

Essentially, we are all kept very busy ... under no 

circumstances are you to quietly inspect the contents 

of your own mind. Freud called introspection 

'morbid' unhealthy, introverted, anti-social, 

possibly neurotic, potentially pathological. 

How much better life would be if we began the day with 

a poem rather than the empty prattle of newspapers, with their diet of fear, hate, envy and jealousy. Newspapers are 

merely a negative diversion from the self, a bit like soap 

operas. The writer Marcel Theroux said to me on 9 January 

last year: 'I have been in great spirits this year, and I 

attribute this entirely to the fact that I have not read the 

Daily Telegraph for nine days. ' 

Oscar Wilde

Let me say to you now that to 

do nothing at all is the most difficult thing in the 

world, the most difficult and the most intellectual. .. It 

is to do nothing that the elect exist. 

Knowing that Jenkins is sitting in double maths 

while you sit in a cafe with a cup of tea multiplies the 

pleasure a thousandfold. There is no fun in joining the frisbee-throwing hordes in the park on Saturday. The idler 

wants to be throwing frisbees while the hordes are 

suffering. Frisbee-throwing becomes incalculably more 

delicious under these conditions

As with all aspects of idleness, we should resist the 

pressure to reject the elements of our lives which do not fit 

into the productive, rational, busy paradigm that society 

and our own selves impose upon us. Learning how to live 

can involve learning how to love the hangover. This trick 

is for the advanced student of idleness, to be sure, but try it 

and see how your life improves

We might lay the blame, indeed, at the feet of the busy, 

restless, striving Americans. Right back in 1882, Nietzsche 

noted that lunch was under threat from the new work ethic 

in the US. 'The breathless haste with which they work, ' he 

wrote in The Gay Science, ' is already beginning to infect 

the old Europe ... One thinks with a watch in one's hand, 

even as one eats one's midday meal while reading the 

latest news of the stock-market; one lives as if one "might 

miss out on something"

Observing 1930s New York, Lin Yutang also 

complained that the speed of life was destroying the 

pleasure of eating. 'The tempo of modern life is such that 

we are giving less and less time and thought to the matter 

of cooking and feeding ... it is a pretty crazy life when one 

eats to work and does not work in order to eat.

No one has the time to eat at 

leisure, it seems. It's a common sight to see people 

snaffling down a burger or sandwich between stops on the 

underground. This kind of eating has something almost 

guilty and furtive about it. It's not eating, it's lonely 

refuelling. The same thing has happened to breakfast. 

Handy little bits of solid cereal called 'breakfast bars' 

advertise themselves with the slogan ' Good Food on the 

Go '. So much more efficient that way

But the cosy and entrepreneurial Seattle Coffee 

Company was wiped out when the vast Starbucks outfit 

bought all 65 of them in 1998, and these days every high 

street has its Costa, Starbucks, Aroma or Nero. Far from 

being loafing zones, these places are simply pit stops for 

working machines, petrol stations for human beings. As the 

writer lain Sinclair puts it: ' [Tlhe whole culture has 

speeded up so that people just queue to get takeaways. And 

it's the death of cafes. Who 's going to spend days hanging 

out at cafes? It's gone. '

Albert
Camus, for example, with typical Gallic morbidity,
describes illness as 'a remedy against death, because it
prepares us for death, creating an apprenticeship whose
first step is self-pity. Illness supports man in the great
attempt to shirk the fact that he will surely die. ' 

The pedestrian is the highest and most mighty of
beings; he walks for pleasure, he observes but does not
interfere, he is not in a hurry, he is happy in the company
of his own mind, he wanders detached, wise and merry,
godlike. He is free. Most of those, however, who stride
along the streets of our big cities are not enjoying their
stroll. They are merely using their legs to get from A to B.
There is no component of fun in their walk; it simply has to
be done. Their walking has a purpose in mind: to move from the underground station to the office, from bus stop to
factory, sandwich shop to bank. The journey itself is
unimportant, a waste of time. The goal is the important
thing. Caught up in this sort of walking, we find it hard to
abandon ourselves to the moment. We pace with purpose,
head down, staring at the pavement. Through our mind
runs a stream of anxieties: things to do, things not done,
commitments broken. If anyone saw us they would get the
vibe: busy, important, things to do, places to go. 

The beggar's life is idealized as one of freedom: from 

work, from desire, from consumer slavery. There is a truth 

to this, and it's a shame that today we see homeless people 

as simply victims who need to be helped. This may well be 

the case with many; but it is also possible that others have 

actually chosen to live this way. They would rather be 

homeless, poor and free than mortgaged, employed and 

enslaved. 

In Buddhism the beggar, the tramp, the vagabond is not 

a subject for reform or liberal hand-wringing, but, on the 

contrary, he represents an ideal of living, of pure living in 

the moment, of wandering without destination, of freedom 

from worldly care. 

'Most of the world 's troubles seem to come 

from people who are too busy' wrote Evelyn Waugh. ' If 

only politicians and scientists were lazier, how much 

happier we would all be. ' 

Those who take time off, who step back to look at the 

world, the lazy ones, the ones who can't be bothered, the 

writers, poets and musicians, these people do much to 

make life worth living in terms of producing a culture, but 

they tend not to get involved in the running of things, the 

management of the infrastructure, hospital bureaucracy, the 

education system, the local councils, the tax inspectorate. 

And this is because they find all that sort of thing so 

unutterably dull. Instead of trying to change the way other 

people live, they focus on transforming their own lives

Today's enemy, in the West at least, is not so much the 

governments as a new authority: consumer capitalism. 

But is rioting, though undeniably enjoyable, and an 

expression of the spirit of liberty, really worth it? 

Surveying the successive failures of revolutions, uprisings 

and riots over the last thousand years to install more 

humane laws or less interfering governments, one might 

conclude sadly that a better place to effect change is in 

oneself and in one's own immediate surroundings.

Gazing at the stars opens our minds to another reality, a 

mysterious eternal world, beyond material struggle. 

Despite the attempts of the rationalists to explain the stars 

as merely a constellation of suns light years away, we still 

revere them and revel in their mysteries. 

We feel small under the stars, yet paradoxically we feel 

more ourselves. We are who we are. 

But gazing heavenward is seen as a waste of time by our 

practical-minded rulers. Our very language makes a virtue 

of being stuck on the earth, and criticizes those with loftier 

aspirations. Bad: head in the clouds, starry-eyed, losing 

grip, not living in the real world, moon-faced loon, lunatic, 

airy-fairy, space cadet, away with the fairies, moonstruck, 

on another planet. Good: feet on the ground, anchored, 

down-to-earth, grounded, keeping your head down, getting 

a grip. 

Today we seem to have lost the art. We seldom remark
on someone's ' conversational eloquence' (as De Quincey
did of the legendary Victorian loafer Walking Stewart).
People now praise someone's energy and achievements,
and focus on the final result rather than the process. (David
Beckham, not noted for his powers of conversation, is a
global hero.) Then it's back to the grind. 

A life lived around parties can also make sober life seem 

dull by comparison, and leads to the unhealthy 

phenomenon of living for the weekend, while feeling 

depressed and powerless all week. The true idler wants to 

live a good life all the time, not just on Saturday nights, 

and the real lesson of hedonism is that we should attempt 

to enjoy all moments, not just those ones when we are out 

of our heads. Time should be savoured, not endured. 

Hedonism should provide ideas on how to live; it should 

not become a mode of living in itself, as it is unsustainable. 

The idler's desire is to live with no rules, or only rules 

that have been invented by himself. He wants to develop 

the inner strength to have complete power over himself. He 

refuses to hand over that power to any authority 

whatsoever, however benign that authority may appear to 

be. And the fewer rules there are, the less potential there is 

for transgressing them all the time and therefore wasting 

energy in guilt. It is easy to become, in the words of 

Thoreau, a 'slave-driver of yourself'. We create sets of 

behavioural rules for ourselves and then feel bad when we 

fail to live up to them. 

To make money, you can use all that time to start a 

business, pursue freelance projects, invent websites. My 

advice is to forget all the rubbish about having to specialize 

in one area and instead become a jack of all trades. Learn 

how to look after yourself. Paint, plumb, read, write, play 

music. Become average at many things rather than very 

good at one thing. 

If one of your projects takes off, and you earn some 

money, then great. But it's a good idea to learn to live on 

very little. 

Mark Boyle "The moneyless manifesto"

 We love it, and envy those who have lots of it. We even give up our time – those precious, finite moments that make up the totality of our lives – in return for it, regardless of how much we already have, and how hideous or soul-destroying the task. Everyone, it seems, wants more money. We’re all Spike Milligan, when he quipped “all I ask for is a chance to prove that money can’t make me happy”

 We love it, and envy those who have lots of it. We even give up our time – those precious, finite moments that make up the totality of our lives – in return for it, regardless of how much we already have, and how hideous or soul-destroying the task. Everyone, it seems, wants more money. We’re all Spike Milligan, when he quipped “all I ask for is a chance to prove that money can’t make me happy”

This is not a book about the self, it’s about money, but questioning where the boundaries of self lie is a crucial foundation to understanding the call to move beyond monetary economics. People assume that I would agree with the old misquoted adage, money is the root of all evil. I don’t. Instead I propose that it is our deluded sense of self which is the root of many of our current personal, social and ecological crises. Money is instrumental to maintaining and affirming this delusion.

Money is both chicken and egg in relation to this delusional sense of self. Whilst it originated as a mere symptom itself of the illusion of separation between ourselves and all other life, and the consciousness of concepts such as debt and credit which stem from that, it has in turn perpetuated and greatly intensified the extent to which we feel disconnected from the rest of life by increasing the degrees of separation between us and what we consume. This creates an even stronger delusion and more severe symptoms. Therefore it plays a major role in contributing to the destructive acts which each of us undertake when we put the narrow interests of our own skin-encapsulated ego over the interests of the whole, our holistic self.

This behaviour is not incidental; nor, as defenders of the status quo would have us believe, is it human nature. It is simply the mindset born of a culture in which disconnection and separation are built into its infrastructure; a mindset which we absolutely have to move on from if we are to have any hope of surviving, let alone reversing, the ecological meltdown we are faced with. If, as the 19th century naturalist Henry David Thoreau said, “In wilderness is the preservation of the world,” then Wendell Berry’s remark has never been more poignant: “In human culture is the preservation of wilderness.”

 The cultivation of fire, language, linear time, and measurement, leading to the development of agriculture, technologies, centralised politics and the mass media, all contributed, over thousands of years, to the gradual separation of human beings from Nature, our communities and, ultimately ourselves, until we end up with what we have today – beings utterly swept up in the illusion of our own independence and separation.(10) Born of this illusion is our modern culture.

How many of you see yourselves as a spirited and wondrous being, a magnificent encapsulation of the entire universe? How many of you feel that you live in a world that forever affirms and celebrates the beauty, care, compassion and spontaneity that we are all capable of? How many of you feel you live in a world in which integrity and creativity are considered more important than clocking hours, or paying bills? Not many, I would think. Yet who would doubt that living in such a world would make us happier, and more fulfilled?

Man … sacrifices his health in order to make money. Then he sacrifices money to recuperate his health. And then he is so anxious about the future that he does not enjoy the present; the result being that he does not live in the present or the future; he lives as if he is never going to die, and then he dies having never really lived.

– Dalai Lama

Anthropological studies have shown time and time again that many tribal people, regardless of how much food they gather or successfully hunt, will never store food. Daniel Everett, a renowned linguist who has spent years amongst the Pirahã – a Brazilian tribe who have no concept of numerical systems, let alone money – writes in Don’t Sleep, There are Snakes(12)that when asked why they didn’t store any food, the Pirahã replied “I store meat in the belly of my brother”. Implicit in this is a deep trust in Nature to provide, and an acknowledgement in the interdependency of the community. The very odd day they go hungry, but mostly they feast. They never worry. From Everett’s accounts they are a much happier and more content people for it too, and understandably so: like an unconcerned child, wouldn’t you be happier assuming that tomorrow you will be provided for?

Contrast that with how we live in civilisation today, always worried about things from the past and planning ahead for the future, never being in the moment. How much of life do we miss out on because our minds are time travelling?

The concept of money plays a grossly underestimated role in our historically unrivalled inability to live in the present moment. It is not just anthropological studies which show a link between the use of money and a decreased sense of living for the day – my own limited experience taught me exactly the same. Counter-intuitively, and to my own surprise, I slowly began to worry less – not more – about everything after three to four months of living without money. Admittedly, in those first few months I worried much more, due in a large part to the fact that money had for so long provided me with a sense of security, and I was concerned that if I was hungry or got into a bit of bother I had zero to fall back on.

As the wheel of time slowly turned I found myself voluntarily surrendering to life and started living for the moment, something I had never done in the days when I was much more conscious of concepts such as credit and debt. Every day seemed to provide for me, and with that repeated experience you slowly stop worrying about the next day. Somewhere in your psyche you realise that it’ll all be fine, and that the worst that can happen to you is that you return to the whole, which is my understanding of what your true self is anyway. Orwell once said that “happiness only exists in acceptance”, and that has been my experience in life, and the experience of people like the Pirahã. Accept what life brings to you every day, regret nothing and don’t worry about the future. And have fun – none of it is that serious.

The implications of this stretch further, breaking off sections of what were once community into their own separate markets. Most notably in the realms of art and music our relationships have immeasurably changed, so that in the space of one hundred years the vast majority of us have moved from being participants and creators to being consumers. In Ireland, my native land, in the 1920s, people gathered around each other’s fires every evening and played music. Most people could contribute something – whether a jig on a fiddle or the stamping of their foot – and all involved intrinsically knew and felt the value of creative, communal play.

That was before the advent of the radio, then the television, quickly followed by the tape, the compact disc and the ipod, with a brief appearance by something called a mini-disc if my memory serves me correctly. Each new technological development – itself only made possible through the increasingly larger economies of scale and finer divisions of labour that I talk about later in this chapter – takes away one nugget of creativity and community, until we are left with fifty people in a room absorbed by fifty different pieces of music – none of them creating, and none of them sharing. The same process has infiltrated almost every aspect of our lives, to the point that we are now just consumers of life, and not participants in it.

How is community possible when everyone is as replaceable as interchangeable cogs in The Machine, and how is it possible not to feel isolated, when everyone you deal with is a stranger?

If you grow your own food, you don’t waste it. If you have to take responsibility for your own water supply, you’re probably not going to shit in it. I was speaking with a journalist recently about a report from the Department for Environment Food, and Rural Affairs (DEFRA)(19) which states that bread is now the number one food item that we waste, and he asked me why I thought that was so. I told him it is simply because we no longer have to knead and bake our own bread. If we had to put thirty minutes of love and elbow grease into it, we wouldn’t waste a slice.(20)

Until we understand that our own health, our own lives, are dependent on the health of the whole, we will not adequately resist a culture that seems hell-bent on looting every fish, tree and mineral from the planet, polluting our air and rivers and streams along the way. Derrick Jensen, an American author and environmental activist, points out that “if your experience is that your food comes from the grocery store and your water comes from the tap, then you are going to defend to the death the system that brings those to you because your life depends on them. If your experience, however, is that your food comes from a landbase and that your water comes from a stream, well, then you will defend to the death that landbase and that stream.”(22) Nothing stops us understanding our interdependency with our landbases better than money

If this was the only problem, I wouldn’t be so concerned. At least it would only be harmful to those of us who also perceive ourselves to benefit from it. But when a person spends forty plus hours a week in an office shuffling electronic paper from one inbox to the next, they have almost no connection to the rest of Nature, or to the stuff they consume. Such disconnection leads to voids that are plugged by escapisms such as consumerism.

The difference between optimum and maximum is crucial; efficiency, like everything else, has its optimal level. So while everyone wouldn’t start doing every single thing for themselves again – that would be to go to the other ridiculous extreme – communities would become sufficient as a unit, and life could be much more varied, more connected, more autonomous and free.

When we are connected to what we use, or when getting or making something new isn’t so simple as going to the shop, we appreciate it and we certainly don’t waste it. You understand how much time or energy you or someone you know put into it. Money disconnects us from our goods and services through the massive economies of scale and the highly specialised division of labour it facilitates. This disconnect leads to large levels of waste in our daily lives.

Through the eyes of a people intimately connected to each other and their land, such as the Awá tribe of the Brazilian Amazon, extreme is how we industrialised nations live today. Extreme is a worldview that sees the majesty of life on Earth as an ingredients list of resources that by mining, clear-cutting and bottom-trawling can be efficiently turned into cold, hard cash. Extreme is not knowing our neighbours, let alone feeling comfortable enough to ask them for help. Extreme is many members of a community having spare rooms in their houses while others sleep on the street. Extreme is spending our lives doing jobs we hate, just so that we can repay the bank money that it created out of thin air in the first instance. Extreme is taking what was freely given to us and then charging another part of Nature for it, only sharing that which was gifted to us if we receive something in return. Extreme is walking towards the precipice as we smugly recycle our tetrapaks. Extreme is letting it all unfold before our eyes, as if somehow we were not powerful enough to stop it.

Even if a unification of world ideologies was possible, within this version of a resource-based economy there seems to lie the assumption that ‘advanced’ technologies make us happy. If this were true, why is it that in easily the most technologically advanced period of human history, humankind has never been more depressed? I’ve no doubt proponents of a globalised non-monetary economy would point out that the reasons for our current unhappiness are much more complex than that, and they’d be right, they are. At the same time, it is widely documented that those who live in low technology societies, past and present, express stronger feelings of happiness, contentment and connection to community and place than those of us in the global West, who survive on a collective diet of quick-fix antidepressants, escapism and self-help gurus

Some of our social norms are pervasive and intensely oppressive. In Western civilisation, status is conferred on you by how much you own, where you live, what career you have, how much money you earn, how powerful you are, or the brands you sport. In each of these, the bigger or more expensive the better. If you choose to live moneylessly, or even a life of simplicity, you instantly forsake most culturally accepted indicators of success. Despite many who have swam against the tide reporting that making such bold moves enhanced their sense of confidence and freedom – to the point where they no longer care what people think – it can initially seem a very difficult path to take. They also realise, as Bob Dylan once penned, that “a man is a success if he gets up in the morning and goes to bed at night and in between does what he wants to do”.

One of the main concerns cited to me by people pondering moneylessness – or just simple living – is what their friends, family and community will think of them because of it. After all, having no money is stigmatised with a sense of poverty and being unsuccessful in life, even if your life has never been richer in real terms. Yet the extent to how deeply embedded social acceptance is within us has still surprised me, despite our claims that we dislike the very society we feel compelled to be accepted by. As Jiddu Krishnamurti once said, “it is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society”, yet we often seem to prefer to make such adjustment than risk the exclusion that is perceived to come with living a healthy life

But we’re addicted. Addicted to growth, to more, to bigger, to faster, to status, to the illusion of certainty, to convenience, to mediocrity, to an unhealthy and unbalanced level of comfort, to processed food, to conformity, to non-stop round-the-clock everything. We’re addicted to consuming the planet, and with it all the elemental building blocks that make up our flesh and bone. We’re killing both our egocentric and holistic selves, and we can’t seem to help either.

Tolerance, where someone needs more of a substance (or behaviour) to get the same effect, is clearly visible with consumerism. The level of consumption thought of as ‘normal’ in the industrialised world has been steadily rising for over fifty years. We’ve now reached the point where our collective appetite for resources is generating an ecological catastrophe. While addiction to alcohol, nicotine and other drugs are clearly threats to health, they’re unlikely to destroy our civilisation. Our collective hunger for more and more goods is another matter. That’s why it is worth thinking about the role of addiction here.

A smoker may use cigarettes to calm down, but nicotine dependence makes people more anxious. Someone may turn to alcohol to cheer themselves up, yet drinking heavily makes people more depressed. Addictive behaviour often appears to be a solution to the very problems it makes worse. This creates a vicious cycle, where the more someone relies on something the more they end up feeling they need it. This is true with consumerism too. The more we rely on buying things as the way to meet our needs, the less we develop other paths to a satisfying life.

When I first decided to give up money, I only intended to do so for a year. But after twelve months I had never been healthier, fitter or happier. Yes I did have to give up little things like going to the cinema, chocolate and delightful dealings with Her Majesty’s Revenue Commissioners, but I regained my freedom, my autonomy to only do things my heart agreed with, not to mention a sense of real control over my life again. I found parts of me that I didn’t even know existed, and I loved it. For the first time in my life I felt like I was living with awareness, with connection, with Nature. I didn’t continue because it made me miserable – I continued because I’d never felt so alive. The question has got to be: what do you value most in your life – freedom or stuff?

Life is the most incredible gift we’ll ever be given. It is an adventure, something to explore to its fullest. We would do well not to waste it, and destroy life for everything else in the process, because we were afraid to let go of our habitual behavioural patterns. One of the tragedies of this culture is that we are so afraid to die that we never really live. We live with superficial relationships that lack dependency or depth, we live with money instead of connected relationships with all in our biosphere, and therefore we live in isolation rather than community.

Such manipulative use of language has produced profitable results for those with vested interests: few of us can even imagine a non-monetary or non-wage economy, thinking it to be a utopian fantasy dreamt up by hippies and those with no sense of reality, even though we can readily see this utopia in its most glorious action on any occasion we wander to the woods, where we bear witness to every other species living in a totally localised manner.

The question then becomes – as intelligent, self aware, life-loving creatures – why aren’t we recognising this? Why are we prioritising our own individual lives over the life of everything else on the planet? Why, in other words, can’t we see and understand natural limits?

The answer to this can only be understood in terms of the separate self – if we do not sense ourselves as being part of Nature, then we cannot understand the limits it places on us. We see limits as bad – capitalist culture has made unlimited growth the be all and end all, and that is reflected in our understanding of our selves as well. We are economic people, after all. But limits, in fact, are absolutely integral to healthy systems. A child without limits runs out of control and is not happy. Pathogenic bacteria, left unchecked, destroy their host. So ourselves, and so our ecosystems. Without limits we are a disease on the Earth, mindlessly consuming our host, with thought only for our own survival. But after the host dies, what next?

he monetary economy kills our spirit, teaching us to consume instead of play. It has bought up the entire planet – a planet that was once ours to share freely – so that it can then sell it back to us. Because of this, we fools spend all of our time doing work we derive little or no meaning or happiness from, instead of doing all the things that we love to do.

Slavery never ended in the nineteenth century, it was merely rebranded and marketed to us in a different packet. The monetary economy doesn’t serve us, we serve it. It is out-of-date, obsolete, a chain around our necks. So let’s change it, and together co-create stories that serve both us and the land we inhabit well.

When you disconnect from the world of high technology and reconnect with Nature, you stop becoming a consumer of life and finally begin participating in it, like you did as a child. Is listening to an album on your iPod, taking in a movie at the cinema, or going to the pub for a bottle of ice-cold American beer really the fullest expression of the human potential that lies inside us? Imagine a society where we made our ales and ciders together, before drinking them around a campfire whilst singing, dancing and playing music together. A world where we spent our days meeting our needs in ways that integrated pleasure and creativity, where one day we’d be making a table, the next day planting some acorns, and in the evenings telling stories, learning chords, playing chess using pieces we hand-carved ourselves, and generally making merry. After all these years of being told moneyless living must be boring, I would love for someone to finally explain to me how participating in life could be less fun that just consuming it.

There is so much each of us could do in life, so much to experience and wonder at, yet we spend much of our time working around the clock just to pay for things that we don’t really need and which eventually end up owning us. As Epicurus once pointed out, there are two ways of getting rich: increasing your financial wealth, or decreasing your desires. Every bill or expense you can eliminate from your life means that you get to spend more of your precious time here doing the things you really want to do and less of the time doing things that you have to do to pay the bills. Reducing your outgoings means regaining control over your life and it affords you the time to work on whatever projects you want. It buys you the time to get creative, learn something new or volunteer for a project you believe in. The closer you reduce these bills and desires to zero, the closer you are to complete freedom. Let go of your addictions and you will soon regain the freedom to spend your days doing whatever the hell you like.

The monetary economy kills our spirit, teaching us to consume instead of play. It has bought up the entire planet – a planet that was once ours to share freely – so that it can then sell it back to us. Because of this, we fools spend all of our time doing work we derive little or no meaning or happiness from, instead of doing all the things that we love to do.

We are extraordinarily adaptable creatures. We can be any beings we want to be, if we want it badly enough. Out of the flames and smouldering embers of such a remarkable world as ours can rise a thousand phoenixes, a million transformations. Out of monetary economics can rise the gift economy; competitive relationships can transform into symbiotic ones, hoarding into sharing, stress into play, complexity into simplicity, the conditional into the unconditional, boredom into creativity and isolation into connection. We are faced with an incredibly exciting chance to create a new way of living, one that mixes the best of the old with the best of the new and undiscovered.

I want to live in freedom, in a manner that also affords the rest of life the same autonomy over their lives. I want to be intimately connected to the land and the people of my habitat. I want to nurture relationships that are based on sharing and unconditional giving, relationships that uplift and inspire and affirm that people are in fact loving and kind. I want to live as I see fit regardless of whether the melting of the ice caps – and civilisation with it – is inevitable or not. I want to live a life that is present in the moment, not regretting yesterday or worrying about tomorrow. I want to share the fruits of my labour as freely as Nature shares them with me, without a taint of the notions of credit or debt on my mind. I want to delve into the depths of life and experience aspects of both it and myself that I don’t even know exist yet. And when only my body remains, I want my closest friends to make things out of every spare part of my flesh and bones – shoes, belts, tools and drums. I want my beloved to then play a beautiful beat on my tanned skin that will echo across the valley, an eternal beat that every bird, every otter and every human recognises as the heartbeat of the land.

http://www.moneylessmanifesto.org/book/notes/