Sacred Economics and other thoughts – Lisa Er interviews Charles Eisenstein on Sacred Economics, and the world after Trump.
“The present convergence of crises––in money, energy, education, health, water, soil, climate, politics, the environment, and more––is a birth crisis, expelling us from the old world into a new.”
“When we must pay the true price for the depletion of nature’s gifts, materials will become more precious to us, and economic logic will reinforce, and not contradict, our heart’s desire to treat the world with reverence and, when we receive nature’s gifts, to use them well.”
“It’s a very ancient idea that the universe runs by the principles of the gift. That human life runs by the principles of the gift. And that in fact the purpose for our existence, the reason why we’re here, is to give. And that everybody has a gift that is important and meaningful, and maybe even unique and essential. It’s certainly true in an ecosystem where every species has an important function, and without that function, without that gift that it gives to the ecosystem everybody would be a little bit poorer. The system as a whole would be a little bit weaker.”
“And this is a new understanding that may be only 40 or 50 years old, in the west at least. A hundred years ago, or even 50 years ago, scientists thought that you could eliminate one species, eliminate in fact all the bad species, and make nature better. But we’re understanding now that every being has its gift to give. And this shift of perception hasn’t been integrated yet into our institutions.”
“Mainstream economics doesn’t really understand this. It says that human beings don’t really want to work. There’s a phrase in economics, “the disutility of work.” Human beings don’t want work, so we have to make people work with these incentives, this money that overcomes your natural disinclination to create, to be productive, and to give something to other people. You have to get something in return, otherwise you won’t want to do it. And it’s considered good that we have a system based on scarcity, that creates anxiety, that kind of forces you to work.”
“Money is just an agreement. Money only has value because people believe it has value. It is something that we create through our agreements. You can say that money is a story. It’s the symbols that we interpret in a certain way, and that means that they’re valuable. So why have we agreed to create a system of value that is the enemy of all of the beautiful things we want to do?
The paragraphs above are from Charles Eisenstein’s presentation, “Sacred Economics, money, the gift, and society in the age of transition.”
http://charleseisenstein.net/sacred-economics-money-the-gift-and-society-in-the-age-of-transition/
In this interview we covered the underlying causes of our current economic difficulties including the need for an attitude change about money, and the system, and how these both need changing.
Money is not a neutral energy. It has ‘scarcity’ built into it. It creates endless growth of the economy because more money needs to be created in order to support the growth.
We are not only reaching growth limits but we are reaching spiritual ones. There is a psychic limit to the cost of impoverishment of life when everything is effectively converted into money.
Charles answers questions on some of the most hopeful trends he sees today; his vision for a new economy; the key to transitioning to sacred economics; and what can we do in our communities to contribute to a new economy.
On speaking about the new POTUS, Trump, Charles says that almost anything could happen in the US, including government breakdown, and creating a new constitution, or even extreme scenarios such as break away states,
You can find Charles’ bio on his web site :
http://charleseisenstein.net/about-charles/
This interview was sponsored by The Awareness Party