不花錢更開心
酷銳話題
作者：By Silver Donald Cameron
Reporter： Believing that money distorts our relationships with the natural world and with one another， Mark Boyle set out to live for a full year without making any use of money at all. A year later， to his surprise， he found that he was happier， healthier and more content than he had ever been. He wrote a book called 1）The Moneyless Man and used the royalties to start a movement called“Freeconomy，” which utilizes an online site to present the philosophy of moneyless living and to provide a clearing-house where members can connect with other members to share skills， possessions or accommodation. It’s now used by people in 162 countries.
Mark Boyle： Just happened to move over to the UK， and then got a job in an organic food store， and that put me into contact with lots of green-thinking people， people who are questioning things. You know， I’d heard of earthworms and bees and stuff for the first time. After having studied economics for six years， I’d never actually once come across kind of real-life economics. And so it made me question everything about the way we were living and the 2）monetary system. And I got to the point in 2006 where I was trying to think “What am I going to dedicate my life to？ There’s so many big issues in the world， from sweat shops to factory farms and ecological destruction， like， which is going to be my passion？”And I realized that these were all just symptoms of a deeper 3）recourse， and for me that recourse was our separation from the things we can see and our separation from nature， and until we reconnect with what we can see and with the natural world， then very little’s gonna change. And I had like another kind of momentary realization of one of the biggest disconnecting tools that we have is…is money. It gives us the illusion of independence. It’s a good thing to be independent， but what we’re actually really doing is just becoming dependent on people far away from us. It’s not like any of us could survive by ourselves today. We speak always about the benefits of money—it’s every day in the papers—but what we don’t talk about is the consequences. And I realized that actually there’s no point me talking about these consequences if I don’t actually start to live it myself， first to see how it feels as a human being， to live without money in a world that’s pretty much driven by it. So I made a commitment to， for one year， to live without money. By the end of it， my biggest…my biggest problem was can I go back into the monetary world. It was a real struggle for a few months， and I just realized I’ve never been happier. That’s why I continued doing it after the first year， but it has been the best experience of my life on so many different levels.