In 2000, Daniel Suelo gave away all his worldly possessions, left his last $30 in a phone booth and wandered into the wilderness of the American Southwest. This, he says, is when his life began.
The author of his biography
“He said money was an illusion, and I didn’t really believe that,” Sundeen says in the video below. But when the economy collapsed in 2008 and “money just disappeared” Sundeen thought “maybe Suelo had a point.” In 2009, Sundeen began writing Suelo’s story:
Suelo has lived without a penny to his name for nearly 15 years. He refuses to use or accept money, government assistance or even barter and trade.
“My philosophy is to use only what is freely given or discarded and what is already present and already running, whether or not I existed,” Suelo writes on his blog “Zero Currency.”
“Our whole society is designed so that you have to have money,” he continues. “You have to be a part of the capitalist system. It’s illegal to live outside of it.”
As well as quitting cash, he threw away his passport and driver’s license and changed his legal name, Shellabarger, to Suelo, Spanish for soil, Britain’s Daily Mail reported in 2012.
Suelo has spent most of the last decade and a half camping in the desert, living in caves, staying in communes around the country and occasionally spending the night in the homes of strangers.
For several years, he lived in a cave on the edge of a cliff in Utah’s Arches National Park, where he carved a bed out of rock, foraged for food, drank from springs and bathed in a creek. When Suelo was away, he left a note for hikers – “Feel free to camp here. What’s mine is yours. Eat any of my food. Read my books. Take them with you if you’d like.”
His food there included foraged mulberries and wild onions, scavenged road-killed raccoons and squirrels, expired groceries from dumpsters and meals cooked by friends and strangers.
While critics complain that Suelo’s getting a “free ride” and that the system would collapse “if everyone lived like him,” Sundeen points out the irony that “if everyone keeps living like the average American, the world will actually collapse much more quickly.”
Last summer Suelo decided to move back to “civilization” – Fruita, Colorado – to care for his aging parents. He still lives without money, but has had to reinstate his driver’s license to drive them around. He’s set up camp at a nearby river so as not to lose touch with “the real world,” where he still lives by his mantra of taking as little as possible and giving as much as he can.
“We can cultivate freely giving and freely receiving no matter what station of life we’re in. That’s our true nature. It exists in everybody.” Suelo says in the video above.
Read adapted excerpts from Sunsteen’s book in The Atlantic.
Give unto ceasar what is ceasar’s. Proof that posessions own you, not the other way around.
“While critics complain that Suelo’s getting a “free ride” and that the system would collapse “if everyone lived like him,””
Those must be the critics belong to the MSM and elites.
““Wild nature, outside commercial civilization, runs on gift economy – freely give, freely receive – thus it is balanced.”
Not for long. At the way Barry and his Zionist cohorts are making all of our land a “National Monument” and fencing off what’s not used, people won’t be able to live off of any deserted land or natural wilderness. He’s sectioning and carving our country out like the Zionists do in Palestine and soon we’ll all be shackled into one corner with nowhere to go and fighting each other for scraps off the ground because we don’t have the balls to fight back at our true enemy, THE ZIONIST JEWS!
“You have to be a part of the capitalist system. It’s illegal to live outside of it.”
Just ask James Boyd or Kelly Thomas.
If you could, that is.
Here is a man, probably mid 50’s, with no commitments, i.e. wife, children, getting in touch with his inner self. A section of the vid. showed him sitting in the meditation position, fanning with his hands the “good” energy toward himself. IMO, this is completely useless.
I would venture to guess he is as passive as the day is long, and would not stand and defend this country.
Interesting experiment he conducted, I’ll give him that, and he didn’t leach off anyone, this is admirable.
His comment, “If everyone keeps living like the average American, the world will actually collapse much more quickly,” sounds profound, but is there any truth to back this up? The world bankers will collapse things when they decide, not us.
A society to function requires productivity in some capacity. He was able to live by the freewill gifts of those that had to give, because someone, somewhere, had been productive. Someone grew the food he ate, sewed the clothes, made his shoes, backpack, hat and eyeglasses, etc..
Money in itself is not evil, it’s just a means of exchange. Silver and gold are a means of exchange. Money represents labor, period.
Hopefully, he’ll meet a nice lady that will love him and bring some little ones into the world.
Agreed Katie, it is the love of money that is the root of all evil. Or so they say. When good men do nothing and evil runs rampant, this is what you get, a “looted” Treasury to the tune of trillions, the gay agenda shoved down your throat, (pardon the pun), crumbling infrastructure for years of neglect, Insurance Companies spending millions more on advertising while denying claims, the failed experiment of ObamaCare. I could go on and on .
Of course, the “good men” I speak of hold no public office. They’ve been sitting back watching all this tomfoolery and getting resolute in their convictions. They know the show will not go on much further and it’s coming to a crescendo, of Civil War in the near future. It’s gonna go down. As Henry says, “Get your mind right.” You’ll need it for the fight.
it will be far from a “civil” war. to many pissed people.
You are spot on Katie……….I do not worship money. I use it as a tool to help others which in the circle of things benefits me as well. The evil creatures in control of so much of our society absolutely hate it when we show love and caring for our brothers and sisters.
This man was living entirely free. Amazing.
And now he has a drivers licence again.
What a waste of time.
This man is truly Free. And will always be even if society becomes slaves of the devilish elites!
I just got done messin with code enforcement who think they own my home. After that and reading this I’m starting to think it’s not a bad idea to do what he did….