Author's self description: "I can’t really tell you my plans for the future; it all depends on what is revealed to me in the next phase of my personal exploration. Besides, the world is approaching a state of flux that could easily render most plans irrelevant. I will continue writing and speaking for at least another year or two. My main interest now is in exploring the boundaries of what is “possible” according to our received beliefs, received habits, received technologies, and received ways of knowing. For humanity to take that Next Step, we are going to have to violate what is politically practical, socially practical, and even technologically practical. The same holds on the personal and relational level. I have caught glimpses of the impossible in all these realms and I am excited about what lies ahead."

Gobbely-Gook, emotionally stunted/damaged, socialist/collectivist, altruist/spriritualist, AGW, anti-human nonsense
Why would I discuss any of that.

"Sacred Economics traces the history of money from ancient gift economies to modern capitalism, revealing how the money system has contributed to alienation, competition, and scarcity, destroyed community, and necessitated endless growth. Today, these trends have reached their extreme—but in the wake of their collapse, we may find great opportunity to transition to a more connected, ecological, and sustainable way of being." -- http://charleseisenstein.net/project/...

"Of course, by the time that the impact of climate change penetrates the structures of normalcy and causes food shortages, catastrophic weather events, etc. that impact modern Western society, it will probably be too late. So far the elite nations are able to insulate themselves from the harm that ecological destruction causes. Therefore it seems unreal. The air conditioner still works. The car still runs. The credit card still works. The garbage truck takes away the trash. School is open at 8am and there is medicine in the pharmacy. The narratives that define normal life are still intact. If we wait for those narratives to be demolished by external events — by geopolitical and ecological catastrophe — it will be too late.

That defines the challenge before us. How do we bring people to care as much about climate change as the residents of Flint, Michigan care about the lead in their water?"

http://charleseisenstein.net/grief-an...

Yeah.... not exactly the paradigms we are working with here. I have to go with a Thumbs Down on this. It is not fruitful, even for open discussion.

I agree with some of his problem-definitions but not his suggested cause or the solutions he alludes to.

Around 3:45 where he says to create wealth you have to find something that people once got for free and sell it to them. But that's not true. You create wealth by making something people want. He says creating value requires turning things into commodities, but value is created by decommoditizing something, making something special that no one else has, the opposite of a commodity.

He says we look at nature as just a bunch of stuff. It really is though.

You might fulfill your psychological needs by accumulating stuff, he says. I completely agree. The problem, though, is not the existence a medium of exchange and is not creating stuff. The underlying problem was the psychological need. If we produce less stuff, psychological problems will not go away.

He says he always had a sense that we shouldn't hate Mondays. I agree completely. If you do, though, the problem is not people producing stuff.

I agree with him on the issues of community, but I don't agree that having a medium of exchange as the problem.

People have beautiful things they'd like to do, he says, but money stops him. I say no. It's the underlying scarcity of goods and services that stops them.

I completely agree with him about internalization of the costs of business. People should pay for the costs they incur on others. But doesn't saying that presuppose using a medium of exchange and using it to create value and keep the profits from the value you create? Burning fuel to support billions of people puts the environment in grave peril, but when we say that we admit that resources are scares, humanity is not gift-based, and when we cause global warming we're stealing someone else's personal value.

He says we need to re-localize goods and services. I say no way. The only reason to do this is the damage to the environment of moving stuff, but increasingly we produce value that can be sent over the Internet. We have to find a way to make the earth support billions of people one way or the other, and people to specializing and shipping value around the world is a way to do it. We need to find ways to do that that do not generate externalities. We should not stop specializing and trading.

He says we need P2P lending. People should have at it, IMHO, if they have peers they want to lend to and borrow from. I think it's a great thing to do. People already do it. The problem is not with capitalism.

Was civilization a huge mistake, he asks? No way.

Photographs from space reminds us how fragile our world ecosystem is. Yes.

On top of that-
' teaching at Penn State’s department of Science, Technology, and Society.'
He may have seen, spoken to, or even touched the hand of Michael Mann, inventor of the Hockey Schtick!

Now unlike some here I do this for fun so I have not marked down. I appreciate the view of Zenphamy but I reckon this Charles site is best described as pathetic especially as his writing is not turgid enough for him to get that material published in the literature.

Some of his papers are:

Truth and Magic in the Third Dimension
' in many realms evidence follows belief.'
This statement is true! That is how results are produced in university studies, there is no money/incentive to find evidence to the contrary.

A Miracle in Scientific American
'an old non-functioning radio that had belonged to his bride’s beloved grandfather mysteriously started playing a love song as the ceremony ..'
This story misuses evidence to imply a faulty conclusion. Often done.

The Ecosexual Awakening
'It seems the earth is not giving her gifts so freely anymore. She is being forced, coerced, raped, tortured.'
Rather than the earth, more apt about Swedish and German women at the hands of Muslim migrants.

Grief and Carbon Reductionism
'We came back over-and-over to the realization that the climate movement must proceed through the several stages of grief to get to Acceptance'
Agreed. I look forward to the climate movement accepting their 'idiotology'.