Full transcript: Charles Eisenstein on London Real
4:35 This is London Real, I’m Brian Rose, this is Nick Gabriel, and joining us today is Mr. Charles Eisenstein, who is a speaker and author of most recently, Sacred Economics, which asserts that the money system has contributed to alienation, competition, among other things, some scarcity, potentially destroyed communities and necessitates an endless growth. And I want to talk more about that, but welcome, Charles. Yeah, thank you. It’s good to be here.
5:04 It’s quite an ominous introduction, isn’t it? Yeah, before we hear about the book, I mean, you’ve had quite a journey, which is our tagline for the show. I mean, you graduated from Yale, you went to Taiwan, you learned Chinese, you’ve come back and done some teaching at Penn State. I was wondering if you could tell us a bit about your journey, because it sounds like that’s That’s a really important part of your story is how you got there. Yeah.
5:26 I mean, really the journey came about because I didn’t believe or accept or I couldn’t muster any enthusiasm for the life, of course, that was handed to me and the world that was given to me as normal. Like, okay, here, Charles, here’s how you’re supposed to proceed through the world. I just wasn’t excited about that, and so I kind of sporadically followed the program. Like you said, I went to Yale, so at least I followed the rules enough to get into an elite college.
6:04 You took your SAT tests and it’s not easy to do. Yeah, I did that kind of stuff. But then everyone else was applying to grad school, and law school, and medical school, and I just couldn’t make myself do it. Interesting. The months went by and then I graduated with nothing to do.
6:23 So I went to Taiwan and I’d been there before one time because I really didn’t like college very much. So I just kind of stepped right off the boat and done that repeatedly. Have you just gone from one place to the next kind of searching for the real thing or the next thing? Yeah, I mean, I just kind of felt like this wrongness in the world that made me unable to fully participate in it. What was your earliest memory of that?
6:53 My earliest memory of a wrongness. Of realizing there was something wrong with the capitalist system? I would say probably in junior high. And it wasn’t like the capitalist system that I identified as the wrongness, and I And I still don’t necessarily even really use the word capitalism very much as a key concept. But yeah, like in seventh and eighth grade, I was in this gigantic junior high school with, and it wasn’t quite like it is today, how prison-like the atmosphere is today.
7:32 But there was still just all these rules all these passes and notes you had to have and the whole system, I was like, really? You’ve got to be kidding me. This isn’t supposed to be what childhood is all about. You had that realization at 12. You felt similarly about school, right?
7:55 You just didn’t like it. I hated it. I hated it. He’s one of the first people I’ve ever heard articulated like that. I rarely didn’t like it for that very, very same reason.
8:04 But the weird thing is, I’m sure you were good at it, because you must have been to get to Yale. So it’s not like you weren’t excelling at school. Right. And even though I was kind of a punching bag for some of the kids, I was subject to bullying and stuff. Even so, I never really sided with authority.
8:23 And if some kid did some bad thing, like set off a stink bomb or something like that, I would be secretly gleeful, and hoping they would get away with it. And just wanting the whole place to just fall apart and just something in me knew that this isn’t how life is supposed to be. And I wondered, and this is something I’ve actually asked my students when I taught briefly at university, what does it take, because not a single kid or hardly anyone really believed in the system.
9:04 The rules are something that you avoid as best as possible, you don’t really respect authority. It’s kind of a game you have to play to get from point A to point B, isn’t it? Yeah, and I thought, what would it take to turn these kids into people who think that you should respect authority? What happens to them that they become the perpetrators of the very thing that they can’t stand right now? Wow.
9:26 So your books are about economics, but have you thought about education system as well? Yeah, well, my recent books about economics, the book before then was more about civil civilization and why all these crises are happening. Right. There was the ascent of humanity. Yeah.
9:41 Okay. Yeah. And so there was a part about education there. You know, one of the crises is in education and… Did you come to any conclusions there about education? Well, it’s just part of this program of control that comes from a really deep route and the crisis in education and in everything else comes from that deep route.
10:03 And the basic thesis of the book is that all these crises, environmental, health, educational, political, climate, energy, water, all of these are happening at the same time for a reason. They come from the same source and they’re pushing us toward a new era. You’ve got to tell us what through it is. Well, I mean, I just call it separation, so you look at all the different ways that humanity is becoming more and more separate from nature, more and more separate from each other, like the breakdown in community, neighbors not knowing each other anymore, separate from our own bodies, alienated from physicality even, alienated from our feelings, all these different and in our ideology and our thinking too you know where we have you could even call it a mythology that says what are you what is a human being well what you are is this kind of bubble of psychology floating around among other bubbles of psychology just different collections of neuroses basically yeah like in this external universe of other you know you’re a soul encased in flesh or a mind encased in a body and separate from other minds, separate from each other, separate from the world.
11:30 And that answer, we think, yeah, that’s what it is, that’s what a human being is, but other cultures had very different answers. They said that what you are is the totality of all your relationships. What you are is a microcosm of the cosmos. They had a very different answer, and our answer creates a world of control and a world of competition because all these others out there, they’re not you. So at best they’re indifferent and at worst hostile to your interests and the same with nature.
12:07 So security, wealth, power comes from controlling, insulating, dominating. Okay. Yeah, you mentioned that I think in secular economics or maybe about your own life that you try to let go of your quote unquote life under control. Is it like something you think that everyone is believing their life is under control or tries to get it under control when it’s really uncontrollable? Yeah, usually it’s an illusion.
12:33 It always is an illusion, isn’t it? Yeah, we think it’s under control, but it’s really not. Someone said something recently like, climate change is out of control. I think it was like chance McKenna, but chance McKenna was like, you were never in control of the climate change. But can you talk more about control as far as what other people think their life is under control.
12:53 Sometimes I look at it through the lens of addiction, which is a way to kind of control pain, I suppose. So if you feel lousy, you have a good stiff drink and you feel better, it works. And that’s the thing about addiction is it works. But then you feel even worse the next morning. So what do you do?
13:19 You do at work last time, and maybe with a little extra, you have two stiff drinks. And when that stops working, you have three or four or five. And the reason it doesn’t work is that it doesn’t actually address the source of what hurts. So I think that we kind of enact that pattern in a lot of different situations, not just personal, but collective as well. So like, for example, in agriculture, the problem is, I don’t know, insect damage.
13:56 So the solution killed the insects. Well then, so you use a pesticide and it works for a while, just like that good stiff drink worked for a while. But then super bugs evolve. And so what do you do? Well, you use a stronger pesticide.
14:13 And then that kills off larvae in the soil and depletes the soil of something. So what do you do? Well, add some fertilizer and then the fertilizer kills off, I don’t know, some insect that eats the fungi and now you get a fungal outbreak. What do you do? Well, you put a fungicide on.
14:36 So more and more control. And each failure of control is remedied by even more until it stops working. And on a kind of vast, like, civilizational level, that’s what’s been happening. Like in the financial system, you know, using the debts are unpayable. We’re drowning in debt, a debt crisis.
15:01 What do you do? Well, you lend even more money to the countries or the people who can’t pay their debt. Do you outline kind of what your thoughts are on sacred economics just to give people a feel for kind of roughly what you’re saying in that book? Sure. Yeah, I mean, it would be hard to outline the whole thing, but the basic idea is that, well, first, that money is really nothing but a set of agreements, or I like to say it’s a story that gives value to these symbols, that it’s an interpretation of symbols.
15:38 That piece of paper or those bits in a computer, they don’t have any value aside from our agreements. It’s a promise to someone else to do something and then it becomes you trading someone else’s promise. That’s how it started off, isn’t it? Yeah, maybe you could say that’s how it started off, but right now it’s just embedded in all kinds of social agreements about what these things mean. So the question then is, why have we created social agreements that drive us toward doing things we don’t want to do and that are killing the planet?
16:13 Why is there a lot of money in cutting down a rainforest and digging mines and exterminating the indigenous people who live there to get the rare earth minerals? There’s a lot of money in that. Why is there not much money in restoring wetlands? Why is there lots of money in doing things that we don’t really want to do, like I don’t know being an accountant or something like that, and not much money in the things that we really want to do? Because it’s just an agreement.
16:47 Why have we created this agreement that is the enemy of everything that’s sacred to us? And what would it take to change that agreement? And so that’s what the book is about. It’s describing what money would look like if it were aligned with the things that are becoming sacred to us, such as a healthy planet, such as fulfilling work, things like that. What are your thoughts on that?
17:11 I was about to ask you the exact same question. I want to start with you and then I’ll chime in. I have so many thoughts on that. me thinks this sounds amazing, you know, like a system that rewards people for doing work they find fulfilling and something that helps nurture the planet as opposed to destroy it. But another part of me comes back to an argument that Brian always makes, which is, it’s contrary to human nature.
17:39 I mean, humans are in many cases, inherently greedy and selfish and lazy and, you know, I’d love to live in a world where I’d be rewarded for doing jiu-jitsu or going to a yoga class instead of whatever, but I don’t, you know? Okay. So yeah, this is one of the assumptions that I really kind of examined in the book. Like are we actually inherently greedy? When does greed make sense?
18:07 Well, greed makes sense in conditions of scarcity. So if there’s, or when we perceive that there’s scarcity. Greed would be insane if, say, like greed for food would be insane if there’s food everywhere. And I’m trying to keep this pile for myself, you know, I’m not going to let you have any, and you’re like, Charles, look at those trees that are laden with fruit, you know? It wouldn’t make sense.
18:34 So we live in a system that actually creates artificial scarcity, starting with the way that money is created, because it’s created as interest-bearing debt, which means that there’s always more debt than there is money, right, because money is lent into existence by banks, basically. So here’s a million quid, and now you owe me, the bank, 1.5 million, and everybody is in the same situation. So the amount of money in existence is less than the amount owed.
19:05 So it’s systemic scarcity and our greed and competition and selfishness is a response to that. Okay. Whereas in a gift economy, so I look at like what were pre-monetary economies like? Like barter systems. They weren’t barter.
19:24 They weren’t. Barter was actually really rare. Okay. What they were were gift economies. So like say we’re a band of hunter-gatherers and maybe you’re a really effective hunter, I’d like to think so.
19:37 Yeah, right? You’re bringing back the big kill. Now what do you do with that? Do you dry it and store it and barter with it and keep it? No.
19:47 What you do is you have a huge feast and you invite everybody for miles around and you give the choicest piece to your mother-in-law. Maybe I made the arrow and I gave it to you as a gift, my brother, and you give me a a choice piece of meat in gratitude. And so in a nomadic society especially, wealth is a burden, like things that you have to carry, those are a burden. So if you have more than you need right now, you’re gonna give it away. That works with a community.
20:21 I mean, that works with a small community and after that it doesn’t work. Right, but what I’m saying is that there’s no greed as we know it because wealth comes from how much you give. Also you can’t store food and you can’t store it forever and it’s perishable and it has volume which you can’t transmit. But I reckon if you took that same native and said, if you got all the food, then generations to come, your family would never starve to the end of time. They might start storing up that food and freezing it.
20:46 But they already know that they already are living in a perception that their family will never starve to the end of time. Because they’re in the plentiful jungle. Because they’re taking care of everybody in their community and they know that if they have a need, like maybe you break your leg or something like that. Well, everyone’s gonna remember how generous you were and they’re gonna give back to you. So everything we call wealth and security comes from how much you gave, not how much you have.
21:10 Now, the question you’re getting at is how do you translate that into a modern society? Yeah, and when it’s not quantifiable and the group gets bigger than a few hundred people, then you have the disputes and then it gets tribal and then people are like, but I give you that arrow, give me the whole hog, and you’re like, you only get a poof, and then it’s like, all right, I’ll kill you. Which I think is what Charles goes back to and he has an interesting point, I think a very good point he makes about how we don’t have a community anymore.
21:34 And I read something that you said that you tried to create a community in your suburb. I don’t know if it was near Penn State or something and you couldn’t create it. Could you explain why you couldn’t create it? Yeah, because people didn’t need each other, you know? And like we could get together for we could have like a party, you know, Super Bowl party or something like that.
21:54 And people would talk, you know, and they would drink and they would eat together but there really wasn’t anything to do except to eat, drink, and watch, right? So like you can do that with anybody. You don’t need those people. Like I wasn’t depending on anybody to provide my food, to provide my shelter, I mean like. So it’s just a gathering and everyone goes home and there’s no community?
22:19 Yeah, you look around and you can say is every person, I don’t need you, you know? And you could hate me and it wouldn’t affect my quality of life. Right, and you’re saying people don’t wanna need other people. Right, because we’re so immersed in a debt-based economy that to owe somebody something is a tremendous burden. What do you think of that concept of community?
22:44 Just the concept in general, and I mean, trying to create a synthetic community in London, besides what we’re doing with London Real, is near impossible. I have to agree with Charles. You can have people over, and it’s like, la, la, la. But afterwards, at the end of the day, You don’t really need each other to survive. You don’t need me to watch your kids.
23:00 I don’t, you don’t need me to fix your roof. I don’t need you to do this, you do that. So it’s this real loosely based kind of Facebook friend community. Unless you’re creating something together. Like you guys are creating the show together.
23:11 Or if you’re in a band or something like that. We’re in a community, Brian. We are, we are, we are. And so, well, because you need each other, you’re creating something. Is that what creates that?
23:20 Yeah, when a group of people are all in service to something beyond themselves, which could just be community survival, but it could also be that you’re in a band or you’re doing some kind of project together, creating something together, then you get to see who you really are. You can’t just put up this kind of image, but your gifts are pulled forth and you need each other. Every person’s gift contributes to what you’re creating. So Charles, are you saying if the monetary system collapsed tomorrow, that after the initial upheaval, we would naturally congregate into these communities and all these problems would eventually solve themselves?
24:02 Well, partly, I wouldn’t be quite that idyllic about it. Like, I think that we, I mean, really the point of the book is how to translate these principles of gift into a context of mass division of labor and global coordination of human activity. So could you give us an example of that, how you do that translate the idea of the gap? First, let me just say that in addition to that, I do think also that we need to reclaim some parts of life from money and reclaim community and that you’re right, when things fall apart, that tends to happen after any natural disaster.
24:50 People, it’s not like the authorities’ fear of riots and people stealing from each other at gunpoint. What happens is people start taking care of each other. There actually is evidence of that. Even in New Orleans after the hurricane, they actually found out that a lot of those horror stories you heard were manufactured by the police. And there was a few small bands of these rogues, but on the most part, people were like giving people, stores were opening and giving water to people, and people were actually helping.
25:18 Like after Sandy Hook, like the one person on the street with a generator would invite everybody to come to his house and charge their cell phones. Whereas an economist might predict that he would charge money for that and use that to control other people. Brian would be charging for sure. I’d be thinking about it. But yeah, we have a desire to give that’s so basic to human nature simply because, here I am in London.
25:45 If I ask anybody directions, they’re not going to get anything out of it by giving me directions. But they’re happy to do it. Even Londoners are not known for being really friendly, right? But, oh yeah, you go down there and then you turn left. That’s a very tiny gift.
26:01 They’re actually quite friendly. But no, I understand what you’re saying. Yeah. And I think that that’s really a basic concept of the book, gratitude, that here we are born into this world and we didn’t earn life. We didn’t earn our birth.
26:18 We didn’t earn our mothers feeding us, nursing us. We didn’t earn the sun. We didn’t earn water. We didn’t earn any, being taken care of for all those years as children. And that experience of having received so much creates in us the desire to give in turn.
26:40 And that kind of addresses your thing about, or maybe it was you, like, what about greed? Aren’t we just lazy and stuff? I think no. I think that we have a desire to give, and if you’re in a job where you’re not giving your gifts and they’re not going towards something meaningful to you, that job becomes intolerable. And a high salary can mitigate that feeling for a while, but eventually no amount of money is enough to compensate for not feeling fulfilled.
27:15 Yeah, I know a guy like that. You? Get out of town, bro, I don’t have this high salary. So I mean, you talk about this gift economy. Nick was asking about this kind of transition.
27:27 I mean, how do you transition from this, I don’t know, you’re not saying evil capitalism, but into more of this gift economy. What do you think we should do? Yeah, I mean, like the transition can mean different things for different people. It doesn’t necessarily mean that you stop working for money. I mean, what it means is that you say, you know, I’m here for a reason.
27:46 I have something to give to the world and even just believing that and trusting that can be a big step because our educational system, like a lot of what it does is it suppresses our gifts. Unless your gift happens to be for mathematics or for something that is validated by the system, you know, if your gift is for perceiving human energy fields or for empathic listening. Or making people laugh or whatever it is. Or making people laugh. Yeah, like making people laugh.
28:13 That’s a good example. Like you get suppressed. sent to the principal’s office, right? So we grow up in a situation where our gifts are suppressed and we get into the habit of suppressing our gifts for the purpose of an external reward, grades, and then eventually money, and to avoid censure and avoid consequences. So even to understand and affirm, yeah, I am a gifted person and I’m here to give something to the world.
28:41 That’s important. That’s already a big step. So when I’m talking about entering into the gift, that’s first and foremost what I’m talking about. It doesn’t really necessarily have anything to do with money. So it could mean you find a way that you express your gifts and you’re making lots of money.
28:59 It could happen. But often it isn’t because money isn’t aligned with the things that we really, really care about. So for many people, stepping into the gift means some kind of financial insecurity. And that’s actually kind of a principle of the gift, you know, you give and you’re not sure how the return gift will come back. Yeah, but that’s really what I’m talking about, you know, it’s more than just economics, it’s cosmology, it’s a way of seeing the world.
29:28 It’s kind of with them, I mean, you know, in a weird way, it’s kind of what we’re doing, you know. When Nick and I start doing the show, we’re giving this out every week, and in the weird ways it comes back to us through give other people giving. They contact us to help and give us and shoot films about us for free, and we’re like, this is weird. Right. It’s strange.
29:49 It’s a universal law, I guess. Yeah, it’s a universal law. You give and it comes back, and you can’t predict how. And I’m sure you guys didn’t do this by thinking, okay, what’s the best way for us to make money? Because then it doesn’t work, right?
30:02 It’s in a weird karmic way. And that cuts off the kind of inner guidance, which is like, how do you know what your gift is? Well, it comes back to that principle that we’re beings of gift we desire to give. And when you meet a desire, it feels good. It feels good to give.
30:25 And that means that this kind of good feeling, this feeling of excitement, The feeling of looking forward to waking up the next morning, you know? You’re talking about the whole Monday complex. Yeah, and that gets back to laziness, which you were talking about. Like when you’re expressing your gift, you’re not lazy. Lazy is a response to being forced or coerced somehow into doing work that you don’t really wanna do.
30:50 That makes a lot of sense. What do you think about that, Brian? It does make sense, it does make sense. And then I look back to like the early agrarian societies and somebody wants to play around and we gotta eat or we’re gonna die unless you get your ass out into that field and make those potatoes grow, then we’re dead. But he’s being lazy if he doesn’t wanna do it.
31:07 But look, there’s a film, Ancient Futures, made by Helena Norberg Hodge about Ladakh, which is this region of India on the Tibetan Plateau, agrarian society, and harsh climate. Like 12,000 feet, winter is like seven months long. you’d think that they would be struggling for survival. But actually, they basically only work five months a year. The rest of the time is devoted to weddings and feasts and parties and stuff, yet they produce plentiful food, usually in surplus, with enough surplus to make beer, which they drink all winter.
31:50 And even during the high season, they don’t work that hard. So you’re saying farmers don’t work hard? I can’t believe every society had that. There might have been some times where the going was tough, but overall, and hunter-gatherers even more lived very leisurely lives. There were periods of the Middle Ages too, when there wasn’t a war or a plague or a vicious lord taxing you and stuff.
32:19 In medieval Europe, there were many times and places where peasants had 150 days off a year because of all the Saints days, you know? You know, just thinking, I have, think of all the people around the world who, their gifts have been suppressed because of their… Suppressed is a strong word. Well, I mean… Not expressed.
32:38 Not expressed or dormant or latent because they are so busy chasing money to pay the bills. You know? To the lifestyle they want. Well, I have a buddy who’s one of the best artists I know, like the most creative guy I know. And he’s a computer programmer, I’m pretty sure he doesn’t exactly wake up every morning like excited to go to work and punch some code into a computer.
33:00 But he has to do it because, you know, that’s the funnel that he’s been let down by society, you know. I don’t think he’d be as rewarded if he sat and painted all day long, you know, I just don’t think that would happen. And is it really the lifestyle that they want, you know? Right. That’s another, I think it’s a myth that people work really hard to make enough money to lead the lifestyle that they want, and that they really do want those sports cars and expensive vacations and all the…
33:31 You assert that rich people aren’t happy either, right? Yeah, they don’t seem any happier than anybody else. Yeah, they don’t. And I think that a lot of those things are a substitute for what they really want, which which is connection, intimacy, sense of purpose, excitement, exploring boundaries, expanding your boundaries, adventure, and instead of adventure, they take a cruise. Instead of exploring their boundaries, they buy a sports car.
33:58 Instead of intimacy, they, I don’t know, look at pornography. Higher prostitutes. Yeah, yeah. A lot of this stuff makes sense, Brian. It does make sense.
34:10 You know, it’s interesting because this feels like this is a journey for you Charles it doesn’t feel like you’re you want to be The next Messiah or anything so I’m not asking you for answers But what do you I mean now that we’ve identified this which these truisms where do you go from here? You know, how do we how do we try to get there, you know, it’s I don’t believe it’s the resource-based economy I I don’t know and I and I also believe you know capitalism does great things like allocate resources in an efficient matter and it does have, you know, we’re much better off 50 years ago, you know, as far as the standard of living worldwide, that’s personally what I think. But yeah.
34:46 Well, yeah. I mean, I don’t think we want to throw the baby out with the bathwater when it comes to capitalism, although I don’t necessarily agree that we’re better off than we were 50 years ago in meaningful ways. Okay. Yeah. I mean, standard of living, I guess, is what we’ll say.
34:59 Yeah. And whether standard of living… Data’s not dying. Yeah. People not starving.
35:04 Well, that’s a question too, but… It’s not going to be the day. Even so, you know, what I write about, you know, in terms of systems then is how to change the money system so that it’s no longer the enemy of the environment, for example, or social justice. So one piece of that would be to internalize costs that are now exported onto the environment and onto future generations. So for example, right now you can make really cheap throwaway stuff because the cost to the environment and the cost to future generations is not included in the cost of that product.
35:48 You’re just dumping waste out and who’s paying for that? The people downwind. The people in the future, they’re paying for that. That shouldn’t be allowed. You shouldn’t be able to profit yourself by making someone else pay the costs.
36:02 So there are ways to build those costs in to products so that it becomes very expensive to pollute, so that entrepreneurial energy you’re talking about gets turned toward minimizing waste. Okay. And we’re doing a bit of that with the carbon emissions or not? I mean, it could be done like things like a carbon tax would be one way of implementing that and I write about other ways in the book. Do you think that should be tradable something like that?
36:30 Do you think that’s an efficient way? Well, the way, I mean, possibly- Tradeable already, right? They trade, they trade. Yeah, I mean, it hasn’t worked very well, because there’s a lot of ways that you can- Get around it. Yeah, I mean, it hasn’t.
36:42 Yeah, but those details need to be worked out, I think. The whole concept that that is tradable is another argument that I make, that capitalism is an efficient use of the resources. So if you cap it, I’d say, okay, this is what we’re gonna do, we’re gonna charge for these carbon-based things. This guy says, well, I want them because I’m gonna do this and I can’t use them very well. You can do them here.
37:04 That is a bit of a capitalist barteristic con. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that does work in your opinion? I think it could work. It hasn’t been implemented very well.
37:11 There’s been loopholes that basically make the whole thing useless. Okay. What I wanted to ask you about Charles is, and also you, Brian, is one of our very early guests on the show, Jan, he always says to me that capitalism is predicated on the erroneous notion that resources are inexhaustible, resources are unlimited. And if you have 4% I don’t agree with that assertion, but I’m still listening. Well, think about every global economy, right?
37:42 I mean, the main metric is GDP. Like they look at their GDP for the year and if it’s increasing by X percentage, it’s good. And if it’s not, the economy is contracting and it’s bad. That’s not equated to capitalism as a general theory. But I’m still listening, go ahead.
37:55 The growth thing is something Charles talks about, Yeah, I’d like to hear his opinion on that. We are- You’re saying that’s sustainable. Well, we’re running out of resources, man. You say we’re not, but I really believe we are, and then you know what, I’d just like to ask Brian one more thing, and I really would like your answer to this because I’ve been thinking about- Don’t ask me for my honest answer. He always tells that to me.
38:13 I really want your honest answer. Because I know you’re lying to me all the time. But when I once said we’re running out of resources, and you were like, I don’t think we’re running out of resources. Can you tell me more about that? It’s been on my mind for a long time.
38:25 Time it’s taken to the extreme. I just think it’s great. You can sell a lot in this world by instilling panic. You can sell a lot of books by saying, this is the time now where everything’s changing, you know, the end of the world, you know, that’s a great sales pitch, you know, but it doesn’t happen. Now is when the banking system is going to collapse.
38:42 It’s not going to collapse now. It’s been around for a long time. Yeah, maybe it needs fixing, but I don’t think it’s going to collapse. So that’s what I always say. Maybe I’m just playing the devil’s advocate a bit too much.
38:52 There’s definitely some truth to what you said. I can’t wait to hear what Charles is going to say. I’m thinking of like five things to say. Probably whichever one I start with is going to end up taking us somewhere. So I’ll probably won’t be able to say all five.
39:11 So yeah, resources, running out of resources and stuff. I mean, it’s true what you say about GDP. It only gives value to the things that have been taken out of the ground and turned into to a product somehow. And it’s not just a problem of how we measure things because some people propose alternative measures. What about software though?
39:32 Software, Microsoft was built as a great company, great GDP, nothing was taken out of the ground. It was just innovation, ideas, people doing something better. So not all GDP is resource-based, is it? I was gonna say Apple next, but then you could probably make it a lot harder. Right, I mean, you could.
39:44 I mean, there are people who argue about that, like how much electricity the internet uses to keep running and stuff like that. But I think that there’s another part of the argument. When you talk about the limits of growth, it’s not only natural resources that limit growth. It’s also the, there’s also a limit in human needs and desires and a limit in how much of human relationship you can turn into a service. Okay.
40:15 So something like some kind of technology, telecommunications, say, maybe it doesn’t use a whole lot of natural resources. I mean, maybe it does, maybe it doesn’t. But you’re still taking a function of human relationship, communication, and making it into a product. We didn’t used to pay for communication. We didn’t used to pay for entertainment.
40:37 We didn’t used to pay for healing. We didn’t used to pay for all kinds of know-how. We didn’t used to pay for childcare. We didn’t used to pay for food preparation, right? So we’re like creating this spiraling, growing economy and we’re also getting out of touch with each other.
40:52 So growth means that, I mean, here’s a business idea, okay? It’s been valid for thousands of years. You find something that people do for each other without paying for it. You take it away and you sell it back. Now, usually it’s not conscious.
41:06 Like I’m gonna de-skill people and make them forget their culinary traditions so that they no longer know how to cook. And then I’m gonna sell them fast food, right? It’s not conscious. I’m gonna pollute the water and put chemicals in municipal water and then sell them bottled water, right? It’s not conscious, but that’s the way things work out.
41:25 So if you want to look for what’s the next thing, well, look, what do people still do for each other that they don’t pay for? And then how do we, like, friendship, wise advice? Sounds like Facebook business. Yeah, or like life coaching, you know? Life coaching.
41:40 Right, something like that. And so the kind of economic orthodoxy says there’s no limit to the number of things that could be turned into products of one sort or another. But I think that there is a limit. I don’t think that human needs are infinite, at least not the need for things that are quantifiable. And ultimately, it’s only the quantifiable things that you can turn into a commodity or into a product.
42:09 And when we focus more and more on those things, the unquantifiable gets left out. So you can buy enormous amounts of music online, but you cannot buy the experience of somebody singing to you. And if you ever have had that experience, I mean sometimes you have that experience when you go listen to live music and you’re like, wow, this isn’t just a performance. There’s a real connection to the audience and even if you paid a ticket price, the ticket price is basically paying for the performance, but if there’s that extra thing where the band is really singing to you, then you realize that you’ve received something that money can’t buy and you feel grateful to the band and you become a fan and you want to give back something, you want to support them even though you already paid for it.
43:02 So there’s this extra thing, this unquantifiable thing, and I think that that’s what’s missing from our monetized lives. And the strange thing is modern companies are figuring that out and they have very skilled, very intelligent people figuring out what that unquantifiable thing is and how they can quantify it and package it and incorporate it into their sales pitch. Right. Yes, they’re evil. They’re evil.
43:24 Well, at least they sell you a substitute for that thing, you know? So like fast food advertisements, you know, like life, like, you know, if you’re experiencing life is really dull and unexciting, ha ha, you know, McDonald’s, party time, you know, whatever. I think they’re fulfilling a need. I do agree with Charles’s and I don’t think it was created as a conspiracy to get you to want this. But I think the growth, to be the next new company, you have to fill the need.
43:49 You have to fill the need. Right. Or create the need. And then I guess as people get more distance from each other, then they need that need to connect. That’s right.
43:56 And now you give them Facebook to connect. Right. But it’s not the same, is it? So then, you know, you give them digital music, but it’s not the same, so then you have to do all these stuff. I mean, the premise of the movie Fight Club is that we’ve gotten so distanced from everyone I mean look at Ed Norton’s I mean Ed Norton’s character he’s living in a high-rise away from everyone else he’s got his customized rugs and he doesn’t have to interact with humans anymore and what does he want to do ultimately he wants to get in there and fight guys not to fight them I think really just to communicate with them he wants to he wants reality he wants authenticity you know and like that’s when he when you get into a fight like you know it’s you’re really in the moment it’s really physical yeah looks It’s like you like that movie.
44:36 Yeah. Brilliant movie. One of the best movies ever. It is. There’s so many subtleties there.
44:41 Yeah. Yeah. I don’t know where we were. You were talking about GDP and then you were talking about it. So do you think it’s unsustainable?
44:47 I mean, I look at this economy, I look at the character in Fight Club. Now he’s got the iPad and then he’s distanced. Now he can work from home. He doesn’t even have to communicate with those people. He can keep everything.
44:56 I mean, there’s got to be a point where people are going to be like, enough consumerism, enough. We reconnect. We do all this stuff. That’s why people go drink ayahuasca in the jungle, like Nick, because we’re tired of it, but we don’t know we’re tired of it. Yeah.
45:10 Yeah, I think it’s unsustainable. Nature can’t sustain much more of it. The human spirit can’t sustain much more of it. Community, like civic society, can’t sustain much more of it. And we’re already running out.
45:23 What’s that? Wait, could you elaborate on the last point when you said civic society couldn’t sustain much more of it? Yeah. connected we are from each other, the more we need laws and rules and things like that to govern human relationships and those reach a point of diminishing returns. And the need for intimacy, the need for connection that is denied turns into an explosive force and causes all kinds of disruption.
45:54 And society is kind of like not holding together very well. Yeah and so I think it is unsustainable and I agree with Charles it’s interesting because we had a we had a legal release that Charles signed earlier and he’s like what does this really mean and it’s like as we get in touch out of touch with community we have to set up laws and police so instead of you just not being I hate to use this word but we’re in England a cunt to everybody you just you you say oh it’s against the law I can sue him you know you just stop being civil to people and you start being like what’s the most I can get out of this. Let me sue him because it makes more money, not because you really shouldn’t do that to that person. You should help out that person. Right, because when there’s no community, there’s no mechanisms of social pressure to make you engage in pro-social behavior. Right. So you have to have coercive mechanisms instead. It’s interesting. Yeah, it’s really interesting. Like police. And I think the system is really falling apart, you know, and that’s one of the reasons for the economic crisis also, is that there’s not a lot left to sell people. There’s not a lot more, you know, so much of our relation relations with each other have been monetized already, that we’re kind of running out of room for growth. And of course then there’s ecological limits as well. And you know, you look at the growth curve in industrial economies, you know, and I mean, jeez, it peaked decades
47:22 Ago. And the problem with that is that our current financial system only works in a context of growth. Governments as well, I mean, everyone needs growth to keep everyone happy. But nature doesn’t work that way. Nature is self-limiting.
47:39 If the population of any species becomes too large, it’ll start killing it off with some inbuilt mechanism. And in nature, there are a lot of situations where you do have rapid growth. Immature ecosystem grows rapidly in total biomass. But then it reaches kind of a leveling off. It might reach a little peak and then slowly decline or it might just kind of level off to a peak, to a plateau.
48:04 And when that happens, the early relationships which were highly competitive, competing for sunlight, competing for soil, they change into more symbiotic, complex relationships and the system reaches maturity. You could say that the same thing is kind of happening to humanity where we’re reaching the end of this period of growth and leveling off toward a steady state economy or maybe even a peak and then some de-growth going toward a steady state economy. Another way to look at it is that we were, who is telling me, someone, one of these speakers, everywhere he goes, he asks, humanity collectively, what stage are we in?
48:55 Infancy, childhood, adolescence, adulthood, old age, what is it? What do you think the answer is? That’s infancy. What would you say? I would say adulthood.
49:06 I would say adulthood. Yeah. Well, he says that everywhere he goes, you guys are exceptions then because most people say adolescents. Still trying to figure it out. Like we’re trying to figure it out, we’re irresponsible, and there are some other things too, but what I see is that we’re kind of reaching the end of that last growth spurt where we had maybe infancy might have been hunter-gatherer days.
49:34 And so the Industrial Revolution is like the teenage growth spurt. And we’re finally, like growth is leveling off now, and we need to go through a transition. And what is that transition? Yeah, that’s my next question for you. What is it?
49:47 What do we do? Yeah, so in an ancient society, when you reached that age and your physical growth was coming to an end, you would go through a passage, a coming of age ordeal, and it would be pretty intense, like very intense. A classic rite of passage is rock. Yeah. Yeah.
50:11 They don’t exist much anymore. Like maybe you’d get fed large amounts of a psychedelic plant. Maybe you’d be circumcised with a rock and no anesthetic. Yeah. That’s big.
50:20 Like where you come from, Nick had that happen to him. Yeah. That’s why he’s a man. Yeah. It would be bad enough that basically your whole world would fall apart.
50:29 Everything that had seemed so secure and stable and real, that would be gone. Your whole identity would fall apart. And then when you finished the ordeal and you came back to the tribe after your vision quest or whatever it was, you’d come back to the tribe. And everybody would know that you were an adult now. And you would know that you were an adult.
50:52 Whereas in our society, you know, you go into your 20s, your 30s, and I don’t know if you guys have experienced this, but it’s like, am I really an adult? You know, I’m in this adult body and I’m dressed like an adult, but I feel like a child playing grown up. Another fight, yeah. I’m a 30-year-old boy. Yeah.
51:07 I said that when I was 30. Yeah. So they had these, you know, a lot of deal, and you’d come back as a full member of the tribe. And I think humanity is going through that right now, where all those things that seem seems so real and predictable and safe are falling apart. What was once practical, like saving for retirement.
51:32 We know that that money isn’t going to be there when we retire and our pension fund isn’t safe. It’s going to be Enron. Yeah. And AAA bonds are not safe. We know what was once so secure and science constantly solving the world’s problems and making life better and better and you know like all that stuff we don’t believe in that anymore and because we’re going through this we’re just entering into it this ordeal the series of crises that’s making the world fall apart and the purpose of that I think is to is to birth us into full membership of the tribe of all life on earth where our gifts that we’ve been playing with as children we’ve been playing with these gifts of technology and culture for thousands of years, now we’re going to, as adults, turn those gifts toward their true purpose.
52:25 And I’m not sure what that is, but I know that humanity is like every other species that we have a gift that’s necessary for the well-being of all and the development of all. And maybe at the beginning it’ll be to heal the damage that has been done. I mean, we could use technology for really beautiful things. Will this look like some kind of a Woodstock of the late ages, like a 1969 piece of love and a complete change in cultural values for a while, do you think?
52:54 I think actually, I don’t want to sound like a hippie, but I think, yeah. Okay. It might look like Mad Max as well, you know? It might be. No, but I think that the hippies were really catching a glimpse of something.
53:08 And a lot of those values will come to pass. But the funny thing is the hippies, the people at Woodstock are the guys who have 401Ks and the guys who started Microsoft. That’s right. There’s nothing wrong with a 401K plan, but maybe they saw a glimpse of it. They caught a glimpse of it, and the story that we’re living in now still hadn’t played itself out.
53:29 True. The story of separation, conquest, we kind of took it to a new extreme since the 60s. We had a lady in that chair a few days ago named Dr. Rachel Armstrong, and she believes is that ultimately it’s the new generations that are gonna be able to take us there because that’s older generations, we’re already vested, we already have these dogmas in our minds and we really can’t change enough to make it happen and it’s gonna, whether we like it or not, come from this younger generation that grows up and is like, grandpa’s doing it all wrong, that’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever seen and then, you know.
54:02 Yeah, yeah, that could be. I don’t know. Because at least like we’ve transitioned out of it enough that we’re not gonna so enthusiastically pass it on to our children, maybe? Yeah, even like, even you are vested in a certain extent for the system not changing. No, for sure.
54:18 I mean, I’d love it to continue as it is now because, you know, I’ve got my electricity and my hot water and, you know, my iPad and Spotify. And I mean, it’s amazing, but- I can’t tell if you’re being sarcastic. No, I’m being dead serious, but I also know that it cannot continue like that. And I know that for me to have my iPhone, it means some dude in China is working some shitty job pulling a lever for 30 hours or 20 hours a day. And you don’t feel good about that, man.
54:43 But you did it. But I did it. Take me away. Well, what do you think about that argument, that people, they vote with their expenditures? I mean, Nick bought an iPhone, even though he might say Foxconn does horrible things.
54:57 Actually, someone gave it to me, to be fair. But you have to look at the context that you’re in. And in a context of alienation and separation, Disconnection like, you know, maybe Facebook and an iPhone is the best you can do, you know, it’s it’s human beings You know our choices are so dependent on our situation on the external and internal situation that you take Anybody and you put him in you in your role and he’s gonna make the same choices you do Hey Brian, did you adapt to their environment quickly? You’re saying they just kind of yeah This is where I’m going to be the safest.
55:35 So it’s not like you’re bad for making those choices. Did you ever watch a movie called There Will Be Blood with Daniel Day-Lewis? Of course I did, yeah. Have you seen it? I haven’t seen it, no.
55:44 But I found that movie fascinating. You know, I remember at the end where you… Early oil exploration kind of in the 20th century. Daniel Day-Lewis is the main character, and he has made an absolute fortune in the early oil industry in the States. And he did it by being incredibly ruthless.
56:00 And also, what’s the word, industrious. And in the end, he’s got all the money in the world and he has absolutely no peace of mind and his son comes to him to us for his blessing in a business endeavor. And he is so twisted and evil and insane from his greed that he just looks at his son as a competitor and he refuses to give him his blessing. It just makes me think like that, yeah, it comes back to a lot of the things we’ve been talking today. It can really fuck people up, the system we live in.
56:33 It’s a bit of a caricature of that last bit of the movie, but I see what you’re saying. I got a couple of things I want to ask Charles before we kind of wrap up. You know, everyone, I said earlier about predicting that this is the time now. This is when banking’s going to collapse. This is when our environment’s going to tell us to stop.
56:49 This is when civilization… The sky’s falling. Yeah. a certain amount of arrogance and hubris and audacity for us to believe it’s happening to us now. I mean, you look at Mad Men, which I love that show, and they thought it was happening in the 60s, social change and marches on Washington and racial change, but it didn’t happen then, and is there a point where we’re just trying to be a little more embellishing or being a bit egotistic?
57:11 It could be, but maybe it is happening now. Like, that’s the word. Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you. Right, I mean, I think back in ancient Rome, Like, man, pretend this is 320 AD, man, their empire’s falling apart. Like the Visigoths, they’ve crossed the Danube, and our empire’s so decadent, and the legions are not what they once were, and things are gonna fall apart.
57:37 And there was someone saying, you’re just being arrogant. That’s right, he was right, he was right, because Rome wasn’t sacked by the Vandals until whatever, 80 years after that guy was saying that. But every year there was some idiot, some alarmist saying that, but actually what they were seeing was true. And I think what all of these kind of apocalyptic visions and doomsday predictions are tapping into is the understanding that our system is not sustainable.
58:06 Now how it actually collapses, how this transition happens, I don’t know. It could be a single really dramatic event, it could be a series of events, these coming of age ordeals can happen in different ways, but I think that we’re seeing something true here. Now, another part of what you’re saying is like you’re kind of questioning this alarmism and this urgency, and I think that that’s actually really healthy to question because to me, something about it right now is a kind of a scarcity mentality, like a scarcity of time.
58:47 And I think that part of the revolution that we’re undergoing is that we’re kind of trusting a sense of timing and an organic unfolding of events that we are not in charge of, we’re not in control of, but that we respond to and we serve. And this, you know, because part of the old story is humanity dominating nature and imposing our design onto nature, and I think that we’re being kind of birthed into a much more humble role where we see that, yeah, humanity is part of this unfolding wholeness, and how do we know? How do you know what the most useful thing you can do is when things are so turbulent and everything’s changing?
59:39 How do you know, should you work on ending climate change or reforming the prison system or teaching people how to forgive or maybe just practicing that in your own family? What’s the best use of your time? How can you predict what the effects will be? So you’re trying to encourage people to look at the things around them that they can change? Yeah, I’m encouraging people to trust their impulse to be of service and to give in whatever situation presents itself.
1:00:10 Even if your mind says, well, that couldn’t possibly help the planet transition because maybe what’s calling me right now is to take care of my grandmother who’s dying and to sit with her day after day after day and to change her bedpan. And the rational mind said, that couldn’t possibly have any effect on the universe because she’s going to die anyway. Maybe if I educated children or something like that or campaigned. Or marched on Wall Street. Marshall and Wall Street, right?
1:00:35 But there’s another part of us that knows that that’s a significant act and that it somehow has an effect on the universe, and I think that’s the part we have to begin listening to. Hmm. What’s your role in all this? I mean, you’re obviously, you’re writing books, you’re talking to people. What do you see your role is in this transition?
1:00:52 Well, I see myself as kind of a storyteller. Okay. You know, at the beginning, I talked about these kind of systems of agreements that we have and money is one of those, money is a story you can say so is you know America that’s a story and marriage would be a story yeah and all these institutions are changing because they’re all based on that really deep underlying story of separation. So I see myself kind of as a storyteller of the new story of interconnection or you can say inner being, oneness.
1:01:29 Barred sounds cooler than storyteller though. I like storyteller. Barred’s a bit presumptuous. I think so. Yeah.
1:01:36 Plus, I’m a lousy singer. Barred is supposed to sing. I don’t think I’m that special really. You guys are among the storytellers too. I know.
1:01:46 I was just thinking about that. Damn it. No, because we are all kind of telling the story and communicating this to a whole new web of people that will hear Charles talking, and we’ll hear Graham Hancock talking, we’ll hear this person talking. It starts to chip away at your mentality. Right, because we’re still at so much momentum from the past and habits of separation and seeing the world that way.
1:02:08 And then we have that inner knowing, like we talked about before, like at school this can’t be right. The world is supposed to be much more beautiful than what’s been offered to me as normal, but that’s a lonely knowledge because all of these institutions around us are saying the opposite. And so I think it’s really important to have people saying, no, actually that secret knowledge that you had is right, and here’s why. And offering a different story of the world, a different framework that says, yeah, those things that you were feeling, those weren’t crazy.
1:02:45 Because I certainly need that. Because I feel like a crazy person sometimes, that I’m naive, or deluded, or something like that. And it’s only been these other storytellers who have, in various ways, said, no, Charles, you’re onto something here. And so in other words, I’m saying that we need help to believe what we know. We know it, but we don’t believe it, and we help each other.
1:03:11 And you’ve been on this crazy journey of self-discovery. You really turned your back on so many tenets that you were brought up with, but even writing a book or doing all these things are probably things you never thought you would do. Yeah, although I’ll say I was more fortunate than most because my father gave me books that confirmed my belief that there was something a bit wrong around here. And he himself was very critical of US foreign policy and stuff like that, but I was reading books like Silent Spring.
1:03:46 It was like the book that kind of started the environmental movement by Rachel Carson, Yef Schumacher, like George Orwell, I was reading things like this and I was a teenager. That’s helpful. Do you think if there’s a parent listening to this right now, do you think that they should like just take another look at their kid and just to be like, well, wait a second, maybe I’m not appreciating the gifts that they have and I just want them to get the good grades or so they’ll get into Yale so I can tell all my friends about it and they’ll say, you’re a good parent.
1:04:15 Well, it’s not even so much that they wanna tell all their friends about it, but parents are genuinely worried, it’s my kid gonna be okay. And kind of encouraging their children to sacrifice what’s really important for the sake of security. But I think as parents, you know, and we’ve lived some of life, and I’ve got three kids now, we know that it’s a mistake to live for the purpose of security, that we’re here for more than just surviving. And why would we wanna pass that on to our children?
1:04:48 I mean, for me, for many people, it took years and decades to finally learn that I’ve got to follow my bliss. And like, do we want our children to have to go through decades of doing the wrong thing before they finally discover what the right thing is? And also like even a more simple way to put it is, you know, if you’re not having fun, if you’re not enjoying your life, you might as well be dead. I mean, what’s the point of coming here and struggling for 60 or 70 years, like doing some drudgery and waking up every morning, like wanting to shoot yourself because you hate your boss.
1:05:23 And I mean, what the fuck is that? Right, that’s one way of looking at it. What if someone doesn’t have security and they can’t eat and their life sucks? Keeps them thin. I mean, I think that it’s perfectly fine and noble thing to feed your children.
1:05:43 But there comes a point, like how much security is enough? You know, is it enough to just have enough money to make sure that you have food for the next week? Or should it be for the next month or the next year or the next 10 years? And then what if the economy tanks? Or what if you have a medical problem?
1:06:01 Well, you better have some more money. Like how much money is enough to insulate you against any possible outcome? There’s no figure. No amounts enough. No.
1:06:11 Right. So, you know, at some point it’s like when do I start trusting that if I give, I will receive? That’s a big trust. Community will provide, I mean, that’s a big trust, a lot of people wouldn’t trust that, I wouldn’t. But I’ll say the more that I’ve let go, the more I experience abundance.
1:06:28 That I believe, that I believe, so it’s a leap of faith. Yeah, I mean, I don’t make a whole lot of money, but everywhere I go, I’m staying in really nice guest rooms, people are taking me to restaurants, you know, I’m flying, I’m traveling a lot, you know, speaking.
1:06:45 Like people give me stuff, you know, So, in my experience, sometimes there’s a delay, like you say, I’m just going to step into my gift and you don’t start receiving back. And then you go through a process like, am I really doing this out of a desire to serve or do I have some idea that I’m going to be a big giver and I get conceited and then like maybe you will get a wake-up call. So it is a journey. And it’s the spirit of it that’s very important, isn’t it?
1:07:19 It’s interesting. It’s really about following desire. Okay. Yeah, and and just trusting that that I’m here to give I really want to do that and and if I’ve experienced myself as lazy, that’s rebellion against doing the wrong thing There’s a point there. There is a point there, you know There’s just one more thing I want to ask you before we we try to wrap up you had something you talked about Well, you don’t like the pronoun we or you said that in some way using the word we almost disempower And I was wondering if you could talk about that.
1:07:50 Well, yeah. I mean, if you’re talking about we need to cut carbon emissions or we need to institute a different political system, like all these kind of systems level solutions, like, okay, fine, but who’s we? Like does it mean that everybody else has to magically agree with me for this to happen? Or does it mean that I try to persuade everybody? But now I’m not talking about what we should do.
1:08:13 I’m talking about what I should do. Like, I should go out and persuade people, maybe? And then, so unless like, unless your vision includes, how do you change mass consciousness? It’s just a diffusion of responsibility, basically. How do you do it?
1:08:36 It’s like you and the iPhone. We need to stop making these people work, yeah, you’re not saying I need to stop buying the iPhone. I’m going to say that you need to stop being a cooler person. I’m going to keep my eye on that. Yeah.
1:08:48 So you were explaining, you need to empower yourself first or you need to stop. No. Can you hide in the collective we? Is that what you’re saying? We can kind of just…
1:08:56 Politicians use we all the time. Yeah. I just get impatient with what we should do if it doesn’t also tell me what I should do. Okay. That makes sense.
1:09:06 Okay. As in people should be telling you what to do specifically? Well… I mean, yeah, like we should all be nice to each other, right? Or we should all, you know, we should, I mean, there’s a lot of things that we should do, but I’m not we, I’m just me.
1:09:19 So the question is, what’s useful for me to do and how do I choose what I should do? And it may not be to persuade, like people think, well, if I want to have a big influence, I have to write a book or something like that, or persuade lots of people or go on podcasts with hundreds of thousands of viewers, but I think that anything, I guess this is more kind of a take-home, you know, that anything that you do that changes this experience of separation that people live in is a powerful political act because it disrupts the story that we’re living in. So when you experience generosity, for example, it just doesn’t fit like you said, well, people are just greedy.
1:10:13 To be fair, that’s Brian’s, I can’t put this on me, I never said that. There’s a little piece of us, there’s a little piece of everybody that says that. There’s a piece of me that says that, too. Everyone’s out for themselves. And when push comes to shove, they’re going to keep the money.
1:10:26 And then I come across somebody who’s so magnificently generous and so fearless that I’m like, wow. Where is this person living from? This person’s action violates what I thought I knew about human nature and the universe, and it opens it up in me too. That’s cool. And all of us have opportunities to do that, in big ways or small ways, just to act from a place of connection, to act from the place of, I know, forgiveness would be an example.
1:10:59 I know that if I were you, I would do the same because we’re not separate. So to give people the experience of like total acceptance, non-judgment, forgiveness, generosity, all of those things disrupt the story of separation and they make it, even if like you can’t intellectually persuade somebody, just giving them that experience unravels the fabric of of the world and makes the transition to a new world a lot easier. Yeah, if you ever want to astonish someone is like give them something and they’ll be like floored.
1:11:37 Like I think, you know, some of the big things in my life is when someone did something that was completely selfless. And I was just like, are you fucking kidding me? My name is not giving me shit, bro. Actually, you give me shit all the time. Hey, comedy queer.
1:11:50 But no, I mean, people say, oh, the world should be better, the world should be better. I mean, like it starts with the people you come in contact with every day, right? It just starts with all those little relationships, and I’m a big fan of that. I wanted to ask you one of our typical London Real questions, and I’m curious how you respond to this one, Charles, but if you could make a phone call to the 20-year-old Charles Eisenstein, what advice would you give him, or what would you tell him, and would he listen?
1:12:17 Yeah. I don’t know if you’d listen, I would say trust yourself. So we’ve heard that before actually, and yeah, trust yourself and I might really go into it actually and not give you an ideological answer. What would I actually say to that guy? Take your time.
1:12:48 It’s a good one. Take your time. Yeah. Would you expand on that or just take your time? I guess I was so caught up in paradoxically.
1:13:04 I spent a lot of time drinking beer, but it wasn’t because I felt like I had endless time. It was because I felt anxious. Maybe I would also say you can’t make any mistakes. Even your mistakes are necessary. I would just try to give that young guy some ease.
1:13:28 Okay, because you’re worried about making mistakes Yeah, I was trying really hard to be good You know wanting to like my whole life was a campaign to enable myself to see myself as good You know Most of the school I don’t think you’re alone. I don’t think you’re alone in that, you know there was a recent study where they had people look at pictures of organic food packages and then they gave them some kind of questionnaire that tested how altruistic they were, and people who looked at organic food, even just looking at it, gave them kind of a feeling of superiority and smugness, which made them actually less altruistic. I think that the more highly people think of themselves as being virtuous, the less virtuous they actually are.
1:14:17 That’s interesting. That is very interesting. Yeah. already good, you know, I’m a vegan or I’m a this or I’m a that. So basically we should bomb whole foods because I would get rid of a whole bunch of smugness.
1:14:33 I know what you’re saying. I’m just kidding. Give me a smug guy now. I know where you’re going with that. Is this a joke?
1:14:38 Yeah. Yeah. But just like the campaign, like the record state, I don’t want to bomb whole foods. To convince yourself that you’re good, you know, is a waste of time. And it’s also damaging to try to manipulate other people and to try to get them to change by wielding, you know, by leveraging their guilt and shame.
1:15:04 Really what you’re creating in the world is more guilt and shame, you know. That makes sense. Yeah. On that same note, if there is that 20-year-old out there, whether it’s, you know, the old Charles or not, you know, what do you tell them? Not that they’re listening to you as a leader, but what do you say to them if they’re like, okay, I like what I’m hearing here, how do I do?
1:15:25 The most important message for a 20-year-old is that your secret suspicion is true. There’s three. One is that the world is supposed to be much more beautiful than what has been offered to you as normal. Two, that you have a magnificent gift to give and that the purpose of your life is to give it and if you don’t know what it is then the most important thing you can do is to find it. Which might mean doing nothing for a while.
1:15:57 Maybe you have to get out of the habit of doing things that are not your gift in order to discover what that gift is because it’s been suppressed. And three, something tremendous is supposed to happen to you. That big thing that you’ve been expecting it is supposed to happen. That’s powerful. Power.
1:16:16 That’s fantastic. That’s the best answer we had yet. No, look, I was just thinking I’m going to make this one little clip with a great highlight clip of Charles, right? Yeah, that’s cool. How do people get a hold of you, what’s your website, Twitter, all that good stuff?
1:16:28 I would just say charleseisenstein.net. And that’s the portal to other things. And on Twitter, I think you’re just at C Eisenstein, I think. Yeah, that’s my Twitter, but I don’t really use Twitter much. Okay, gotcha.
1:16:41 So your website’s the best thing, right? Yeah. And all three books of yours are on Amazon? Is that the best way to buy them, or is it best to go to your website to pick up of a copy of Sacred Economics. I mean, yeah, Amazon, you know, or, you know, if you want to support an independent bookstore, you can do that.
1:16:54 Okay. Yeah. Yeah, a lot of people, a lot of our guests are like, don’t buy it on Amazon or buy other places. It’s free, also available online as a gift. I believe we didn’t talk about that, but you can download the e-book and you choose the price or you can just read it in HTML, read it on web pages and give a voluntary donation if you want to.
1:17:13 Talk about walking the walk, right? Yeah, that is walking the walk. I mean, it’s part of like, you know, if you have something that you really want to give, you don’t want to set up a paywall and keep people away, right? It’s kind of weird. So any amount that I charge is too much, and at the same time, any amount I charge is too little.
1:17:39 That makes sense. Because this is really sacred. It’s worth more than any amount of money. So that’s why I like to put it out there and you decide, you know, what return gift you’d like to make. And I get a lot of return gifts actually.
1:17:52 People actually do choose to pay something. Yeah. I think that’s really important just to keep, you know, keep that free and keep it ubiquitous and just get it out there to as many people as possible. Wow. Thanks so much, Charles, for coming on.
1:18:04 Yeah. Thank you so much. It was not what I expected at all. And once you get warmed up, man, you’re forced to wreck me. a few more of these child’s interviews and you’re going to be a real human being right now.
1:18:15 I think my core of capitalistic republican fan base is slowly eroding and pretty soon I’m going to get hate mail and so I’m a little worried about that. No, but there’s truth in everything, you know, every, every, every little sector of opinion even if it’s, there’s always a little, little piece of truth in there. All right, I like that, keep that in mind when I say crazy shit. Awesome, if anyone’s listening to this on iTunes if you want to come watch us and see our faces We’re all on YouTube channel London Real TV If you’re loving this or loving what we’re doing just go to iTunes right now Give us a quick review and if you want to come find us we’re on Twitter Facebook and our websites London Real TV We’ve got a forum there all sorts of stuff stuff going on there next week. We got Tim Ferriss and It’s all kicking off here. It is all kicking off, right? Mm-hmm. All right. Thank you guys and until then it is about the journey peace guys it just seems so dangerous because it’s like in this board and many sports people are going to take them because they’re competitive but there’s there’s you know there’s no science there’s no direction you’re getting them from a guy in the locker room and then you’re tripling it because you’re because you’re not sure a competitive person and like what’s the way what’s the solution to that problem
