Human Value Exchange
or HuVEx
Well, hi! Here is the little manuscript of that little philosophy that kept me alive when traveling major parts of Europe and in Tanzania by foot with a backpack and a tent. I am using this self experience of travels to highlight and showcase this concept, since it embodies the most extreme and society distanced lifestyle imaginable for many people in our time, but couldn't be closer related to the reality we all share when living this same life on earth. I'm not sure if people are supposed to hear about this already. It doesn't fit into the state of society we're in right at this time, but we will get there. My optimism is sure of it since I see the path that goes parallel to money...
Living without a source of currency often is considered impossible, at least based on what reactions I received from strangers meeting me on the travels. The foundational explanation about how this works, is basically always the same and it always comes down to this HuVEx, Human Value Exchange. I will expense this idea now for the first time in a written form. I hope this will cause many people to enrich their lives and the experience that their potential gifted them on earth!
In the following I will report of concepts, ideas and ways of integration in my own life and in the life of people I know that would benefit greatly from the approaches shared here. That being said, there is something to be won from everyone out of this, since it's about being human and living life. This shall be your guide of how to establish a great new aspect of living as human being and how to acquire great advantages by being simply human.
It's a part of the journey to come back to our roots.
1. Introduction of myself
2. What is HuVEx
3. Life without money
Traveling without money
Education without money
Friends and their problems
4. What you need
1 This is who I share to be in public!
Luckily I am not really getting tired of introducing myself in the depths of this Blog again and again, so I will also not skip that part in this - let's call it essay. All for the sacred context, right?
I am Lennart. I have built a character and the concept of a movement, a club and a way of living, mainly connected to the letters Gen.ZM. You might have been familiar with it before. As this character, which wears a poncho, a self decorated linen pant and is most of his time barefoot, I travel the world as a volunteer and author, learning from the world and its people and I come up with a frame to be integrated bit by bit in the reach of my potential. Without shoes and without money, this isn't the norm, but it works and I am not going to hide how it's done and how each of us can benefit of the aspects.
Finally we will be able to see our own life more freely, clearer and in a better relation to reality itself. Also, this might be your first insight into the way of breaking out, living beyond norms, growing beyond a systems border, living freely and enjoying all that the world has to offer. If it overwhelms at first, take a break but don't ignore it. Because it's all about us and this one shot that we are giving to be on this world. Please, don't just let it slip!
This is about a potential inside of us, that a world driven by money instead of human value tries to suppress. We are able to do much more than money allows us and here are a few hints to it. We will begin with me. Why not?
When I left school and didn't fit it, I found a place in Canada and a community life I shared for a year and that was beautiful. I made my first experience with volunteer work and remembered the time during school, when I worked on weekends to afford my Canadian stay for one year, and I disliked many of the aspects presented. My certainty about not fitting into that system grew day by day during school and it had many faces - the fear of drowning in this type of society. Still being in the current western world, North America, everything around me still worked with money and beyond realising the joy it brings me, to do such a labor without payment in cash, but only for gratitude from others and a good and very social time, not much really changed on the idea about what to do with this upcoming life. I didn't really have a plan. I just liked to do work with people that I love in beautiful nature, I loved the adults with mental disabilities and my coworkers just as much. Not having money enhanced the clear perception of joy I had about this. My time in Canada was very good, but could not be the final stage...
Luckily one has caring parents and they do have ideas and plans for you in case that you do feel lost. They want to help by heart. In my case those wishes were truly good and out of love. They wanted me to find, but also were trapped in their thoughts taught by a system that they have never come to see the border of, only the inside of the cage, the regulation and the limits. Also you would never really advise your child to go a completely different way, that isn't safe, that isn't the norm for being a good parent... ok, so let's forget norms.
In the end you will always need to find the way yourself to make it truly your own path. Either way, being back from this year abroad, I became a carpenter, a learning one, mainly for my mum's sake. If I had to choose, I would pick an apprenticeship in which I can learn most practical things, with actual importance for myself and my future community of people. Working with wood, building roofs and houses seemed perfect and was totally not my thing, as expected. Tho I was allowed to learn endlessly, even if most aspects were negative. I realised what people are not like-minded, I realised what culture isn't mine, I realised to never want to drive to work, to never be outside on roofs in rain and snow, to not work for six euros an hour. In the end the owner of that company had a big heart and saw my situation, knowing that I belong somewhere else, and he gifted me freedom. I was fired on that day in December and I was most, really most grateful and remember dancing for what must have been my first time in Germany back to my car driving home.
There was this clear image in my mind of a bow and arrow, that have been on extreme tension for months now and by this happenstance released, they exploded into movement and action. I was able to feel the vibrating air around me that suggested that everything was about to change. And it did!
I started my first life session of convinced self studies. Convinced of that there is a way around everything that I don't seem as fitting for myself. Not by hiding of my problems or running away from obstacles, but by finding my own way in between. The big words from a guy without a job. I lived on the costs of my family, since they allowed it and were capable. I also had some spare money of the apprenticeship which I didn't use. I stopped consuming, since I didn't need to and saved all of it. And after this very intense time of which I have written enough on other places like A Year in the Life of 25, I came to the realisation that all things I long for, must be hidden in this world of ours, from which I had been living so distant until now. I didn't feel like I really knew how life looks like and there was a plan but there was time to use, so I went to work for the second time in my life with salary. I think I'm done for good, now...
Norway was the first destination and I managed in March, freezing my ass of with zero experience in Scandinavian winter nights and living with the richtest in Oslo through platforms like Couchsurfing (very much advisable when traveling with lowest budgets, looking for deeper cultural exchange with people of the place) and after Oslo I came through the rest of the country spending 2 or 3 euros a day for maybe a loaf of bread once in a while and mainly cabbage and a dry, very dry fish. Not good on the long run, but it kept me alive. But it will stick in my memory of how basic life can look when living with little money. The rest of my limited money resources I spend on three trains rides. The tent gave me the great opportunity to choose freely at night where to be. Norway is a very great country based on the Jedermannsgesetz which you might now. They say nature belongs to everyone and you can almost camp anywhere. A few weeks I managed to live like this, met buddhist monks on the way and lived with them and then I returned home.
A day after being back in this place where I was locked into self studies for way too long, I decided something spontaneous on the morning of the 1st of April very much to the discontent of my beloved mother. I had a visa process running for the United States of America and there was an Academy requesting me to be of their studies, in the only way that I could imagine studying, either way. They would take over all the studying costs and I would become a Social Therapist. Amazing isn't it?
On that pretty random morning I decided to never go to university in my life. To not lock myself into one place, with one direction of studies in the frame how the West presents it. I fell in love with the freedom of self studies way too much and also with the freedom that travels brought. My life seemed to escalate but in loving thoughts about my parents, I caught myself quickly again in a way that was calming for them in some way. I applied for my second volunteering service, this time in Tansania. My parents would lose me again for another year but at least I was a little safe there. I did my paid work long enough to pay for the social service costs and then I afforded a flight to Spain, Alicante, in the middle of May. The next eleven weeks I would walk back home to Germany but I didn't know that at this point. I just knew of three weeks in Spain, traveling with Martin. And that thought was overwhelming enough. I had enough money to keep living like in Norway and that honestly sucked, but! Experience! Knowing what you don't want for the future is worth gold. Martin flew home afterwards and I missed the opportunity and got to the island Sardinia instead, which was much closer and where my family was doing their holidays on the other side of the giant mediterranean isle. My second journey alone started and I met them which was a great bonus on this tour. I could've returned home with them just then, and I remember the moments of decision most clearly since that should be a key decision point in my life, but when I said them goodbye and started to walk towards the next island, Corsica, day by day my decision proved to be the right ones to the point until I met this guy.
We were sleeping on the same beach in Ajaccio, Corsica, and he was the one requesting to join my dinner made of random cans and pears. It was the beach that was used not many decades ago by the prison a bit further down that beach and it had a vibe. This young black man who joined was from Paris and not from its rich districts. He lived for money for a while but his life style of current travels consisted of trying to find a job to get money and to other times just ask bakeries for left over old bread. I loved that idea and so we started living like that together, for five weeks... we had the idea that we could travel all the way back to my home country and we did so. Soon we experienced that people really liked the thing we were doing and they wanted to support us in some ways. They gave us money and we bought a ticket to leave the island of Corsica. They gifted us fruits and pizza and meat and we lived a good life without any hunger. They invited us in and so we lived in Corsica, South France, Monaco, North Italy, all of Switzerland and at the Lake Constance before reaching my home on one rainy evening. When we reached Monaco and stayed there in this life style just much better for two weeks, we became clear of what we had discovered, of what life parallel to all the money existed. We learned about HuVEx and exchanged a lot of what we had to give. Our presence was often a great gift alone, our conversations were enriching to almost all, our physical strength given without payment was desired and the memories made were dear to all of us. We lived without money and we had it all. Day by day we looked at each other laughing badly, about being as light as a feather and living the life of Billionaires, just more free and even more beautiful places, with more loving people and with less responsibilities. We had found our key to Life.
Do you remember this Tanzania social service I earlier talked about. That happened still, but I didn't really plan it in the journey. Having had this experience, I was very much about to head straight out trying to travel to Tibet, but so instead I came to the east of Africa and live in Tanzania for a year. When I had holidays in December I traveled the same way for six weeks through the entire country, but this time alone, without shoes and in a country in which language and animals were a bigger problem. Luckily I know Swahili and expect for one encounter at night, the animals gifted me peace. People were amazed of this German barefoot guy who just had passed them, telling them in their mother tongue of what he's up to. Surviving with such an appearance, such a story and such a philosophy as HuVEx people made it most wonderful and easy to survive in this way. Yeah well, that's me. I'm sitting here in Dar es Salaam and writing about it all. Feels nice! It's all not that long ago but it has a really special place in my heart and the memory is golden. I want to share this!
1. Introduction of myself
2. What is HuVEx
3. Life without money
Traveling without money
Education without money
Friends and their problems
4. What you need
2 What is HuVEx
It was through the process of asking other people about their thoughts, to then realise that my definition and perception of the words are not equal with those of others. That wasn't surprising otherwise something in my way of being raised had be done very wrong. So I knew that we have different ideas of what 'Human Value Exchange' means when we each hear of it the first time and I thought to give this explanation of my own view, to be on the same line when continuing the exchange... Exchange? What is an exchange about this? Well, there we are...
My Google research without AI brings results. If you want to search something on the web without committing the crime of using AI wastefully, then simply type '- AI' behind whatever you are searching. God or someone will be thankful...
'Exchange' comes from the french word 'eschangier'. The spelling was influenced through this dead language called Latin which I studied for five years to reach this desperate point in life. Latin came up with the prefix, I guess you call it, called 'ex'! English had the word of 'change' after being the offspring language of the Anglos and the Saxons and just added the latin bit to make it EXCHANGE. Very beautiful indeed. A long unnecessary explanation later and the meaning is probably still to give and to receive. Let's bring this into our beloved context.
I put in efforts and energy to come up and write those lines you are reading here. If I'm doing the excellent job that nobody demands and read over my own written stuff once more and correct it again, than that's the amount of work put in to have it here. I give but what do I receive? Usually, if this was usual, my work as an author would hope for payment... I would publish, advertise and pray for that next mention of a writing fellow and for a few subscriptions to get my daily bread. I don't think I even have a subscription possibility set up for this page. And by the way, this art is deadly poor if you're not the absolute hit. Like Rowling.
I don't do it for the money and therefore I consider my writing as free art. I write, because the writing gives me greatest joy. I write in order for others to find this, benefit from it and maybe have a conversation later on, a word exchange in person, and that would be all the payment that I could wish for. Also I have a potential of change which I constantly strive for. This being a part of it. And as a giant extra people read this and still want to support with money... and what can they do? They donate to the project that I am volunteering for. The greatest compliment for me as a unpaid Fundraiser. This gives me quite something, this whole experience of living. And so I want to give back, naturally right? That's part of the Exchange... now, what is Human Values then and how could you possibly exchange them?
The hardest part will be to determine the meaning of 'Value'. A friend of mine said that it is something, that you respect... Oxford Dictionary says 'how much something is worth in money or other goods for which it can be exchanged'. If we are into the philosophy behind value, which is called axiology, we will find the separation of two types of value. One is called 'intrinsic value' and it's apparently a good in itself, for example joy when watching a beautiful cloud form on a spring day. A feeling has intrinsic value...
The other type of value they name 'instrumental value', which is embodied by a good, that serves for the purpose to acquire another good. Golden coins or printed paper are often used for that purpose of exchange.
In my own words there is something quite clear I had seen as a Human Value before knowing those definitions. Because there are certain things which have a value about my being as well. And you see it everywhere. Every job pays you money for the Human Values that you contribute, time being one of them. Also the education you own is considered a human value. Your capacity to think, solve problems and creating things is certainly valuable. But this Human Value is even more present when we're down on the interaction between humans. Simply having a conversation can have a lot of value. Sometimes less when only greeting, sometimes more when not having slept a night but instead talked with your closest friend. Words have a huge value and being able to share them with people gives us a lot. Being heard is just as important and if you have somebody listening to you, then this attention they offer to you, is a Human Value.
But also your physical body owns a great aspect when talking about the entire value your being possesses. There are endless editions to this long list, but generally speaking are Human Values those things created by a human for another human. Let's overtake the things we now gathered first on the context of traveling and then the one, of making life happening.
1. Introduction of myself
2. What is HuVEx
3. Life without money
Traveling without money
Education without money
Friends and their problems
4. What you need
3 Life without money
We are coming closer to the essence and closer to the practical guide of how you and the people of your surrounding can benefit from this. Life without money sounds impossible and for many people it might be. There is some easiness about money that many wouldn't want to give up if they had the option. But I will repeat freedom as the key aspect, that should motivate the few of us, that really search for it.
Life without money is something I haven't experienced until now but it is the great goal to which I dedicate my striving in order to make it most impactful. Living without money is the mastery of what I'm doing and cannot simply be decided to be done just now, but it's the path and the journey. I can travel without money and my intention is to get rid of the money I have, but that needs preparation. Since people are the key. That part will be expanded to its proper length soon!
05.02.2026