The Moneyless Man Read Online Free PDF Page A

credit card. It just gives, in the faith that its benefactor will spread its seed further afield, giving the world even more apples.
    How does pay-it-forward apply to my experiment? I never agree terms beforehand with people I help; I just help. It’s a relationship based on trust. I do it in the faith that my requirements will be met whenever I need (not want) something, whether that help comes from the person I helped or from someone I’ve never met, whether it comes five minutes after I’ve helped someone or two years later. Cliché enthusiasts call this ‘what goes around comes around’. I believe it’s nothing more complex than this: if you spend your time putting more love into the world, then it is reasonable to believe you are going to benefit from a world with more love in it.
    Pay-it-forward is a beautiful theory and I believe that if we practiced it more fully, the world would be a much friendlier place. We are often too short-sighted and too self-absorbed. We take and we hoard but this creates what is, really, a very false sense of security and abundance. By giving and sharing we could all be so much better off materially, emotionally and spiritually. Not only would we have access to a larger pool of material resources, we’d have a wider network of friends and the warmth that comes with doing something just because we can.
4. THE LAW OF RESPECT
     
    Respecting other people’s wishes is an essential part of life and sometimes involves compromise. Even though I planned to live off-grid, I inevitably found myself in other people’s houses and workplaces. If I had to do what bears do in the woods, I could have pulled out a spade, dug a hole in the back garden and had a crap; in other words, absolutely shocked my hosts.
    However, the point of my experiment was not to annoy and completely alienate the 99% of the population who still use money and sewers; staying steadfastly true to my beliefs in such instances would have been counter-productive. This is what I call my ‘law of respect’. I stood up for what I believed in but my focus is on effecting the most positive change in the longer term and on bringing people with me on the journey, if they want to come. If you respect someone else’s way of life they are far more likely to respect yours.
5. THE LAW OF NO NEW FOSSIL FUELS
     
    We’re soon going to have to make the transition to a world without oil; it is a finite resource and we are using it remarkably quickly. Not only are petroleum-based products incredibly polluting but using them puts pressure on governments to find new sources of oil; a pressure that has, increasingly, resulted in wars around the world.
    I didn’t want to be responsible for that, so for the whole year no new fossil fuels were to be used in my name. If someone wanted to help by offering me a lift because they thought I was exhausted, I would politely refuse. I would allow myself to hitchhike, as the driver would be going that way anyway. I would only accept lifts when the journey was impossible by foot or bicycle and very sparingly, as the year was not about freeloading on others. I would never hitch the eighteen miles to Bristol to seefriends or to get food or wood, but I would do so to travel between countries.
6. THE LAW OF ‘NO PRE-PAYMENT OF BILLS’
     
    Not only did I not pre-pay any of the normal bills we tend to accumulate, I didn’t even have any bills, as I set myself up to be completely off-grid. Setting up my infrastructure didn’t happen overnight. In some respects, I’d been preparing for it my whole life. However, more practically, I took six months to build up to the year, which I decided would start on November 29, 2008, better known as ‘Buy Nothing Day’ or, as the last Saturday in November, the day the Christmas buying frenzy officially kicks off in the United States.

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PREPARING THE FOUNDATIONS
     
    When I first started to think about living for a year without money, I didn’t think it would be that