The Man Who Quit Money

Last weekend I read a very interesting book, The Man Who Quit Money. It’s the story of Daniel Suelo, who, in the year 2000, took all the money he had ($30), placed it in a phone booth, and walked away. Since that time he has lived completely money free. He accepts no welfare or government handouts, earns no income, pays no taxes. He lives in the wilderness (caves in the Utah desert), forages wild and discarded food, and receives from others only what is freely given. He doesn’t barter (this work for those chickens) but he is active and does volunteer, receiving the natural benefits that flow from the work (transport on a fishing vessel, being fed with the other workers, etc.). Suelo is not a bum or a hermit. He is very engaged in society with many friends. He simply will not be paid in money and, when he can’t graciously avoid receiving it, he gives it away. He is popular in the nearby city of Moab as a house sitter and maintains a blog about his moneyless experience.

People like Suelo are very interesting and a blessing to the rest of us. They challenge our notions of what is possible and open our minds to new things. When I was I new teenager, a mere fifty years ago, I was quite involved in track and field. At that time it was obvious to most people that only very exceptional human beings could run marathons, and widely believed that women could not safely run races longer than 200 meters. Today, thanks to the efforts of countless, Suelo-like non-believers, we shake our heads at these notions.

One particularly interesting point made by his biographer, Mark Sundeen, is that Suelo comes from a Fundamentalist background, specifically Plymouth Brethren. These are the folks who gave us Dispensationalism (the notion that world history is divided into seven periods “dispensations” and God deals differently with the world in each of these periods) and the Rapture (the belief that those who are saved will be spirited away just before the final tribulation). Sundeen’s point is not that Suelo is a fundamentalist – Suelo has left all that behind – but that coming from a background among marginalized people gives Suelo the freedom to be radically different, and the latitude to think thoughts that are profoundly unconventional.

As I read this book I was reminded that my mother was raised Plymouth Brethren, and that, as a teenaged girl, she was deeply involved in the Social Credit movement in Alberta. This was part of the counter-cultural, anti-establishment challenge to the money system that arose as a response to the Great Depression; the Occupy Movement of her day. William Aberhart, the founder of the Social Credit Party in Alberta, was also a fundamentalist and a dispensationalist.

I am neither a fundamentalist nor a dispensationalist, but I do think these sorts of people make a great contribution to our world. They’re the folks who challenge conventional thinking. Whether or not they have the answers, they raise a lot of questions. Questions drive the quest, and change the world.