The Dark Furie

When I lived with money I was always lacking. Money represents lack. Money represents things in the past (debt) and things in the future (credit), but money never represents what is present.

So he's insane then? Not really, more that he's better educated in the ways of the world and a little bitter (aren't we all?) about how people destroy themselves. You see, Daniel has a degree in anthropology that saw him joining the Peace Corps and monitoring the health of an Ecuadorian village for two years. During that time he saw the people of the village adopt new methods of economy, selling the excess food grown in their fields for cash and using the cash to buy things they hadn't needed until they were offered them - televisions, junk food, etc. As he measured their health he saw that his charts showed their health steadily declining as they spent more money on these things. In his own words, "It looked like money was impoverishing them". It was a turning point in the way he viewed the world. Ten years, a bunch of charity work and one Buddhist monastery later Daniel decided that in order to have a happy life he needed to live a free life and not be involved with money at all - a Sadhu in the most capitalist country in the world, in his mind.

But is money that easy to get rid of? While Daniel sees himself apart from the capitalist world he still lives off of its scraps, taking what others have left behind and wouldn't have had if money wasn't involved. And that's probably the reason I felt compelled to write this post and point out this man. A man who preaches regularly about the good parts of living without money, the character building toughness of it all, how it brings you closer to grace and therefore closer to God. A man who is as much a part of the system he reviles as any of us simply for the way he's chosen to opt out. A man who seems to have missed the point.