Skip to content or view screen version

UG#642 - Living a 3-Dimensional Life (Living Moneyless, Walden #1)

Robin Upton | 24.05.2013 03:16 | Analysis | Free Spaces | Social Struggles | Sheffield | World

A poem by Wendell Berry starts us off on a differently paced, more musical set of episodes this episode. As a counter to what Jacques Fresco terms 'base articiality of materialism and mindless consumption' we weave a tapestry of thoughts including those from iconoclastic earthy thinkers including Suelo, the moneyless resident of a Utah desert from whom we heard in episode 600 and the American Transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau.

ug642-hour1mix.mp3 - mp3 27M

ug642-hour2mix.mp3 - mp3 27M


An extended introduction is graced with 'How To Be A Poet' read by its author, Wendell Berry, as an introduction to a slower paced, less pointed show this week. The show consists mainly of a pair of interlaced readings about the exceptional lives of their authors, both deep thinkers given to musings on nature and on life. From the 19th century, we read some sections of the first chapter of Walden, Henry David Thoreau's celebrated chronicle of reflections from his years living alone in a one room hut. From the 21st, we read a selection of answers by Suelo from the F.A.Q. on his website 'Zero Currency', about the moneyless life he lives, why he got started on this road and why it suits him so well. We kick off the show with a short recollection by Jacques Fresco of his time in school. He summarises a 3/4 century of musings on how the money system has allowed an elite to enslave most people in developed societies in a dreary consumerism with the curt phrase: "This @*&$ has got to go!"

Music: An excerpt of Breathe by Pink Floyd, plus Toxic Swamp by Kenny Young & The Eggplants and Within This Emerald Hill by Jesse Gardner

Thanks to the good folk of Librivox for the reading of Walden

Robin Upton
- e-mail: unwelcome [At] unwelcome Guests [d0t] net
- Homepage: www.unwelcomeguests.net/642