Who is charles eisenstein

Global Commons. News Events Blog Videos Webcasts. Charles Eisenstein January 15th, "A miracle is not the intercession of an external divine agency in violation of the laws of physics. The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible On January 15th, visionary Charles Eisenstein engaged with over individuals speaking about a radically different understanding of cause and effect, sounding a clarion call to surrender our old worldview of separation, so that we can finally create the more beautiful world our hearts know is possible.

True or false, the idea that the epidemic is some monstrous plot perpetrated by evildoers upon the public is not so far from the mindset of find-the-pathogen.

It is a crusading mentality, a war mentality. It locates the source of a sociopolitical illness in a pathogen against which we may then fight, a victimizer separate from ourselves. It risks ignoring the conditions that make society fertile ground for the plot to take hold. Whether that ground was sown deliberately or by the wind is, for me, a secondary question.

I wish a lot more people would embrace not knowing. I say that both to those who embrace the dominant narrative, as well as to those who hew to dissenting ones. What information might we be blocking out, in order to maintain the integrity of our viewpoints?

Millions of others are in the same boat. Most would agree that a month without social interaction for all those children a reasonable sacrifice to save a million lives. But how about to save , lives? And what if the sacrifice is not for a month but for a year? Five years? Different people will have different opinions on that, according to their underlying values.

Or I might ask, Would I decree the end of human hugging and handshakes, if it would save my own life? I am grateful for every day she is still with us. But these questions bring up deep issues. What is the right way to live? What is the right way to die?

The answer to such questions, whether asked on behalf of oneself or on behalf of society at large, depends on how we hold death and how much we value play, touch, and togetherness, along with civil liberties and personal freedom.

There is no easy formula to balance these values. It has especially impacted childhood: as a young boy it was normal for us to roam a mile from home unsupervised — behavior that would earn parents a visit from Child Protective Services today. It also manifests in the form of latex gloves for more and more professions; hand sanitizer everywhere; locked, guarded, and surveilled school buildings; intensified airport and border security; heightened awareness of legal liability and liability insurance; metal detectors and searches before entering many sports arenas and public buildings, and so on.

Writ large, it takes the form of the security state. Other cultures had different priorities. They allow them risks and responsibilities that would seem insane to most modern people, believing that this is necessary for children to develop self-reliance and good judgement.

I think most modern people, especially younger people, retain some of this inherent willingness to sacrifice safety in order to live life fully. The surrounding culture, however, lobbies us relentlessly to live in fear, and has constructed systems that embody fear. In them, staying safe is over-ridingly important.

Yet all the while, we know that death awaits us regardless. A life saved actually means a death postponed. Failing that, modern society settles for a facsimile of that triumph: denial rather than conquest. Ours is a society of death denial, from its hiding away of corpses, to its fetish for youthfulness, to its warehousing of old people in nursing homes. All this is inevitable given the story-of-self that modernity offers: the separate individual in a world of Other.

Surrounded by genetic, social, and economic competitors, that self must protect and dominate in order to thrive. It must do everything it can to forestall death, which in the story of separation is total annihilation. Biological science has even taught us that our very nature is to maximize our chances of surviving and reproducing. No hospital records are kept on whether patients die well.

That would not be counted as a positive outcome. In the world of the separate self, death is the ultimate catastrophe. But is it? Consider this perspectiv e from Dr. Some of us might rather be held in the arms of loved ones at home, even if that means our time has come…. Remember, death is no ending. Death is going home. When the self is understood as relational, interdependent, even inter-existent, then it bleeds over into the other, and the other bleeds over into the self.

Understanding the self as a locus of consciousness in a matrix of relationship, one no longer searches for an enemy as the key to understanding every problem, but looks instead for imbalances in relationships.

The War on Death gives way to the quest to live well and fully, and we see that fear of death is actually fear of life. How much of life will we forego to stay safe? Totalitarianism — the perfection of control — is the inevitable end product of the mythology of the separate self. What else but a threat to life, like a war, would merit total control? Against the backdrop of the program of control, death denial, and the separate self, the assumption that public policy should seek to minimize the number of deaths is nearly beyond question, a goal to which other values like play, freedom, etc.

Covid offers occasion to broaden that view. Yes, let us hold life sacred, more sacred than ever. Death teaches us that. Let us hold each person, young or old, sick or well, as the sacred, precious, beloved being that they are.

And in the circle of our hearts, let us make room for other sacred values too. To hold life sacred is not just to live long, it is to live well and right and fully. Like all fear, the fear around the coronavirus hints at what might lie beyond it. Anyone who has experienced the passing of someone close knows that death is a portal to love. Covid has elevated death to prominence in the consciousness of a society that denies it.

On the other side of the fear, we can see the love that death liberates. Let it pour forth. Let it saturate the soil of our culture and fill its aquifers so that it seeps up through the cracks of our crusted institutions, our systems, and our habits. Some of these may die too. How much of life do we want to sacrifice at the altar of security? If it keeps us safer, do we want to live in a world where human beings never congregate?

Do we want to wear masks in public all the time? Do we want to be medically examined every time we travel, if that will save some number of lives a year? Are we willing to accept the medicalization of life in general, handing over final sovereignty over our bodies to medical authorities as selected by political ones?

Do we want every event to be a virtual event? How much are we willing to live in fear? Covid will eventually subside, but the threat of infectious disease is permanent. Our response to it sets a course for the future. Public life, communal life, the life of shared physicality has been dwindling over several generations.

Instead of shopping at stores, we get things delivered to our homes. Instead of packs of kids playing outside, we have play dates and digital adventures. Instead of the public square, we have the online forum. Do we want to continue to insulate ourselves still further from each other and the world?

It is not hard to imagine, especially if social distancing is successful, that Covid persists beyond the 18 months we are being told to expect for it to run its course. It is not hard to imagine that new viruses will emerge during that time.

It is not hard to imagine that as we are being told , reinfection is possible, so that the disease will never run its course. That means that the temporary changes in our way of life may become permanent. To reduce the risk of another pandemic, shall we choose to live in a society without hugs, handshakes, and high-fives, forever more?

Shall we choose to live in a society where we no longer gather en masse? Shall the concert, the sports competition, and the festival be a thing of the past? Shall children no longer play with other children? Shall all human contact be mediated by computers and masks? No more dance classes, no more karate classes, no more conferences, no more churches? Is death reduction to be the standard by which to measure progress?

Does human advancement mean separation? Is this the future? The same question applies to the administrative tools required to control the movement of people and the flow of information.

At the present writing, the entire country is moving toward lockdown. In some countries, one must print out a form from a government website in order to leave the house. Or of prison. Do we envision a future of electronic hall passes, a system where freedom of movement is governed by state administrators and their software at all times, permanently?

Where every movement is tracked, either permitted or prohibited? And, for our protection, where information that threatens our health as decided, again, by various authorities is censored for our own good? In the face of an emergency, like unto a state of war, we accept such restrictions and temporarily surrender our freedoms.

For the first time in history, the technological means exist to realize such a vision, at least in the developed world for example, using cellphone location data to enforce social distancing; see also here. After a bumpy transition, we could live in a society where nearly all of life happens online: shopping, meeting, entertainment, socializing, working, even dating.

Is that what we want? How many lives saved is that worth? I am sure that many of the controls in effect today will be partially relaxed in a few months. Partially relaxed, but at the ready. As long as infectious disease remains with us, they are likely to be reimposed, again and again, in the future, or be self-imposed in the form of habits.

It could become second nature to recoil from shaking hands or touching our faces—and we may all fall heir to society-wide OCD, as none of us can stop washing our hands. The paradox of the program of control is that its progress rarely advances us any closer to its goal. Log in here. Create a free account and we will share the world of Kosmos. Early, priority access to the freshest Quarterly Kosmos Newsletter, with briefings, podcasts and short videos delivered to your inbox Opportunities to engage online with thought leaders and affinity groups Invitations to our yearly retreats and other Kosmos gatherings Create a Free Account No thanks.

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