>>Presenter: Hi, my name is [unintelligible].
I have been a Googler for about four years
now.
Welcome, everyone, to this Authors at Google
talk.
Today is August 16, 2012.
This is for the video.
We are excited to present one of the most
forward-looking writers and thinkers of our
time.
Charles Eisenstein writes and speaks on the
topics of civilization, consciousness, money,
and human-concerned evolution.
I first heard him on the radio a few months
back, and then I read his book, called The
Ascent of Humanity.
And I was really impressed by how well he
explained the reasons and causes behind so
many of the issues we face today, individually
as well as collectively.
[microphone adjustment sounds] You can think
about all the problems that humanity faces
today as different threads of strings.
Charles shows us how they all got tied together
into this kind of a knot.
In his newest book, Sacred Economics, he proposes
a way to unravel this knot, and move forward
with a new mindset.
[microphone adjustment sounds] All right.
Allow me to introduce to you Charles Eisenstein.
[applause]
>>Charles Eisenstein: Yeah, thanks [unintelligible].
So there's only about, maybe, 20, 30 people
here.
And I think I'm going to do things a little
bit backwards.
I'd like to solicit three questions from the
audience.
I'm not even necessarily going to answer those
questions, at least, not right away.
But I want to kinda try to suss out what kind
of listening and what kind of curiosity, and
why people are here.
Anyone who has a pretty strong question on
their mind, you don't actually have to make
one up right now, but if you came here with
a question or with something that you're carrying,
let me know what it is.
Yeah.
>>male #1: How do we get from here to there?
[light laughter]
>>Eisenstein: All right.
How do we get from here to there?
Beautiful.
Yeah, yeah, good.
[pause] Yes.
>>male #2: Are there parallels between the
way our economy is evolving now and the transition
from [inaudible]
>>Eisenstein: Okay.
Yeah.
Transition in general.
It's probably making good video, because they
can't hear you.
But whatever.
Yeah.
>>Female #1: Can money be spiritual?
>>Eisenstein: Can money be spiritual?
Mmm.
All right, good.
Yeah, so now I know where to start.
Thank you.
How do we get from here to there?
Like, that presupposes that there is a there.
And this is something that I think everybody
can intuit.
[man clears his throat] Everybody has a sense
that a more beautiful world is possible.
And has a sense, especially strong in-- Most
of you are pretty young.
But especially strong among young people,
teenagers, that the world is supposed to be
a lot more beautiful than what has been offered
to us as normal.
And life is supposed to be a lot more authentic,
a lot more intimate, a lot more joyous than
the lives that are offered to us as the standard
life in our society.
And so we have this indwelling knowledge that
there's something wrong around here.
But I don't know what it is.
And this feeling, for me at least, growing
up in the '70s and '80s, this feeling kinda
made it impossible for me to fully participate
in the life that had been offered to me.
And I kinda halfheartedly went along with
it and did it in fits and starts, went to
an Ivy League school but then left and got
a job at a bar, then ended up doing translation
in Taiwan, and then bagging that and just
skating in and out of this life that would
have been expected to me, for me, and had
been handed to me.
And occasionally, getting glimpses of what
it's supposed to be like to be human, and
what the world is supposed to be like.
Little glimpses of the future, kinda like
the hippies got in the 1960s, where they had
these experiences of working together, living
together, psychedelic experiences maybe, that
showed them what the world is supposed to
be.
And I don't know if any of you have had experiences
like that.
For some people, it's a near death experience,
or if you're a long time in danger, or playing
music, or making love, or by the bedside of
a dying person, or a psychedelic experience
sometimes, or just being maybe at Burning
Man, and there's this feeling that this isn't
just some temporary excursion from the normalcy,
but that this is a glimpse of something real,
something possible that can actually happen.
Okay, so yeah.
So we get these glimpses of the more beautiful
world that our hearts know is possible, and
that our minds have a million reasons to doubt.
And I'm getting a little feeling of that here
on the Google campus, just having been here
for a few hours.
Like, there's something [pause] there's something
right about it.
Somewhere.
Like there's such a thing as the soul of Google.
There's something that exists kinda in this
incipient form that wants to be born, that
wants to happen.
It's kinda being carried here.
Maybe it was really obvious in the early days,
but it's-- and maybe sometimes it goes dormant
or sometimes it's harder to see, but it's
still kinda waiting there underneath.
I'm getting a sense that there's something
here also.
So [pause] there's a lot of different ways
I can take this, and this was supposed to
be about money, so I think maybe I will talk
a little bit about the source of the wrongness
that we experience in our lower moments.
I think is eternal and inevitable and just
the way things are.
And that maybe our intuitions that life is
supposed to be more beautiful were just immaturity,
and now we have to put up with the way things
are.
[pause]
I spent years trying to find, trying to figure
out, trying to understand.
A, Am I crazy? and B, if I'm not crazy, then
what is wrong here?
Why have we not fulfilled the promise of technology,
for example, to create a more beautiful world?
Futures have been promising us that for hundreds
of years.
We were--.
The invention of the steam engine was supposed
to usher in the age of mechanized comfort
and leisure.
Futurists were predicting that in 1790.
They were predicting it again and again and
again.
In 1984, Alvin Toffler said, "By the year
2000, the greatest problem facing society
will be what to do with all our leisure time."
And in a way, that's kinda true.
It's called unemployment.
[laughter] But somehow, it really hasn't come
to pass.
All along, we've chosen to consume more rather
than to work less with every new advanced
labor-saving technology.
The computer was supposed to do it, right?
Finally, that was the solution.
It'll do for mental drudgery what a machine
did for physical drudgery.
And it didn't happen.
[pause]
We're starting to get a little bit [pause]
cynical about the promise of technology.
In the social realm, too.
I was reading about how when the first railway
was established between Europe and India--
this was in the 19th century-- people were
predicting that this means the end of war.
There can absolutely be no more wars because
now people could go to India.
They could go to all these other countries
and they can see how other people live, and
they'll know that they're not really enemies,
they're not really different from me.
And so they'll be no more war.
This was shortly before the most horrific
century that humanity has ever experienced.
So today, people make kinda the same predictions
about the internet, that's it's going to create
oneness and a global mind, and it'll make
the effects, the consequences of our actions,
come back to us faster.
It'll tighten the circle of karma and make
it impossible to pretend that we are separate
from each other.
I'm a little skeptical about that, simply
because-- I mean, even if it is-- even if
the internet is the emergence of a global
mind, I mean, gee, my own mind has a lot of
shadows, a lot of unconscious pain.
Dark areas.
So anyway.
[several voice in background]
So I was looking for the origin of the wrongness.
And [pause] one of the stopping points, one
of the base camps, as I traced back and tried
to understand it, was money.
Because when you look into why anything horrible
is happening on earth, whatever your particular
area of passion is.
Look into, why are we cutting down the rainforests?
Why has the Aral Sea shrank by 90%?
Why are we spoiling the aquifers with fracking?
Why are we doing all these things?
Why are the deserts spreading?
Why are people doing this?
You ask a couple levels of why, and very soon,
you get to money.
Somebody's making money from it.
And that's puzzling that it should be this
way, because money is simply a social creation.
It's an agreement among people about what's
valuable.
It's an agreement that to use something as
a medium of exchange.
[woman's voice in background] It's not something
that exists in physical reality, but it's
something that we agree on.
So the question is: why have we agreed to
give value to the things that are destroying
the planet, making people all around the earth
miserable, and tearing apart society?
Why?
Why can't we make other agreements?
And certainly, a lot of people come up with
brilliant ideas about "Here's how the money
system should be."
Lots of smart people have lots of smart ideas.
And then they unveil them, hoping that their
self-evident brilliance and logic will sway
everybody to adopt them, but they never get
adopted.
The reason for that is that the money system
rests on a deeper foundation.
The problem isn't just money.
The problem is deeper than that.
And I would say that the origin of the wrongness--.
And I don't want to be sounding really negative
here, because one thing I learned in writing
my first book, The Ascent of Humanity, was
that everything that we see around us today
is part of a larger process.
But I won't get too metaphysical right now
about that.
But here's something that probably everybody
can sense in our current crisis, or I would
say, our current convergence of awful crises.
We can sense that the crisis, in some way,
goes all the way down to the bottom.
That whether it's the geological crisis, the
soil crisis, water crisis, energy crisis,
health crisis, educational crisis, money crisis,
that it's not a matter of making a few technical
tweaks to restore normality.
But that, in some sense, everything is at
stake.
That-- And what is everything?
[pause]
So let me just actually point out one of the
things that's part of the wrongness, which
would be this model right now, where I'm standing
up in front of everybody and you guys are
all facing me, looking at the back of each
other's heads, being a passive audience.
There's something not quite right about that.
This is a very unusual model, maybe only used
if a great storyteller or something came to
the tribe, a long time ago.
And it's kinda inconsistent with the network
world.
This is more a broadcast model.
I just wanted to acknowledge that.
I will continue doing that for a little while,
but I want to acknowledge that.
[laughter] And say, also, [pause] you know,
because everywhere I go, I meet such brilliant
people who could pretty much-- I'm sure half
of you in this room could be occupied in this
role, and saying something really enlightening.
So there's almost no reason, anymore, for
this model.
So anyway.
As an example of how all encompassing this
change is, we understand that the change that
is being invited by the monetary crisis--
which is dormant right now, but it could flare
up at any time.
It's just been postponed a little to the future.
The change offered by that is related somehow
to the movement toward less hierarchical structures
in corporate management.
But what is that connection?
And it's somehow related to the transformation
of a health-care system toward [man coughs]
all of the things we call holistic and alternative.
Somehow there's a connection here to recognize.
We recognize that somehow, everybody who's
engaged in that is somehow on the same team
with people who are exploring different ways
to mediate conflict or who are working in
permaculture or non-hierarchical modes of
cooperation.
There's something unifying all of these things.
And what is it?
Really what--.
The way I understand our current historical
moment is that we are in a transition in our
most basic mythology.
And the answers to the deepest questions a
human being can ask, such as "Who am I?",
"Why am I here?", "Where have I come from?",
[several voices in background] or "Where have
we come from as a species?" and "Where are
we going?" and "What's important and what's
valuable in life?"
Every culture has a different set of answers
to these questions.
And upon these answers, a civilization is
built.
When these answers begin to change, the structures
built on top of them become obsolete.
That's what's happening today.
The answers to those questions are changing,
but we still live among institutions, systems,
that are built on the old answers.
So just to give you a quick overview, the
old answer to the question "Who am I?"
That's the most basic one.
What is it to exist?
And the old answer is, "Ah!
What you are is a discrete, separate self,
a bubble of psychology, a Cartesian moat of
consciousness, inside of a flesh robot, in
an external universe, among other separate
individuals that are all separate from you."
And every field agreed on this, psychology,
religion.
Right, you're a separate soul encased in flesh.
I'm talking about the dominant institutions
of religion, not the esoteric corners.
Biology, you are a flesh robot basically programmed
by your genes to maximize reproductive self-interest.
You might recognize this as obsolete biology,
but it still dominates our institutions, for
example in the medical institution.
Physics, you're a collocation of particles
interacting according to deterministic forces.
Again, obsolete physics, but still very influential.
And so everyone agreed on what "self" is.
Separate.
And if you're separate in an external universe,
then everything outside of you is, at best,
indifferent to you, and, at worst, hostile
to you.
Everyone else is maximizing their own self-interest.
So you need to exercise control and master
forces, bring the hardest forces, and on the
species level, you need to become, as Descartes
said, "The lords and masters of nature."
So you might recognize that our money system
is an outgrowth, or a reflection, of this
basic mythology , which says, essentially,
"More for you is less for me."
It says we're all in competition with each
other.
And it enforces that and creates that, even
if you don't want to be competitive.
And that has to do with the way that money
is created and circulated in our system, starting
from how it originates as interest-bearing
debt, which is about a ten minute detour from
this story.
Maybe fifteen.
And I'm not going to quite go there yet.
I might end up going there.
[pause]
But that's what Sacred Economics is about.
Really what it's about is how to align money
with the new answers to these basic questions.
How to align money with what is becoming sacred
to us.
So the new answer, which is also a very ancient
answer, to "Who are you?" is that, "Well,
actually, you're not a separate self.
You're a connected self.
You are the sum total of all your relationships.
You are everything."
[pause] You might have experienced this sometime
when you look at somebody and you get that
feeling that this is the same being looking
out from different eyes.
Or when you read about something awful happening
in the world, like maybe you see that plume
of radiation, those graphics, coming from
Fukushima, and it's really painful what's
happening to the ocean, what's happening to
the dolphins, what's happening to the fish,
what's happening on this planet.
It hurts, you know.
Watching it hurt.
It hurts because it's actually happening to
you.
Because none of us are separate from any other
being.
And this contradicts our old logic, the logic
of separation, which really would say, "Well,
why should that matter?
Why should it matter if the rainforest in
[pause] Ecuador is being cut down for mining?
That's not going to affect me.
And even if it does, that's generations in
the future, and technology will come up with
some solution.
So why should I care?"
It just hurts, though.
And that's the sign of our connected being.
[pause]
So the new story of the self, you could say,
is the connected self.
And from that, [pause] from that understanding,
what is rational is different than what it
is for a separate self.
And the things that we all aspire to, we long
to be passionate about, from the heart, become
no longer crazy.
[pause] Do you understand that?
It's a different logic.
So today, though, we've inherited this way
of thinking that conflicts with the desires
of the heart.
And, that's also being institutionalized.
[pause] In our consciousness, we are already
moving toward I call it the age of reunion,
a culmination and turning of separation.
So our consciousness is moving on already,
and we're experiencing ourselves as connected
in various ways.
And we're wanting to live from that experience
of connection.
But we still live in a society that's full
of structures like the money system, for example,
that are built on separation, and that enforce
separation.
Which is why, so often, you might experience
conflict between what's the most profitable
and what you really yearn to do.
[pause] Which isn't to say that there are
not things that you yearn to do that will
bring you money.
But often, you feel that there's a compromise.
And why is it that, so often, that the choice
that doesn't feel as good is the choice where
there's more money?
Why is that?
It's because money is not yet aligned with
the understanding of connection.
[pause]
Another aspect of this transition on the species
level [pause] [several voices in background]
is--.
It's a transition in what you could call the
story of the people.
The answers to the questions "Why are we here
as a species?
What's the purpose of human beings on earth?
What kind of animal are we, anyway?"
The old answer was that we are here to conquer
nature, to rise above nature, to transcend
nature, to become "as lords and masters."
So, for example, we would say that we started
off as these naked and helpless animals having
only superstition instead of science, having
ritual instead of technology.
But thanks to our big brains, we transcended
that and progressively became the masters
of nature, harnessed natural forces, transcended
one limitation after another, changed the
course of rivers, built skyscrapers, off into
space, and conquered all of these diseases.
And some day, according to this story, our
conquest will be complete.
In physics, we will call it the theory of
everything.
That will enable us to manipulate the material
world without [inaudible].
In technology, it'll be whatever the latest
thing is.
Nanotechnology that will extend our control
down to the molecular level, and we'll go
off into space at the same time.
And, you know, live in this Jetsons' world.
And this is, again, there's a future that's
becoming obsolete.
And we're understanding that our domination
of nature has been an illusion the whole time,
that we're actually dependent on nature, that
we cannot rise above nature, and that there's
something that's really not working about
this vision of, "We're going to have synthetic
food and machine body parts and upload our
consciousness into computers and become immortal,
even transcend death."
Like, that feels a bit obsolete now.
We want to reconnect to nature, and we're
seeing the damage that our technological program
has caused.
And we understand, now.
It's not that we want to abandon technology,
but we want to turn it toward a different
purpose.
So I'm going to just, I'm going to have to
give a really abbreviated version of this.
[women laugh in background] But we're moving
toward a new story of people which is, you
could say, it's co-creative partnership and
love with the planet.
And I'd like,OK, so I've read about what money
would look like if it reflected these new
understandings.
And I'm not going to go into the details too
much, but some of the basic pieces include
internalizing costs.
And I'm not even sure how many of you are
economic geeks and things like that.
Some of you are and some of you aren't.
So really quick.
Internalizing external costs.
Creating a money system based on negative
interest, decaying money.
No longer creating interest-bearing debt.
Localization.
Reclaiming the commons.
Disintermediation.
Gift economics.
And a lot of this is happening on the internet
in various ways, especially gift economics.
And certainly, Google is part of that.
Because internet search and internet generally
facilitate ways that people can do things
for themselves and each other that used to
be mediated by money, but are no longer.
[pause] [voices in background]
I suppose I should probably give examples
of that.
Stuff like-- Nah, examples are tiring, and
you guys know about this stuff.
Disintermediation.
Does that ring a bell?
Right?
And collaborative creation.
And the dissemination of culture.
Stuff that people once paid for and don't
pay for anymore.
YouTube content, for example.
[pause] [people talking, bell dinging in background]
Let me think what the other questions were.
[pause] Really, what I want to speak to is
the sense that there is a "there" there.
[pause] And [pause] I wonder how long I'd
have to be quiet before people get uncomfortable.
[laughter] [pause] Okay. [pause] I'll talk
about--.
Actually, you know what I'm going to do?
I'm just going to pause and bring in a question
right now.
So someone, yeah.
Let's have a little Q&A.
>>Female #2: So what does "there" look like?
>>Eisenstein: What does "there" look like?
[sighs] Okay. [chuckles] All right.
So I look around, I study all kinds of things,
from permaculture to holistic medicine to
alternative economics, alternative currency
systems, and [clinking sound] also technology
things, collaborative [pause] co-creation,
cloud computing even.
And they all bear something in common, which
is that they're all coming from a new story
of people and a new story of itself.
They're all somehow partaking in an understanding
of our connectedness.
So, for example, traditional, technological
medicine is about command and control.
[woman coughs] It's about killing viruses,
killing bacteria, cutting out body parts,
controlling hormone levels.
And it works by controlling, posing our real
conquering nature.
Whereas a lot of the holistic modalities are
about liberating the body's self-healing mechanisms,
cooperating with the natural tendency toward
wholeness.
Or, say something like homeopathy, finding
a material substance in the universe that
mirrors the internal condition, and establishing
a communication with something in the universe.
Or something about some of these new water
technologies, which might be a little bit
"woowoo", but, you know, they're about how
water remembers everything that's happened
to it.
People don't quite understand how, but it's
this universal solvent, not just for materials,
but for every kind of influence.
And the body's made of water, and so.
Right, so it's all based on this interconnectedness.
[pause]
In, I'd say, you can map that onto what is
happening with the internet, too.
Which, [bell dings] on the one hand, it's
kinda like the very pinnacle of separation.
Can you imagine people being more separate
than everybody sitting in their own little
box, never actually touching another person,
never actually hearing another person's breath,
or only hearing a representation of it.
Like, on the one hand, it takes separation
to its extreme.
But on the other hand, it's creating connections
again.
And so it's part of the expansion of our separate
selves to include more and more and more other
beings.
[pause] Or even non-hierarchical ways of management.
Like, again, the old model is command and
control from the center.
The new model is emergence.
It's something that you cannot even predict
emerges from the interactions of the parts.
So that's a link.
So what does it look like?
Okay, let me just mention permaculture, too.
You know, where traditional agriculture is
that you impose a design onto this inert substrate
and standardize the inputs, standardize the
outputs, and eliminate as many variables as
possible.
Whereas permaculture seeks out what wants
to happen and cooperates with that.
So it's not a separate external agency.
So I'm trying to link all of these things
together.
So what looks like--.
You know, [pause] on the one hand [pause]--
I don't know if-- How many of you are familiar
with this idea of technological utopianism,
that says technology is going to deliver us
from all of our problems?
Of course, all our problems were created by
technology in the first place, so it's an
indicative process where you use technology
to fix the problems that were caused by previous
technology.
And, of course, we've always had all of the
technology that we need to live really beautifully
on this planet.
We're just not using it that way.
[pause] But that technology to live beautifully
on the planet, it exists.
And it's waiting for us to choose it.
So when I envision what could be, when I envision
a more beautiful world, it includes all of
these technologies that are just waiting in
the wings, like permaculture, like holistic
medicine, like clean energy technologies,
and social technologies as well.
Things like nonviolent communication, direct
democracy.
I almost hesitate to list them all because
they become almost a cliché.
[background noise of voices and thumps] And
they trigger this frustration and almost a
sense of helplessness because the solutions
have been around for decades, now, some of
them.
But the global--.
Like, climate change was becoming apparent
in 1972.
This was going to happen.
And the environmental crisis was apparent
in the '60s.
And we're still going full steam ahead.
Why is that?
[pause]
Someone ask me something else.
[pause] Yeah.
>>Male #3: Is there an overall definition
of what "there" is, encompass some sort of
base level of material plenty?
That's a sorta universal.
Yeah, and what if that material, at that base
level isn't something that can be sustainable
[inaudible], I don't get that.
>>Eisenstein: Yeah.
Yeah, this is a key issue: abundance.
Right?
[sighs] One of the important realizations
that I had is that our current scarcity is
not inherent in the world, but it's an artifact
of our system.
So, for example, there are several billion
people now who go to bed hungry.
A billion or two every night of people in
this world are going to bed hungry.
Is that because there's not enough food?
It's not.
It's because of the way food is distributed.
Half the world wastes enough to feed the other
half.
And even our agricultural system is incredibly
wasteful.
Like, people say sometimes, "Well, peak oil
is going to mean food crisis because you can't
possibly grow this much food without petrol
chemical influence."
But in fact, permaculture farming-- even just
normal organic agriculture, but especially
permaculture-- can produce way, way, way more
food per acre of cultivation, but less food
per unit of labor.
But fundamentally, we could grow easily twice
the amount of food that we do today in a way
that we generate soil and not mine the soil.
So our scarcity--.
That's one example of this artificial scarcity.
The prime example, of course, is the artificial
scarcity of money, because when it's created
as interest-bearing debt, in any moment in
time, there's always more debt than there
is money, because it's created as lending.
And people--.
I don't know how people understand exactly
how this works, but when a bank makes a loan,
it lends money into existence by doing that.
It doesn't transfer money from somewhere else,
but it creates, essentially, new money.
But it creates even more debt [woman coughs]
than it created money.
Because money's created as debt.
There's interest on that loan.
So because all money is created like this,
everybody, on some level, is always in competition
with each other for never enough money.
The only way that the debts can get paid is
if even more money is created as they come
due.
But that even more money comes with even more
debt.
And how does that get paid?
More money has to get created.
So there's never enough money, so we're always
in competition with each other.
And that competition drives us to create goods
and services that we sell to get that money
to pay the debts.
And it works okay as long as there's new goods
and services to constantly create.
But today, we're running into a limit to that.
The end of growth, you could call it.
And it's not only because the ecosphere can't
support more, you know, more clear cuts, more
fishing, more oil drilling, more fracking,
more everything, more discharge of waste.
It's not only because of that.
It's also because our society can't sustain
a whole lot more of converting relationships
into paid services.
>>Male #4: Do you think that's why it seems
like [inaudible] will get Farmville and games
where you actually pay money for things that
don't even exist?
[inaudible]
>>Eisenstein: Yeah.
Yeah.
[pause] See, Farmville is interesting.
I mean, that's another example of artificial
scarcity.
[chair scraping] When you buy these virtual
goods, it doesn't cost anything to make them.
Right?
The only way to have a price for them is to
make them artificially scarce.
The same thing is true of all virtual content,
all digital content.
Like it wouldn't cost Microsoft any more to
make a billion copies of Office than it costs
them to make one copy.
The marginal cost is zero.
Which, if you plug it into an economics equation,
it will drive the natural price point down
to zero, too.
So this is another good example of artificial
scarcity in the midst of fundamental abundance.
And this is a real--.
This is, I think, the biggest issue around
the economics of the internet.
How do you monetize something that is fundamentally
abundant?
[pause] Yes.
So basically, one thing the internet is showing
us and inducing in our consciousness is the
reality of abundance, because--.
And it's kinda like--.
It's doing it for digital goods, but it's
showing us something that's true more broadly,
too.
That we live on an incredibly abundant planet,
and that--.
Like, yeah, there is a physical limit, of
course, to how much oil [clicks in background]
we can burn or something like that, but fundamentally,
there is no reason to have the experience
of scarcity that most of the planet has.
Even millionaires have the experience of scarcity.
They did this study where they took several
hundred people with a net worth of $25 million
or more.
And they polled them: do you have financial
security?
And the majority said no.
Pretty much the same percentage said no as
people who make $50,000 a year.
They said no.
And they said, "Well, how much would you have
to have to really have financial security?"
And on average, they named a number 25% more
than their current net worth.
[pause]
The scarcity that we experience is a matter
of our perceptions.
And our perceptions are, in part, created
by the money system.
Because at bottom, in our money system, there
is never enough.
But this is changing, because the money system
is falling apart [elevator dings] and because
we're getting signals, experiences of abundance
from many corners.
And the internet would be one, where things
that we had to pay for a generation ago, we
don't have to pay for anymore.
Music, for example.
It may be somewhat illegal to download my
music from YouTube with one of those semi-official
programs, but you know, you don't have to
pay.
People don't spend nearly as much on "content",
as it's called.
And this is only accelerating, this trend.
We're having experiences.
That would be a technological experience of
abundance, but we're also having spiritual
experiences of abundance.
And they happen more and more as things fall
apart.
As the economy falls apart, people lose their
jobs.
As people's health falls apart, as people's
relationships fall apart.
And we enter this [pause] in between space,
this crisis space and then this in between
space, where all of the old belief systems
that carried us don't make sense anymore.
And we don't have, really, as much of a filter,
that much of a map.
And we get an experience, a more direct experience,
of reality.
I'm not sure if you know what I'm talking
about, but in various ways, the reality of
abundance--.
And this coexists with scarcity like we've
never seen it.
A whole society, the richest society in the
world, and everybody's anxious.
Not even with good reason.
And then you go to Third World countries,
and people are anxious for good reasons.
And strangely enough, often less anxious than
we are here.
[pause]
Yeah.
>>Male #5: So how do you move from a [inaudible]
type of commission to a, let's say [inaudible]type
of commission without doing a whole bunch
of-- [inaudible]Because you can make 400 bucks
out of 100, pretty much without any consequences,
without [inaudible].
>>Eisenstein: Right.
So how does a transition happen when there
are certain-- there's a certain of very, very
small minority of people who are profiting
off the way things are.
I don't think it happens without a systemic
collapse, really.
Which is usually how major change happens.
On a personal level, it's how it happens.
It's how it happens in my life.
I don't usually make any big changes until
I hit a wall.
Right?
I burn out or have a health crisis or a marital
crisis or a teenager crisis or an employment,
a money crisis.
Something happens and no matter how hard I've
tried to hold on, I can't do it anymore.
So I think that that has to happen on a systemic
level before we're ready for something really
new.
And so you mentioned Silvio Gesell, and practically
speaking, I think that what'll have to happen
is there'll have to be a major, major financial
breakdown, like almost happened in 2008.
And a need for massive bailouts.
And then the massive bailouts can be done
with negative interest currency.
But yeah.
It's going to take something pretty profound.
[pause] How profound?
That's an open question.
You know, it's kinda like asking, "How far
down does the alcoholic have to go before
he's hit bottom and stops drinking?"
For some people, they have to go all the way
to the bottom and be on their deathbed.
For others, it's not quite as--.
You know, maybe the first time they go to
jail, or when their wife runs off, or when
they--
>>Male #6: Some people just die.
>>Eisenstein: Yeah, and some people die.
And I like to think that on their deathbed,
they finally give up drinking.
[laughter] Or that moment of transition.
That couldn't happen to us.
I think that we have three chances to make
this transition.
The first chance was in the 1960s, and we
could have made it very smoothly then, because
that's when we first caught that glimpse of
the more beautiful world that is possible.
Hippies got it, you know.
They saw something real.
The second chance is right now.
And we can still make this transition.
But it's not going to be easy.
[elevator dings in background] It's going
to be bumpy.
But still, it doesn't require billions of
casualties, because even--.
And I say this [pause] knowing very well how
severe the crisis is, how bad it is, how many
undocumented nuclear waste burial sites [dings
in background] there are that are so secret
that not even the government knows where they
are.
And they're all just about to start leaking.
Stuff like that, you know.
Acidification of the oceans.
I mean, there's some really, really serious
problems that are barely talked about.
Or just the legacy of violence that is endemic
to our society.
One out of three children having suffered
abuse.
Or all the people in the Middle East who have
witnessed their loved ones dying by violence.
And how realistic is it to expect that they're
not going to want revenge?
On every level, though, the amount of pain
that's in this world is so great that, on
every level, social, ecological, that it's
according to our conventional understanding
of what's possible.
The transition is almost impossible.
But fortunately, a lot more is possible than
we recognize today.
So anyway, this is our second chance.
Our third chance will come in about 30 or
40 years if we don't take this chance.
And the third chance would accompany billions
of casualties, I think.
Even today, we kinda need a miracle.
But they exist.
One topic I've been looking into is reversing
desertification.
Like, there are people who have projects in
various deserts, even the Sahara, where they're
healing the land and growing things again
where there's been a desert for decades or
centuries.
Or there's technologies that neutralize radioactive
waste, too.
They don't have to cart it off somewhere and
bury anything for the future.
And there's technologies to heal pretty much
every curable disease you've ever heard of.
But they don't fit into the current medical
paradigm and they don't fit into the financial
model that's built around the medical paradigm.
[pause] [ coughs]
Excuse me.
Yeah.
Anyone have another question?
Yeah.
>>Male #7: Why is it so hard to [inaudible]?
>>Eisenstein: I'm sorry, why did what?
>>[Male #7]: To understand the idea of connectedness
and to experience it..
>>Eisenstein: Why is it so hard to experience
it.
Yeah.
I mean, we just [pause] we just internalized
so much of the logic of separation that it
takes a lot of time to develop new habits
of thought and new habits of being.
And, you know, we're embedded in a society
that's built on separation, that pulls us
back into separation.
Say you go to Burning Man or something like
that, or you have an experience of connection,
you know?
And you get it.
Right?
You understand, and it's so clear.
And maybe you even say, "Yeah, I'm going to
live without fear now.
I'm going to be generous and not worry about
getting enough for me because I know it will
come back to me because of the interconnected
nature of reality."
You might have that realization, but then
you go back into the quote "real world" that
contradicts that knowledge at every turn.
And that connected state is not a place that
anybody can stay in by themselves.
It's a place we can only stay in if we have
help from other people who stay there.
You could even say that enlightenment is a
group effort.
So you go back there by yourself, and it pulls
you back.
You take on the mindset of your environment.
You start thinking in a certain way wherever
you are.
Being in an office with cubicles, for example,
induces you to think in a certain way.
Being in a company with certain incentive
structures and certain expectations and ways
to do things-- You become a create of that,
inevitably.
Fortunately, all of those institutions and
structures that pull us back into that mindset
fall apart.
They don't feel quite as permanent anymore.
They don't feel quite as real anymore.
And we have this sense that, yeah, the world
is falling apart, so-- . And, at the same
time, we have more and more people who are
in various ways living from a connected state,
and so they can pull us the other way.
And we can help each other remember what's
true.
Does that answer?
Sorta.
>>Male #7: Yeah.
On a day to day level, how do you teach your
children to [inaudible]?
>>Eisenstein: On a day to day level, the best
thing to do is to give people an experience
that doesn't fit into the logic of separation.
For example, I don't know if you've experienced
receiving generosity, receiving forgiveness,
and it kinda softens, for me, it softens my
protective shell, and softens my suspicion.
And it makes me willing to be more generous
and more forgiving as well.
So whether it's my children or a complete
stranger, I'd like to say that to remember
to act in a way that doesn't fit into the
logic of separation.
[keys jingle]
Last night, I was at [inaudible] in Venice.
I don't know if any of you guys know him.
He's created this organization called ServiceSpace
and they have these Smile Cards.
And so the way you use the Smile Cards is
you go and you do some act of generosity or
you could go to, I don't know, McDonalds,
and pay for the next ten people.
And so instead of getting charged money, they
get a Smile Card that says basically, "A stranger
has paid for your meal.
Take this card, and when you do something
like this, pass the card on."
So you receive something like that, and if
you're living in a world where it's dog eat
dog, and everybody's out for themselves and
you're in a bubble of suspicion and "I'm going
to have to protect me and mine" and something
like that happens to you, that doesn't fit.
And it's basically an event that says, "The
universe isn't the way you thought it was."
[man coughs] So that's something that we can
all do for each other.
[pause] It could be anything.
It could even be a little bit of connection.
Like at the airport the other day, it was
as simple as--.
There are theses kiosks, you know, where you
buy the $9 sandwiches and stuff.
And there's some poor lady with a wooden expression
on her face, handing out, collecting people's
money, standing at this cash register, collecting
people's money all day.
So I just said, "Wow, you must be tired standing
here all day, huh?"
You know.
Just like that little--.
It's a tiny, tiny thing.
I'm not saying I did a great thing or anything.
But that interaction gives a mini experience
of connection that doesn't fit into normalcy.
So that's the kind of thing that we can do
all the time.
[pause]
Yeah.
>>Male #8: You just mentioned that we need
to be able to sustain this minimum, correct?
This theory that there are not people which
[inaudible] is feeling hypocritical of us[inaudible].
They're so critical of us [inaudible].
>>Eisenstein: Yeah, I think so.
And that's what I'm experiencing.
You know, for a long time, it was a very lonely
thing to live in a way that violated the rules
of the separate self.
So, for example, to major in something that
was not practical but that you were really
passionate about.
Or to quit a job that had a lot of security
and to take a leap into something that you
really care about that had no security, and
your parents were really worried about you.
You know.
Or--.
[pause] You know, I think anything that violated
the rule of maximizing your [someone sneezes]
financial self-interest seemed a little crazy.
But--.
And everybody around you, they weren't doing
that.
But today, it no longer seems so crazy, for
me, because there's so many people around
me who are doing the same thing, and thinking
in the same way.
And I do feel like it's reached critical mass,
actually.
But it's still a slow process.
There's still, it still needs to unfold more.
[pause] It's probably 2 ish now.
>>Female #3: Yeah.
>>Male #9: One more question?
>>Eisenstein: One more question?
Yeah.
>>Male #9: You said a little while ago that
the world was falling apart.
>>Eisenstein: Yeah.
>>Male #9: Evidently, it's been falling apart
since it began.
>>Eisenstein: Right.
Yeah, the world's falling apart.
Really, what's accurate to say is that it's
becoming impossible to pretend that it isn't
falling apart.
Like, up until recently, you could still pretend
that things were fine, with just a little
bit of self-deception.
You live in your little enclave, you know,
you read just the right mainstream media,
you know, and you categorize various environmental
problems as a little glitch in the machine
that's going to be fixed with a technical
solution.
And social problems, well, you know, the Great
Society of Lyndon Johnson is going to fix
that.
We're working on that, and better education.
You can still pretend that humanity or our
society is on the right track.
But today, the amount of self-delusion required
to do that is becoming unsupportable for more
and more people.
So it's a subjective thing, I guess, the world
falling apart.
All right.
Yes.
>>Presenter: So thank you.
I want to thank Charles for bringing some
of his wisdom and insights to the Google campus
today.
[applause]
