Why couldn't they do away with money?

I met a British couple in the Backwaters who were heading to Pondicherry. I didn’t have any particular plans and they asked me if I wanted to come. So I went... On day four, we drove to Pondicherry. Until 1954, Pondy was a French colony – and it shows. The second language (or first) of many of the residents is still French and there are more French tourists than from any other country. It has more (western) culture than any other city I’ve been in in the south. Maybe its even a little chic -- they serve coissants instead of wonder-like bread and they use plates and silverware instead of banana leaves. It’s also the cleanest city I’ve been in. Pondy is located on the Bay of Bengal so it has a beautiful view of the water, but the beach is not really for swimming because it has big boulders you have to climb over to get to the sea. The boulders were said to have protected it from significant damage during the tsunami. I did actually climb down one day and put my feet in just so I could say I'd touched the Indian Ocean (then I found out it was the Bay of Bengal). It feels like a combination of a beach town, a hippy hang out, a very proper colony, and a touch of the architecture of New Orleans (although not the jazz music or craziness).

While here, we visited the Sri Aurobindo ashram. When I say visited, I mean, had a tour, but did not stay at the ashram. The couple I was traveling with had a friend involved in the ashram and one of the directors gave us a tour. The founder and his second in command, known as “The Mother” wanted to create a place to facilitate all people of all religious beliefs to meditate and find inner harmony. There are 1200 members who live in the city and exist for the most part on a barter system, offering whatever services they can, whether it be dishwasher or professor. I’m a little bit of a skeptic though. The group owns a tremendous amount of property and has an associated society with members from around the globe, but I think they tend to target big donors. One interesting tidbit of information -- I always assumed "sitting Indian-style" came from American Indians, but after visiting the ashram, and someone asking me where I learned to sit like that, I'm pretty sure its from India. I answered "kindergarden."

The Mother also started a Utopian community called Auroville about 15 km outside of Pondy. Its purpose is to broaden the ashram's goal to help a community find universal harmony. I visited it for a day. Unlike the ashram, they were more open about their challenges. Their goal is to create a society which does not use money and appreciates all members of society. Its especially interesting to try to create this in a country where castes are still an important social status issue. They admit they have not succeeded and that to live there you need to have support from outside family or other funds. However, the tour was very sanitized and there was little opportunity to interact with people from the community except as shopkeepers selling the community members crafts. I wanted to know why they felt were the biggest issues.

• Did people get along?
• Was it really a model for the world if you start with people who self select themselves in the community?
• Why couldn't they do away with money?
• Would people not do the work they needed to?
• Did they attract loafers?

Regardless, for the people living there, I'm sure it was a very nice way of life. I couldn't help comparing it to a kibbutz, but the community was diverse and seemed to have a lot of communal process, rather than focusing on survival. Posted by Skarp at 7:07 PM