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The Treasure of Our Living, Relational Commons, Soil Wealth and a Regenerative Green New Deal, How We Win | Divestment and Nonviolent Direct Action, Advertising and Trading | The Markets’ Problem Twins, Bioregions and Regeneration | Honoring the Places Where We Live, Mystical Anarchism, a Spiritual Biography, Economic Justice and Ecological Regeneration, Joy and Value of Connection to Place and Community, greenplanet-blueplanet | Sacred Economy and Caring, Freedom and Energy from Healing White Racism, Wall Street to Main Street to World Street, Covid-19 is a Symbol of a Much Deeper Infection, John Fullerton on the Qualities of a Regenerative Economy, Biracial Identity | Seeking to Be Unconditioned, Collective Trauma and Our Emerging Future, Kito Mbiango | The Power of Art to Drive Action, Closer Looking | Microscopy and Aboriginal Art, Fourteen Recommendations When Facing Climate Tragedy, Shut It Down: Stories From a Fierce, Loving Resistance, Inner Work Makes Our Outer Work Massively More Effective, Kendra Smith | The Disappearing Art of Living, Memes, Mantras, and Modern Illusions of the Eternal, Values as a Means to Invite Greater Depth, Developing a Mindful Approach to Earth Justice Work, Eating as if Life and the Planet Mattered. Charles Eisenstein is a teacher, speaker, and writer focusing on themes of civilization, consciousness, money, and human cultural evolution. Does money, as the greatest tool that we have created to organize human activity, help to serve this purpose? I even believe that these dreams will be realized to some extent in the decades to come, and I wish him every success. Charles is publishing it serially at the webmagazine Reality Sandwich, you can read it as it comes out weekly or so here: What is, or what do we want our purpose to be on this earth? by EVOLVER EDITIONS. When I got the book, I was quite intimidated. Charles Eisenstein is a teacher, speaker, and writer focusing on themes of civilization, consciousness, money, and human cultural evolution. Such is the life of the slave—one whose actions are compelled by threat to survival. Charles Eisenstein is a teacher, speaker, and writer focusing on themes of civilization, consciousness, money, and human cultural evolution. Subscribe to our Quarterly and receive 4 Digital Issues each year! Sacred Economics is most of all a practical guide on how to design an economic system, locally to globally, that employs the best thinking of many movements: Transition Towns, Permaculture, and what could be called a diverse international commons movement. MUST MUST READ! You can disagree with what he says, but he will compel you to think and introspect deeply. In your research, did you find societies that employed a sacred approach to monetary exchange? 2. He upholds a spiritual perspective, albeit one which locates spirituality in the heart of matter, expressed through our lives, bodies and relationships on and with the earth. “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. Charles Eisenstein He asks those who read Sacred Economics to consider what this gift might be worth to them, and if they deem it useful, to pay him in thanks or pay it forward. Some seem far fetched to me, but what was refreshing was the overall hope filled message of the book. Something wonderful is unfolding at Kosmos. There is no question Eisenstein is smart but his writing is immature and his eulogy is aimed hard at the converted and by definition they need no conversion. Eisenstein is remarkable in his approach to the topic of economics and optimistic in his view of what we could become as a people. • It will promote equitable distribution of wealth. But the systemic changes in how money should work seem highly abstract. ... about the monetization of everything. if the demurrage rates were too high. Seems like so much of how we define ourselves and others are wrapped up in how much we're worth materially. These properly belong to all of us, and their depletion should only happen by common agreement and for the common good. In his overly long, unbearably redundant book, Eisenstein drowns a few valid concepts - namely, the importance of community, a reversal of pervasive commodification, and a restoration of our connection with the goods and services we buy - in a lukewarm broth of lazy, unscientific ideas. I was left, as I probably should be, with attempting to answer Eisenstein's questions for myself. I was first introduced to the work of Charles Eisenstein through the website Reality Sandwich, brainchild of Daniel Pinchbeck. Eisenstein graduated from Yale University in 1989 with a degree in Mathematics and Philosophy, and spent the next ten years as a Chinese-English translator. Certainly the most profound book I have ever read. Thus I’ll speak more briefly than I’m tempted to. Eisenstein is one o the leaders for the dawning of humanity in moving from the Genesis 2 curse in which we are to toil and to be enslaved by the Man. It is the truth of the unity or connectedness of all things, and the feeling is that of participating in something greater than oneself, yet which is also oneself. Charles focuses on this economic aspect, which is digestible to people without any economic knowledge, and introduces alternative systems to combat the issues we face today. In ecology, this is the principle of interdependence.” Not that I read every page, but I did read enough that I surprised myself how much I did read. Many of us dream it is, and Charles Eisenstein’s latest book, Sacred Economics, shows that it’s possible and even probable. Eisenstein is a contemporary philosopher, who has penned several tomes - after The Yoga of Eating and The Ascent of Humanity, this is his latest book, addressing economic issues. Just a moment while we sign you in to your Goodreads account. So, what I mean by “sacred economics” is the realigning of money with those things that are becoming sacred to us today, those things that we deeply value. A very strong effort, one of those books which I feel is almost unfair to review in any sort of detail without allowing the author’s full arguments to speak for themselves. How weird that these feelings can be evoked by a tome about economics! Thus to follow his quest for a more beautiful world and honoring the gifts of others he utilized in the writing, he has made this book available for free on the Internet as well as in bookstores. Let it be an indication of how much I found to like in this book that my typed-up quotes to remember from its pages comprise 13,000 words in a word document.