Mark Boyle (1) (1979–)

3.5 stars

Boyle isn't the most gifted writer, but he's surprisingly not terrible, either. I really enjoyed this look into his year without using money at all, and was encouraged/inspired to double down on my efforts to live a more simple life, which ultimately was the point, right?

I didn't love the layout, as paragraphs were interrupted by boxes of unrelated text. Also, there was a weird mix of UK and U.S. units of measurement. Sometimes it was one, sometimes the other, sometimes both.

The author isn't a Christian, so he's convinced the world can be saved by humanity. (It can't.) There's a brief reference to evolutionary theory as fact. (It isn't.) Boyle swears a few times. But overall, worth a read for the inspiration.… (more)

The book tries to preempt and defuse accusations of hypocrisy or inconsistently by addressing them outright toward the end with the Whitman quote of Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes., yet the persistent theme throughout the book has to be one of a purity spiral and the contradictions within it.

The author was vegan and environmentally conscious and points this out repeatedly; however, working for a fair trade company isn't good enough. Advocating environmentalism isn't good enough. Because it's all still within "the system". This purity spiral leads him to reject money but embrace eating roadkill. Again and again we're reminded how unsustainable the current system is, as the author feels bad and hypocritical for even using a fishing line in self reliance.
Yet if this is actually about saving the world and environment there's never a single comment about what would happen if people actually followed the author's path. The answer is obvious. The entire ecological system would collapse if everyone tried to fish their local waters and kill local game. The author can enjoy this hermetic lifestyle by nibbling on the edges of the system he's trying to reject (or end?). I was waiting for any reflection on this but it never happens. Nor any reflection on the negligible impact of a single person doing this (in terms of environmental impact).

Toward the end of the book his relationship ends and he has a momentary panic seeming to realize that he's stuck in a rural area with no woman, among elderly peers (the death of rural community as he's repeatedly waxed), but no greater reflection is made about this illustrating the dead end of this lifestyle either (needing urban life to find someone to drag out into the wild). The obvious missing puzzle piece is community which requires connection. The author laments the impossibility of friendships across the world and country when you eliminate technology and modern transport, but writes a book that advertises his open house and invites people to come there.

The layers of contradictions are really what kept me glued to this book. The rejection of technology seems reflexive and poorly thought through, with arbitrary limits - and for homesteading there are a lot of other people doing it more realistically and better (with many documenting their work on youtube). For becoming attuned to nature a book like Proenneke's Alone in the Wilderness is much more evocative. Still, the author has actually done the lifestyle change instead of just talking about it in theory, and is living his philosophy (however patchy), which is commendable.… (more)