Is ERE the ultimate blue-pill?

Simple living, extreme early retirement, becoming and being wealthy, wisdom, praxis, personal growth,...
Campitor
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Re: Is ERE the ultimate blue-pill?

Post by Campitor »

Attachment to illusion is evil. Attachment to illusion is called idolatry.
--Daniel Suelo


Hope is an illusion - it doesn't exist anywhere except in your mind. By Suelo's definition clinging to hope is evil and idolatry. I think he's oversimplifying things. I officially award his "money is evil" philosophy a raspberry.

And I think Suelo is confused about money and what it represents. Trading dollars is no different than trading labor for goods or bartering from a philosophical standpoint. If I needed some eggs and had to trade a pig to get them, wouldn't I be attached to the pig? I'd have to feed it, protect it from predators, and perhaps eventually kill or offer it up to be killed in exchange for the desired eggs - is this less evil than exchanging federal reserve notes physically or electronically?

To be "ERE" requires approaching things with systems level thinking. Some things are better acquired via the "illusion" of a financial transaction or would you prefer to raise 50,000 pigs to buy a house? Our existence is limited therefore our time is limited. Time is the most precious commodity we have therefore it should be used conscientiously and deliberately whenever possible. I'd rather spend my time doing the things I enjoy and use money earned via compounded interest to purchase the goods and services that would be inefficient for me to acquire on my own. Anyone advocating the inefficient use of time/labor/money deserves a swift kick.

jonnyz
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Re: Is ERE the ultimate blue-pill?

Post by jonnyz »

The_Bowme wrote:
Tue Dec 26, 2017 3:28 pm
If you want to be ascetic, it's a question of your relationship to worldly goods, not money. If you beg for bread or for dollars to buy bread, I don't see the difference.

edit: also, wasn't it the red pill?
If I were to go moneyless, I wouldn't beg or barter. Me v. the world, baby. It's Interesting that posters have jumped straight to this.

But this comes closer to what I'm seeking in this thread; relationship to worldly goods, not money.

This topic is more personal than I thought. I don't mean to try and sell the Suelo perspective. I think I just wanted to gauge all of your reactions. It's brought to light that... I have one foot in the secular world, one foot in the sacred world, and I'm not sure which world I want to put both my feet in. Yikes.

RE color of pill: people here use it as the red pill, but I'm playing with the idea that moneyless transcends ERE altogether. I think ERE just makes your relationship with money more hygienic:
Fish wrote:
Mon Oct 02, 2017 4:25 am
When I started, ERE was about money and retirement. Now it's not. This was a completely unexpected result. :o :)

jonnyz
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Re: Is ERE the ultimate blue-pill?

Post by jonnyz »

TopHatFox wrote:
Tue Dec 26, 2017 6:58 pm
And at some point, a small group figured out they can get most of the group to work for them, while convincing them that if they work hard enough, they can be part of the small group too. Fascinating.
This is what prompted me to start the thread.

daylen
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Location: Lawrence, KS

Re: Is ERE the ultimate blue-pill?

Post by daylen »

If ERE lead you to these thoughts, then what is the difference? The red pill is the path, not the destination.

How can you expect a society to hold the same values as you in the long term? Redundance of systemic design is necessary if you wish to avoid contingencies.

Culture is good. Culture and a hierarchy of decentralized currency systems is better.

Don't take my word for it though.

jonnyz
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Re: Is ERE the ultimate blue-pill?

Post by jonnyz »

As you say, it's the path, not the destination. I guess you could say blue is the destination: accepting the yoke, not doing anything about it, settling for an unsustainable lifestyle.

I’m not concerned with society (the mob). I’m concerned with me (wisdom seeker). That’s how lasting change happens. Don’t focus on society's problem until you've sorted out your own problems. I'm not saying every person should cease all use of their money, because that probably won't happen. Even if it did, people would figure out a way of adapting. Wouldn't be the worse thing that's happened to humanity.

I'm asking the members of this forum-- people who realize the true value of adaption (quality) over havin' a million bucks in the bank (quantity)-- if they've ever taken the idea of adaption as far as living without the thing they're trying to improve their relationship with: money.

Moneylessness isn't possible (probably) for everyone.
Last edited by jonnyz on Wed Dec 27, 2017 7:21 am, edited 1 time in total.

daylen
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Re: Is ERE the ultimate blue-pill?

Post by daylen »

Why can we not all do both?

How can we create a system for a smooth transition? We are thinking with cybernetics. How can we progress towards higher-order cybernetic thinking while also staying grounded?

Perhaps we should strive towards an ideal system while also learning to engage in our senses. Induction and deduction working in harmony. The scientific experience.

7Wannabe5
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Re: Is ERE the ultimate blue-pill?

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

Money is example of very strong inter-subjective reality. It clearly does not exist if you are alone in the wilderness. So, one of the benefits of doing an experiment with going moneyless, is to bring the wilderness around you into sharper focus. This works even if you are in an urban area, surrounded by other homo sapiens and their various complex hive structures.

Recently, I was watching one of my favorite movie musicals "Oliver!" There is a scene where Mr. Bumble, drags poor Oliver (age 9, but small) around the streets, singing "Boy for Sale":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4CVZnGJIzQ

So, another thing that comes into sharper focus when you do an experiment with going moneyless is your perceived value on the open market absent access to conventional employment market mechanisms. Since the current market perception is that average bride price (in spite of lip service to egalitarian ideals) is more than 1 Jacob/year ($7000 or barter equivalent in support), for any reasonably attractive human female, the "wilderness" solution will almost immediately collapse to the "social barter" solution for frugal women. This makes sense since there is good evidence that money was originally invented for this purpose. Humans are out-breeders, so trade across clans/tribes in reproductive assets is component of minimal "sustainable" (as opposed to monk-like "survivable") model.

There is also evidence that absent any other "need", money will be re-invented by humans, at fairly low population density, simply for use in gaming and gambling. Thus, very early settlements in my region, populated with French fur traders, soldiers and Native Americans, made use of currency based on altered playing cards. Commonplace plot of novel set in chaotic edge of civilization would be gambling resulting in transfer of human property. People do not use the term "money" very carefully. When they say that "money" is the root of all evil, they usually mean something more like "wild speculation", "extortion", or "wasteful hoarding."

Did
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Re: Is ERE the ultimate blue-pill?

Post by Did »

FYI Mark Boyle is back to using money. His thing now is not using technology. He lasted 3 years or so he says.

Fish
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Re: Is ERE the ultimate blue-pill?

Post by Fish »

Suelo is also back to using money.
[New Update (6/17/2017):]

Since the Spring of 2015, I had to put my life of house-less and moneyless freedom on hold to care for my aging parents. My dad finally passed away last February 2016.

With a few exceptions, I still don't take or use money for myself. But I do have a state ID, manage my mom's finances, paying her bills, shopping for her, and dealing with general bureaucracy. I don't have a driver's license, though I've been offered the gift of a car several times but have refused it.

I feel as passionate as ever about a moneyless world, and I hope to return to moneyless living.
I don't think it detracts from his message or his mission, but it does show that it doesn't require a lifetime commitment. There are varying degrees of moneylessness starting from losing a wallet, and I think it's the perspective-shift that is most important, not strict adherence to the moneyless cause.

Edited to add a nice quote from the MMM forums:
misterhorsey @ MMM forums wrote: Even if I disagree with him about the utility of money, I can see how it can tend to turn many human relationships into overt transactions. Sure, in a bartering economy you could start seeing people as possible providers or takers of goods and services - but these transactions need to be mediated by social relationships and community = rather than amoral, freely exchangable currency.

Campitor
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Re: Is ERE the ultimate blue-pill?

Post by Campitor »

jonnyz wrote:
Wed Dec 27, 2017 1:24 am
TopHatFox wrote:
Tue Dec 26, 2017 6:58 pm
And at some point, a small group figured out they can get most of the group to work for them, while convincing them that if they work hard enough, they can be part of the small group too. Fascinating.
This is what prompted me to start the thread.
Here is the problem with this "red pill" philosophy of "no money": it ascribes negativity to items that are "neutral" - the damage to oneself or society is in it's use. Working for other people isn't evil or wrong. We can all post on this forum because of the labor provide by people who work for others; they create and maintain the technology that makes this forum possible.

Money and paid labor are tools to be used intelligently and purposefully. The unwise use of money/paid labor doesn't make either inherently evil. I could live like Dan Suelo (no money and homeless) by robbing wandering tourist in the desert or by emulating Suelo's positive actions. The good/bad probabilities of having no money and being homeless are determined by my choices.

And since red/blue pill is often referenced as a result of its popularization from the Matrix Trilogy, it's worth noting that even after taking the red pill, Neo, Trinity, and Morpheus continued inhabiting the "Matrix" for their own purposes. What would have been the consequences to humanity if the machines didn't need humans and the Matrix never existed? Ponder that for a while.

PS - major plot holes in those Matrix movies. All that constant electromagnetic energy in the sky blocking out the sun but the robots couldn't figure out how to harness it? And the robots were harnessing human heat to create energy but couldn't figure out how to use those huge earth drilling machines to create an extensive geothermal energy grid? I guess the Wachowskis blue pilled the fans.

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C40
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Re: Is ERE the ultimate blue-pill?

Post by C40 »

I'm late to the thread, and I apologize for posting without having read all the responses yet. Here are my thoughts on the subject as initially brought up.


I like money. It's extremely useful. There are good reasons that money was invented on it's own by nearly all developed civilizations.

---------------------

Queue George Costanza here: "WE LIVE IN A SOCIETY".

Our society is a quite well-functioning system that we can use to benefit ourselves. Money is an extremely useful part of this, and no matter how much you or whoever might think it's evil, it does function very well as a store of (perceived) output. It also provides opportunities to 'win' strictly within the monetary system (for example, by buying something for $10, spending what people might consider to be $10 worth of time on it, using it for two years, and then selling it for $30). In this case, winning within the monetary system is like creating output/value from nothing (from a first-person view), and that's pretty incredible! For example, Brute investing a bunch of his money in cryptocurrencies over the last couple years has probably generated a bunch of returns for him, and will provide him with money (output/value) he can live off of for many years. He's won in the monetary system and gets to benefit in the rest of his life.

--------------------

My general strategy in life, including in personal finance, is to 'win' (in my own personal versions of 'winning') within the current systems that exist.

That is because, winning might require one of the three:
1 - Using (some) of the current systems
2 - Abandoning some/all current systems entirely (like, for example, money-less people)
3 - Changing the systems

I mostly pick #1 because that's the most effective way for me to win. Most of the time, I function within current systems and societal ideals. Sometimes I ignore them. Changing the systems isn't worth it for me, because it would take so much work that I won't win in my own personal ways (and, changing the systems is not a part of my personal definition of winning)


IMO, going 100% moneyless is a hyperbolic (and maybe immature) response to some of the aspects of society that, ok yeah, are not fair or pure or perfect. You know what? The whole world is not fair or pure or perfect. The fox steals the goose's eggs. The wolves kill the slow baby deer. The tree and vines grow tall, steal all the sunlight, and starve out the unadjusted ground-level plants. The bored teenage daughter sleeps with the 22 year-old loser own the street. The plague kills millions. All these things, along with most (or one could say all) of the purposes and functions of money are not unfair or un-pure. They just are.

ThisDinosaur
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Re: Is ERE the ultimate blue-pill?

Post by ThisDinosaur »

Its not all or nothing. You can learn something useful from moneyless types and still participate in the economy.

I aim to solve as many living expenses as possible without spending money. Because I don't completely trust the 4% rule or even the 3% rule to cover me indefinitely. Several of my coworkers read FIRE blogs. There is an asset valuation bubble. I think these two things may be related, and I don't want to get blindsided when/if the Index Fund Early Retirement bubble bursts.

BRUTE
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Re: Is ERE the ultimate blue-pill?

Post by BRUTE »

brute is unwilling to read those crazy anti-money websites. what's their argument for giving up money? in brute's opinion, money is pretty much the best invention humans have ever made, better than sliced bread and electricity combined.

jonnyz
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Re: Is ERE the ultimate blue-pill?

Post by jonnyz »

Thanks for everyone's thoughtful replies. If any of you have read my journal, I'm young and figuring things out still. I have a lot to think about.

vexed87
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Re: Is ERE the ultimate blue-pill?

Post by vexed87 »

BRUTE wrote:
Wed Dec 27, 2017 11:31 pm
brute is unwilling to read those crazy anti-money websites. what's their argument for giving up money?
If you don't read it, you will never know :lol:

I really recommend you read the book brute. You won't agree with all of it, there are parts of it I was unwilling to implement, I'm not going to give away my retirement portfolio on a whim because a book suggests I'll be happier for it, because I know society or my local community for that matter is ill-prepared to take care of me or my family to the standard of living I desire in the event that I can no longer work, but there are other aspects of the book which I agreed with and had even never before considered.

Whilst most on ERE forum wouldn't even flinch if someone suggested a Gillette Mach IV $20 cartridge razor was incredibly expensive, wasteful, and inherently stupid when the basic safety razor, or an electric beard trimmer are orders of magnitude cheaper, more durable and do a better job to boot. There are even those here who are prepared to go to the next level to reduce their grooming bills to zero, they simply need to learn to maintain a sharp pair of hair scissors for the occasional beard trim. The book goes through wheaton-esque levels of spending on all sorts of topics, with moneyless being the highest level and the pinnacle of the experiment, but there is much to be gained on the lower rungs of the ladder for those not prepared to do away with money in favour of other forms of capital. Reducing one's dependency on money to solve life's problems is a no brainer. Money may be easier at times, but if nothing else, understanding the alternatives reduces your exposure to a faltering economy and help you accumulate more for your retirement portfolio whilst others are drowning in debt in order to maintain the unsustainable.

http://www.moneylessmanifesto.org/why-free/

Highly recommended for the curious ^^

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