Book Review - The Man who Quit Money

The Man Who Quit Money
(From Amazon.com)

I came across this book title while browsing through book titles on simplicty. The Man who Quit Money - sounds pretty provocative. I ordered it from the library and it came yesterday. It's not a super long book and took me about 4 hours to read from cover to cover. It was fascinating.

Daniel Suelo gave up money in 2000. He lives in a cave near Moab, Utah and dumpster dives for food. He accepts the generosity of strangers and friends. He doesn't patronize food banks or charities. He forages for berries and road kill. Daniel's philosphy sounds like this:

I've been totally without cents since Autumn of 2000 (except for a couple months in 2001). I don't use or accept money or conscious barter - don't take food stamps or other government dole. My philosophy is to use only what is freely given or discarded & what is already present & already running (whether or not I existed). I don't see money as evil or good: how can illusion be evil or good? But I don't see heroin or meth as evil or good, either. Which is more addictive & debilitating, money or meth? Attachment to illusion makes you illusion, makes you not real. Attachment to illusion is called idolatry, called addiction. I simply got tired of acknowledging as real this most common world-wide belief called money! I simply got tired of being unreal. Money is one of those intriguing things that seems real & functional because 2 or more people believe it is real & functional!

The book takes a look at his life, from his birth in a fundamentalist Christian sect to his dabbling in Far East mysticism. Daniel can quote the Bible and the Bhagavad Gita with equal fluency.

There were a few things that stuck with me. At one point, Daniel went to a Buddhist monastery hoping to find a bed for the night. The monks told him it would be $50 and Daniel replied that, in that case, they would have turned away the Buddha. The monks replied that they lived in different times from the Buddha. Is that really true? For that has been the argument that has kept many Christians happily ensconced in their privileged lifestyles. Jesus told one would-be follower, "if you want to follow me, sell everything you own". The would-be follower turned away dejected for he was a very wealthy man. But it's not practicable for us to sell everything and live without money - is it? Daniel would disagree. Daniel's lifestyle challenges all of our assumptions about the role of money in our lives and culture.

Which makes me wonder about the religious communities who take vows of poverty, chastity and obedience. Priests and nuns who live in personal poverty, because they personally "own" nothing - but their community owns everything. They have the latest smartphones, tablets and computers. They live in huge houses and drive fancy cars. They take annual vacations to Florida. They have pension plans and cushy retirement homes for their elderly priests. Is that really poverty? Is that even voluntary simplicity? Quite a contrast to the live Daniel lives.

Maybe we aren't all going to give away our belongings and live in caves. But what about downsizing our lives and living with less. Maybe we'd be happier. After all, studies have apparently shown that the more stuff we have, the unhappier we are. Once our basic needs are met - food, shelter, clothing - and maybe a few extras, our happiness quotient doesn't increase with more possessions. It fact, it decreases. We think that happiness and stuff/money run parallel... truth is, at some point, our happiness reaches a maximum and after that, more stuff doesn't add more happiness.

At one point in his life, Daniel suffered from depression - before he gave up money - and he was on a cocktail of anti-depressants. He was desperately unhappy and filled with anxiety. At one point, a light bulb went on and Daniel realized that he could concentrate on something other than his anxiety.

"I started visualizing my thoughts," Suelo says. "My mind was a weed garden of negative thoughts about people, things, myself. I thought: 'I don't care if it takes me until I'm eighty years old--I'm going to weed out this garden. That's my priority.' I kept seeing these negative thoughts rising in my mind. Why do I hold on to them? It's useless. I'd let it go."

Daniel's insight is applicable to each one of us. We all have negative thoughts that cause us to worry and feel anxious - about the world, about others, about ourselves. Some thought gardens are completely over-run by weeds. Some are meticulously tended. Whatever the case might be, weeds will always find a way to sneak into our thought gardens. We can let them grow unchecked... or we can recognize them for what they are and let them go.

But weeding a garden by hand takes time and it's hard work. Some people would say it's better to use Round-Up. Drug the garden to within an inch of its life. Round-Up not working? Try a different drug.  But what do the pesticides... or the drugs... do to the healthy plants... or thoughts? Good question.

I highly recommend this book.