Charles Eisenstein

The message of this book is to listen to your body and to let that sensitive perception guide your actions rather than adherence to any particular dietary theory. Eisenstein also discusses the ways that our diets are integral components of our total lives, the countless dimensions of our engagement with the world.

We do break up experience up into little parcels and then try to mold each parcels to conform to some rigid mold that we just pick up from who knows where... the media that is show more designed to enslave us, mostly. So Eisenstein's program to reintegrate our lives through careful observation and action, that is a wise and welcome medicine, suited to the needs of our situation.

But I fear that Eisenstein has gotten caught up in his own mold, another trap. For example, on pg. 164 he says, "There is a time to live and a time to die. That is the way of nature."

Bah! Eisenstein is missing the core paradox of living! He has fallen into the trap of logical consistency! The great jazz musician Sun Ra lived the paradox. See for example http://www.sunraarkestra.com/tyrone.html - " Sun Ra didn't like the word freedom, he liked discipline." To be able to distinguish the true essential nature of, e.g., a bowl of rice, and not be be thrown off by one's habitual impulsive ideas and actions, that takes profoundly disciplined cultivation of sensitive perception and analysis. Somehow there is a level of determination required, to see how one is fooled by habitual impulses, to free oneself.

It just won't work to reject all ideas about how to eat in order to make direct contact with eating. Just the idea of direct contact is already an idea about how to eat! Instead, really open yourself to the full dimensionality of experience, which includes vast spaces of ideas. Don't get stuck on theories, don't reject all theories, but instead play with theories, juggle theories, gain skill with theories. Learn their strengths and their limitations. Find the paths that lead from theory to theory and then keep opening to ever new vistas.

As the Zen poem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandokai says, theories and experience work together. A theory is a foot planted on the ground, experience is a foot moving. To get anywhere, one foot moves forward and then gets planted on the ground, which lets the other foot move in turn.

Eisenstein's book is half the story. It is a nice picture of that half. But really, forget about living and dying naturally. That is just another idea! Live and die with passion and determination! Whether or not nature has a plan and purpose for you - it's hard to say, but maybe the real way to fulfillment is not to submit to nature's plan or to any plan that requires submission to the way things are. The other extreme, inventing your own plan to impose onto the universe, that is just as absurd. Inner nature and outer nature are both just accidents.

The accident of the present situation, internal and external, is best used as a springboard, not an anchor. Forget final plans and ultimate solutions: those are deadly traps! Don't grasp, but don't reject either! Use plans and solutions as stepping stones. Sure, read Eisenstein's book and use his insights. But read regular nutrition books too and try out .... beans vs whole grains - the real fun is in exploring and engaging, diving in, getting involved! show less

Is Charles Eisenstein a climate change denier? It is indicative of the polarization of our times that this question might arise in your mind. “What side is he on anyways?”

Although the text of this book is about climate change, the subtext is about the climate of our collective mind. And this climate is increasingly turbulent and diametric.

I’m currently reading "Becoming Animal" by David Abram. On the back of Eisenstein’s new book, you’ll find only one testimonial, sourced from show more Abram. Abram’s book, published in 2010, is about sinking deeply into what it is to be human, what it is to be empathic with the animate earth. If you’re having trouble finding the heart of what Eisenstein is speaking to, this is where you’ll find it.

The book uses what some might call semantic storytelling. Eisenstein wants you to really feel what he’s talking about. Try on climate change denialism and take it for a ride. It is through this experimentation with paradigms that we can learn what feels right for us. Often times we discount views outside of our own before even taking the time to actually see how they wear. Readers might initially take these forays as endorsements, but they are not.

So what is this heart of the book that I speak of? The world is dying. Fish and insect populations have crashed by an order of magnitude. With the advent of complex life that has graced the earth in recent eons, the planet has been able to maintain a strikingly even-keeled homeostasis. Climate change signifies a degradation of this capacity. It is a very dire sign indeed when a warm-blooded animal is no longer able to maintain something as basic as its body temperature. The same could be said of the earth, and if climatologists are right, this will be getting exponentially worse in coming decades.

I remember stumbling across a short film awhile back about the dying redwoods along the West Coast of the US. Apparently a wide variety of factors have been contributed to a spike in redwood death rates. As I watched it, I started to cry. This doesn’t happen to me very often. There was something sad for me about these communities of trees that have been around far longer than we have, coming to the end of their time now.

The experience of reading Eisenstein’s book was like this for me as well. What is it like to sit with the death of so many kinds of life in our world right now? This could be the forest being logged out behind your house, or those starfish you used to remember in the Pacific Northwest, or the permafrost on Mount Washington your grandfather tells stories about. Much of the time we intellectually acknowledged such happenings, but don’t take the time to sit with them to allow our emotions and bodies to integrate these shifts.

None of this is to say the world is a static place. Eisenstein even takes the time to speak to the nationalist rhetoric emanating from the ecological restoration community’s ire towards invasive species. Novel ecosystems are now the norm, and there’s no going back to the way our colonial empire remembers the landscape. Change is inevitable, even without climate catastrophe. But Eisenstein is getting at something else here; the Anthropocene is not just another little blip in the geological record. That’s why some call it the Sixth Great Extinction.

Eisenstein debunks the efficacy of offsetting. Even solar and wind farms are a form of offsetting. In a machine paradigm, damage is more or less linear. In a living systems paradigm, damage is exponential—for a while, it seems like nothing is happening, as living systems are resilient. But then all of the sudden, the apparent capacity of an ecosystem snaps, going beyond it’s ability to remain resilient, and things spiral off in some direction.

The earth is an organism—Gaia. Each organ of Gaia is sacred and invaluable. Each forest, each estuary, each sea, is vital to the dynamic working whole. So we can’t cause damage in one place (say, the tar sands extraction), and hope to counteract it with positive measures elsewhere (say, restoration of forests in the Amazon Basin). And this is one of the reasons why regeneration is so important. We will need to work with nature to regenerative each and every ecosystem across the world if we are to hope for a livable future.

The narrative of climate change is a dangerous one. If we follow its logic, how can we stand in the way of nuclear power, geo-engineering, and eugenics? We can’t. Climate change is symptomatic of a failure of our society to establish economic and cultural norms that heed their place in the natural order, and we won’t get to the other side of this gulf by solving climate change. Eisenstein points out, humans might survive in a techno-utopian future of climate-controlled environments within a world (or solar system) otherwise devoid of life—but is that a future worth considering? Also, the techno-utopian dreamers need to find a lot more solutions than just those necessary to get us through to the other side of climate change; it is very possible that we actually do scale green energy to replace fossil fuels in fifty years’ time, only to realize ourselves in an even more dire ecological crisis due to reaching the limits of resource extraction (such as via the lithium required for batteries).

Why are we talking about climate change anyways? As Timothy Morton points out, climate change is a hyperobject—so massive in time and space as to be not only incomprehensible from the perspective of the individual, but completely unnavigable. In his own way, Eisenstein has come to the same conclusion. Ultimately, humans are simple creatures that rely on their senses and their sensibility for navigating the world. This means that local methods of inherent value are where we will find success. If you’re passionate about social justice in your community, do that. If you’re passionate about art and human connection, do that. If each of us steps into our essence, the challenge we call climate change will resolve.

If we can’t point our finger at climate change, than what can we blame? Eisenstein might suggest we consider our mentality of war. We currently have a lot of endless wars raging: the war on drugs, the war on poverty, the war on terror, and now the war on climate change. Bill McKibben went as far as to write a lengthy piece in Rolling Stone a couple years back about climate change as World War III. Liberals have even fallen into the war trap recently, with their war on Trump.

Ethics aside, there are some scenarios where wars are functional pathways to resolution, or at least towards progressing a seemingly untenable situation. But these scenarios are limited, and when it comes to situations where dichotomies are hopeless oversimplifications, fighting becomes unproductive, or even futile. Climate change may epitomize such a scenario. Addressing climate change is going to take all of us, not just those good at winning.

The conclusion of the book is somewhat striking. It outlines eighteen policies for addressing climate change. In some ways it feels as though it violates the ethic of impartiality established throughout the rest of the book, drawing a line in the sand. I’m unsure how it ended up in a text that is otherwise very much about the human experience, rather than pragmatic policies goals.

This exception aside, the beauty of Eisenstein's work is that it brings us into a space where rationality is illogical. Rationality relies upon the known, upon cause and effect. On the micro scale, there are scenarios where these simple system models actually work, such as with Newtonian physics. But on the macro scale, these methods result in confusion. Due to the interconnection of all things, cause and effect can only ever be a imperfect convenience when used to describe system dynamics. Rationality assumes cause and effect, and is an improper framework to utilize in systems.

Although it has been years in the making, this book is the most up-to-date treatise in the climate change space. Eisenstein takes his themes of respect for inner-knowing that he has been expending upon since his first book, “The Yoga of Eating,” and applies them to the issues of the day. This book is a necessary wake up call in a time where our fears and habits are clouding our vision. show less

I found the first two-thirds of this book to be kind of a slog. There are some really insightful gems in there, but Eisenstein's style is so incredibly wordy, I wasn't sure it was worth it to keep reading. I kept going just because a dear friend of mine said the book was awesome, and I wanted to get a sense of what she'd gotten out of it. With the chapter entitled "Righteousness" about 170 pages in (well beyond the point that I usually set a book down if it's not doing it for me) the book show more really seemed to coalesce, and I started to get into it. It was still wordy, but it was either less so or the insights were profound enough for me that the wordiness no longer bothered me.

The basic premise is that the problems in the world are based on the fact that we operate within a Story of Separation, and that story is just that---a story. We can choose to live within a different story, the Story of Interbeing instead. Eisenstein goes on to enumerate the nature of the Story of Interbeing and the difficulties in moving from one story to the other.

What really struck me about this book is that I've been thinking about the myth of Separation myself for quite a while. Sometimes I'm more trapped in Separation and sometimes I feel almost completely immersed in the story of Oneness (as I think of it), but it's always in my consciousness pulling me towards it. I think my first really profound experience of oneness happened during my first pregnancy when I went in for my first ultrasound at 18 weeks. Rather than making me feel closer to my baby, seeing her as a separate being on the screen was incongruous with the feeling of oneness I had in myself. At the time, I described the experience of oneness as the sense that I was giving birth to the universe, and that experience couldn't be contained within the boundaries of the video screen. Indeed, my entire experience within the medical model of birth was one of profound separation, with a few bright lights guiding me back to the oneness I felt (one of these lights was the incredible nurse we got during my labor, but that's a story for another time).

I felt it again when I gave birth to my son at home, this feeling---this knowing---that I was a part of an eternity of creation and in that one moment, that eternity came through me. It's difficult to explain, but since then, I've worked to recapture that feeling of oneness and belonging. I've studied Buddhist, Jewish, Taoist, Baha'i, Muslim, and Christian traditions, and this feeling of oneness is only heightened as I see similarities between each of these traditions. The more I see the oneness, the more I want it, and the more I seek it.

This book puts this experience of oneness in slightly different terms, like in terms of stories and power structures, and that resonates with me. So, I suppose I could say that I like the book because I already agree with it, which is true, but it's also not the whole story. I don't need validation of the way I see the world, but I do find it encouraging that someone else sees it the same way. I feel encouraged to continue trying each day to live the way I want to be and the way I want the world to be and to trust that by doing so, I'm doing what I can to change things.

It was even encouraging just to see echoed what I've been noticing about the generation younger than mine, that there is an understanding, a passion, a fearlessness, and an acceptance that comes through in my in-person conversations with them and even in their exchanges on social media. It's a pleasure to be around, and it leaves me feeling hopeful. My spouse and I have one friend in particular who is living his idealism in such an earnest way and engages with the world with such honest curiosity and interest that I love being around him because it makes me feel like my desire to live my ideals is less silly than I sometimes worry it is.

For me, this book wasn't important so much for the content of the insights, but for the feeling it left me of being not alone in having these insights. show less

Author Charles Eisenstein begins this bold and well written book examining why innovation, labor saving devices, and all of the earth's bounty fail to deliver prosperity to most of the people. “After centuries of technological advances, why do we find ourselves working just as much as ever?” he asks, before observing: “For centuries, futurists have predicted an imminent age of leisure. Why has it never happened? The reason is that, at every opportunity, we have chosen to produce more show more rather than to work less. We have been helpless to choose otherwise.”

Money is created as interest bearing debt. When the interest rate is greater than zero, the debt always exceeds the available money. Servicing the resulting debt requires constant economic growth. Growing the economy requires transforming something that began as a gift from nature or the community into something that can be sold. Nature becomes transformed into commodities and monetized.

As a result, “A larger and larger proportion of income goes toward the servicing of debt, and when that does not suffice, preexisting assets are collateralized and then seized until there are none left.”

But we are already deeply into overshoot. Financial overshoot is manifest as the aggregate of government, institutional, and personal debt. Ecological overshoot is manifest as global warming, air and water pollution, waste dumps, deforestation, desertification, aquifer depletion, natural resource consumption, depleted fisheries, and other depletions of common resources.

The commons, including land, forests, fresh air, clean water, ocean fisheries, minerals, biodiversity, the genome, and the electromagnetic spectrum, all existed prior to human activities. There is no legitimate right to any private ownership claim to these natural resources. Yet these common assets are continually privatized and monetized to support economic growth. Public goods are privately claimed and sold. Corporations profit at the public’s expense.

Income distribution becomes increasingly unequal. Those who have been able to profit from accumulating money, holding land, or exploiting other commons accrue great wealth. Others are forced to compete for fewer jobs offering unsatisfying work at low wages. The work force is divided into the frenzied and overworked “haves” and the unemployed or underpaid “have not’s”. Well-being suffers for all. The author makes clear: “The more monetized society is, the more anxious and hurried its citizens”

As we dedicated our lives to growing the economy Eisenstein remarks: “Each tree cut down and made into paper, each idea captured and made into intellectual property, each child who uses video games instead of creating worlds of the imagination, each human relationship turned into a paid service, depletes a bit of the natural, cultural, spiritual, and social commons and converts it into money.” The result is the constant erosion of social capital—a trusting relationship among community members that creates meaningful social networks. The author observes: “The commoditization of social relationships leaves us with nothing to do together but to consume.”

Sacred economics rejects the many false assumptions of traditional economics to describe a system that is stable during degrowth, and encourages us to create more of what is truly valuable. Charles Eisenstein presents bold solutions to the systemic problems of today’s economy, while describing how a transition to this sacred economy could take place.

He clearly states: “I will not mince words: in this book I am calling for economic degrowth, a shrinking of the economy, a recession that will last decades or centuries.” Yet, because the assumptions that: 1) growth is good and 2) growth is unlimited are both false, sacred economics enables prosperity during economic degrowth.

His solution is an economic system that integrates these seven features:

1. Negative-Interest Currency— “Because of interest, at any given time the amount of money owed is greater than the amount of money already existing.” Because the interest rate establishes the minimum growth rate of the economy, negative interest rates are needed to allow a decrease in monetization.

2. Elimination of Economic Rents, and Compensation for Depletion of the Commons—Because there is no legitimate claim to private ownership of the commons, private seizure or exploitation of the commons must end and users must pay the public for private use or depletion of the commons. “Generalized, the principle is, ‘The use of anything for money will increase the supply of that thing.’” Choosing to back money by use of the commons will increase the supply of those commons.

3. Internalization of Social and Environmental Costs— “Money as we know it ultimately rests on converting the public into the private” Today, pollution and other forms of environmental degradation generate costs that are usually borne by society and future generations, not the polluters. This unfair private gain from exploitation of public assets must be reversed to discourage pollution and environmental degradation. “Whatever form it takes, an essential purpose of government—maybe the essential purpose of government—is to serve as the trustee of the commons”

4. Economic and Monetary Localization—True cost accounting favors local commerce. “When production and economic exchange are local, the social and environmental effects of our actions are much more obvious, reinforcing our innate compassion.”

5. The Social Dividend—Earth’s bounty and the accumulation of thousands of years of technological advances are public wealth. The benefits must be distributed as a social dividend to increase the well-being of all the earth’s people. “Mathematically, if money is subject to diminishing marginal utility, the optimal distribution of money is: as equitably as possible.”

6. Economic Degrowth—As technology continues to advance we can choose to work less or, more accurately, to work less for money. “Here is a certainty: the linear conversion of resources into waste is unsustainable on a finite planet. More unsustainable still is exponential growth, whether of resource use, money, or population.”

7. Gift Culture and P2P economics—“When every economic relationship becomes a paid service, we are left independent of everyone we know and dependent, via money, on anonymous, distant service providers. That is a primary reason for the decline of community in modern societies, with its attendant alienation, loneliness, and psychological misery. Moreover, money is unsuited to facilitate the circulation and development of the unquantifiable things that truly make life rich.”

Chapter 17 provides a brief summary and roadmap of these transformational ideas. Although these ideas are bold and fundamentally transformational, encouraging transition scenarios are presented. For example:
+ Interest rates have already dropped to near zero.
+ The Alaska Permanent Fund, established in 1976, sets aside a certain share of oil revenues to continue benefiting current and all future generations of Alaskans.
+ Open source software and projects such as Wikipedia make valuable intellectual property freely available to all.
+ Internet sites such as Craigslist displaced billions of dollars in classified advertising while encourage the continuing flow and reuse of goods.
+ Time Banking encourages people to exchange services based on time spent.
+ Disintermediation has reduced the cost of many services such as travel agencies, secondary research, book stores, and music distribution. Many artists, including authors, musicians, movie producers, photographers, and painters create and distribute their works directly to consumers over internet sites.

This book is full of good ideas for transforming the obsolete elements of our economic systems into a truly modern economy. Credible evidence and clear thinking bolsters each argument. The book is well written. Plan to spend time reading and re-reading this book to fully grasp the many ideas it presents.

There are some sections of the book that are too mystical and spiritual for my tastes. Perhaps I am too literal and shortsighted to fully grasp these concepts, the concepts are ahead of their time, or they are based on wishful thinking. I suspended judgment on these sections and enjoyed the many well-presented ideas the book offers.

The author strives to put his ideas into practice; the full text of the book is available online as a gift. Readers are asked to pay whatever they feel the book is worth to them.

Capitalism has had a good run and provided many benefits. So has the steam engine. Although both originated a few centuries ago, the steam engine has long since been superseded by more advanced technologies. Perhaps the time to supersede capitalism with a more advanced and sacred economy has arrived. show less