A Reflection on Freeloaders by Daniel Suelo

Here is an excellent post by my friend Suelo - he is the remarkable man who has lived over 14 years with receiving or spending a penny. Life is given to us freely; why does humanity have to make it into a perpetual competition?

I get so many droves of criticisms in comment threads that I'm a freeloader and a drain on society that I just ignore them. But one I couldn't resist replying to:

"M., I can't wrap my mind around why it troubles you that I accept
what is voluntarily given, that I do my work voluntarily, or take what is
thrown away rather than let it go to a landfill. Voluntary means doing without pay. You volunteer because you want to. If you don't want to, it isn't voluntary. Voluntary is win win: win for the giver, win for the receiver. Why should you resent that I want to help somebody or somebody wants to help me? I ask nothing from you, impose nothing on you. And why should you resent that I grab a few crumbs of overwhelming waste from the table of those who take obscenely more than they need? No, I do not want your help if it isn't voluntary, and you have made it clear you resent giving to the unjust as well as the just.

"I decided not to take food stamps or any kind of government assistance, except I do use libraries, walk on sidewalks & roads. The library thing really puts people in a tizzy. One friend of mine said in a similar comment thread that she was a taxpayer but didn't use the library, so she volunteered all her library time to me. Everybody was finally quiet. Reality didn't change, only beliefs in the head.

"If I 'WILL' be living off government assistance, as you assert, it will be because I am forced, not voluntarily. Your system and your rules impose, making my whole life illegal. I ask for very little: daily bread, not even a house, and a place to sleep. Why is it that those who own believe those who do not own owe them? Lords impose. Landlords. Owners. What do I impose upon you that distresses you?

'Free means free. What is free is un-owned. What is free costs no money.

'Do the sunlight, rain, and air also distress you, as they free fall on the unjust and the just equally, even enabling mooches? What energy running your body & the entire world civilization is not free from the sun? Can you pay back the sun if you tried? And if you think you deserve something because of your skillful work, what skill is yours that was not gifted to you? Is there such thing as a creature that isn't a mooch? Everything you are, everything you have, was gifted to you, unmerited, by pure grace.

'Yes, I am dependent upon your work. You are dependent upon my work and nature's work and sun's work. But you will not acknowledge our work, because it does not have arbitrary numbers upon it. Why would you deserve a cell phone while the sweatshop workers who made it could never think of owning one? Because you have more arbitrary numbers? Who decided we own this land that we invaded? Claim ownership of what was free to you, believe you earned it, and refuse to give it free to another, and claim that your whole universe is dependent upon your arbitrary numbers called money, if you like. Your god is what you believe everything depends upon. But your god you defend so vehemently does not erase the reality that all is by grace, that you earned absolutely nothing. Even the Jesus whose cross you display said, 'I can do nothing of myself', and 'no one can be my disciple unless you give up all your possessions.' Enlightenment is realizing we own absolutely nothing, we earned absolutely nothing. Enlightenment is simple reality."