Articles by Charles Eisenstein
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In September 2001, in the wake of the 9/11 terror attacks, people gathered by the thousands across the country of Iran in spontaneous demonstrations and candlelight vigils to show...
Charles Eisenstein · 1,389 views
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I just heard someone say, “One war crime does not justify another.” My reflex as a peace advocate is to agree with that statement, but something gives me pause. It starts with a...
Charles Eisenstein · 1,267 views
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It Tethers the Masculine Powers to Life, Directs them Toward Love, and Keeps Them Grounded in Beauty.
Charles Eisenstein · 2,685 views
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I learned something important about myself at an event last month, the annual convergence of a men’s organization called the Sacred Sons. Though I was there as a speaker, I decided to...
Charles Eisenstein · 3,039 views
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John Perkins once told me a story of bringing a group to have an audience with the Dalai Lama. A woman asked him, “Is it important to pray for peace?” The Dalai Lama said, “Yes, praying...
Charles Eisenstein · 5,459 views
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I read a story the other day about a couple in Germany. They had enjoyed a harmonious marriage for more than 20 years until the time of Covid, when each adopted beliefs directly opposed...
Charles Eisenstein · 5,439 views
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Sometimes, when people reach out to me with requests for interviews or writing, they preface the request with, “I know you must be very busy ...”
Charles Eisenstein · 4,407 views
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(This essay is the final installment of a series. Part 1, Part 2, Part 3,
Charles Eisenstein · 5,318 views
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"We live in the time of the ballyhooed Great Reset, a time following when great destruction has cleared the way to build something different – or to lock in the gains of big...
Charles Eisenstein · 5,043 views
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Someone sent me a video on January 19th in which the host, claiming a secret source among the White Hat power faction, said that final plans are in motion to overthrow the criminal Deep...
Charles Eisenstein · 5,173 views
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Brazil’s Pantanal is the world’s largest tropical wetland, covering an area nearly the size of Britain. Only today, it isn’t so wet. After a summer of drought, catastrophic fires are...
Charles Eisenstein · 2,487 views
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My wife, Stella, recently shut down her account on the social-media-platform-that-must-not-be-named. “It feels like I’m walking away from a fight,” she said. “Almost everything I read...
Charles Eisenstein · 3,674 views
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"Love of life is the guide and motivator of ecological healing on Earth. Next comes learning how to put that love into action. How do we do that for that most alive of all places, the...
Charles Eisenstein · 6,895 views
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The other day I was amused to read a critique of The Coronation in which the author was absolutely certain that I am a closet conspiracy theorist. He was so persuasive that I myself...
Charles Eisenstein · 6,630 views
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“Covid-19 is like a rehab intervention that breaks the addictive hold of normality. To interrupt a habit is to make it visible; it is to turn it from a compulsion to a choice. When the...
Charles Eisenstein · 4,981 views
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Over the past decade I’ve watched with alarm the widening polarization of the body politic across Western societies (and to some extent globally). As commonly recognized, the public is...
Charles Eisenstein · 8,425 views
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Threats of global catastrophe won’t move people to action. Only the heart can inspire zeal.
Charles Eisenstein · 2,288 views
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Most people have passed through some kind of initiation in life. By that, I mean a crisis that defies what you knew and what you were. From the rubble of the ensuing collapse, a new self...
Charles Eisenstein · 9,182 views
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When we confront something we regard as “evil,” it poses a threat to the self-preservation of ego. We are so busy preserving our existence in the face of this threat that we cannot see...
Charles Eisenstein · 3,634 views
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The Third Wave and Charles Eisenstein · 3,238 views
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The pro-and anti-GMO positions will remain polarized until larger questions about the future of food production are addressed.
Charles Eisenstein · 5,302 views
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If something bites you, it is inside of your clothes.
—Swahili proverb
I have argued that change will come not from overcoming the powers-that-be, but through their transformation. I...
Charles Eisenstein · 3,971 views
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The way you see people is the way you treat them, and the way you treat them is what they become. —Goethe
Charles Eisenstein · 32,378 views
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When I graduated from high school in 1985, college was the unquestionable next step for an intelligent, middle-class or upper-middle class young person. I entered an elite school not out...
Charles Eisenstein · 9,755 views
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Last week I had two brushes with the mainstream of American culture and politics. The first was an appearance on a PBS television show, the Tavis Smiley show. As far as I can remember...
Charles Eisenstein · 15,613 views
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It is getting harder to keep a secret these days. The collective shadow of our society, once safely relegated to the dark basement of the unmentionable, is now exposed to daylight...
Charles Eisenstein · 4,134 views
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He who fights too long against dragons becomes a dragon himself; and if thou gaze too long into the abyss, the abyss will gaze into thee.
—Nietzsche
Charles Eisenstein · 39,758 views
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I am told by Native American friends active at Standing Rock that the elders are counseling the Water Protectors to undertake each action prayerfully and to stay off the warpath.
Charles Eisenstein · 20,544 views
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Normal is coming unhinged. For the past eight years it has been possible for most people (at least in the relatively privileged classes) to believe that society is sound, that the...
Charles Eisenstein · 25,025 views
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This is how a war begins
Charles Eisenstein · 25,283 views
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The other day I was speaking to a small audience at a music festival and thought to allude to Brexit to make a point. Some in the circle looked a bit mystified, so I asked, “Everyone...
Charles Eisenstein · 3,829 views
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This excerpt from The Ascent of Humanity by Charles Eisenstein looks at our relationship to technology, civilization, nature and our sense of self.
Charles Eisenstein · 6,187 views
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I recently attended a ceremony at the Tamera village in Portugal in which the officiant invoked “the healing of money.” Immediately a vivid image popped into my head of a man, vast and...
Charles Eisenstein · 3,166 views
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I received the following email from a young woman, a student at an elite law school. I want to quote it in full, because it cuts so deep to core issues so many change agents face.
Charles Eisenstein · 8,953 views
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The ruling institutions of this world are quite comfortable with a virus.
Charles Eisenstein · 3,545 views
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I’m dealing with massive cognitive dissonance right now. Multiple, contradictory beliefs and perceptions inhabit my mind, each compelling on its own terms. How do I choose?
Charles Eisenstein · 1,534 views
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Over the years, I’ve probably received more mail about Mutiny of the Soul than any other essay I’ve written. The idea of the article has been hugely validating for many readers: that...
Charles Eisenstein · 5,757 views
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I'd like to share an excerpt of the book I'm working on. It is from the beginning... (It is a first draft so be gentle!)
Charles Eisenstein · 2,472 views
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When I was in high school, I remember social banter consisting of a lot of subtle put-downs and one-upsmanship. The popular kids were generally not very nice, certainly not to us...
Charles Eisenstein · 1,686 views
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I'm in Paris now, preparing to speak tonight about climate change. It is a parallel venue, not mainstream, called Place 2 B, but even here I am afraid my message is going to be...
Charles Eisenstein · 3,702 views
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From the anthology Ecosexuality: When Nature Inspires the Arts of Love
I hesitate to start an essay with definitions as if I could compel you with force of logic to accept conclusions...
Charles Eisenstein · 2,443 views
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My new home of West Asheville is in the news. A local coffee shop, Waking Life Espresso, closed its doors after its owners Jared Rutledge and Jacob Owens were outed for hosting a...
Charles Eisenstein · 10,967 views
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I just spent several hours down a rabbit hole. The topic was the "electric universe," an unconventional cosmological theory that emphasizes electromagnetism rather than gravity as the...
Charles Eisenstein · 811 views
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Two years ago when he was 14, my son Matthew grew six inches. Last year he only grew two inches, and this year he has only grown half an inch. Should I be worried?
Charles Eisenstein · 1,302 views
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With the nation’s household debt burden at $11.85 trillion, even the most modest challenges to its legitimacy have revolutionary implications.
Charles Eisenstein · 30,003 views
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Perhaps we could look at acts of direct human-level compassion as complements to, not substitutes for, action on a social or political level.
Charles Eisenstein · 2,480 views
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This is a letter to my younger self - both the inner cynic and the idealist that secretly believes a more beautiful world is possible.
Charles Eisenstein · 90,908 views
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Not long ago, a Diné (Navajo) friend of mine, Lyla June Johnston, sent me a one-line email: “I am not going to Harvard… I am going to plant corn.”
Charles Eisenstein · 1,864 views
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Some things are beyond measure and beyond price. No amount of money is enough to compensate for the loss of the sacred.
Charles Eisenstein · 5,695 views
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A lot of people reacted to my comment on Facebook the other day that greed is more a symptom than a cause of our current system, with all its inequities. I’m asked, What is the cause of...
Charles Eisenstein · 75,993 views
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Many people have little trouble confessing to being hard on themselves, to being “my own worst critic” or to being a perfectionist. They are, after all, merely confessing to something...
Charles Eisenstein · 11,771 views
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A story that will change how you think about what kinds of change will *really* make a difference
Charles Eisenstein · 24,499 views
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Depression, anxiety, and fatigue are an essential part of a process of metamorphosis that is unfolding on the planet today, and highly significant for the light they shed on the...
Charles Eisenstein · 162,942 views
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Feedback from my lecture at the Green Party annual meeting has been trickling in, and it seems that the talk wasn’t as well-received as I thought at the time. The people who walked out...
Charles Eisenstein · 7,165 views
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Last weekend I decided I would get the kids outdoors for a little time in nature. The Susquehanna River was frozen over, with the most remarkable ice formations. Even though the water is...
Charles Eisenstein · 6,541 views
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Wherever I go and ask people what is missing from their lives, the most common answer (if they are not impoverished or seriously ill) is “community.” What happened to community, and why...
Charles Eisenstein · 4,208 views
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At a conference a couple weeks ago an activist who does work in Africa recounted an encounter she had with the minister of agriculture of a certain African country. The minister spoke...
Charles Eisenstein · 8,985 views
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Here is how to make a child bored: first and foremost, keep him indoors so that the infinitude of nature, its endless variation and chaotic messiness is replaced by a finite, orderly...
Charles Eisenstein · 52,749 views
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Here is one of those little things – tiny on the scale of the vast tragedies unfolding on Earth today – that got under my skin. A family living on wild land in Oregon in tipis, raising...
Charles Eisenstein · 4,533 views
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It is frightening, this transition between worlds, but it is also alluring. Have you ever gotten addicted to doom-and-gloom websites, logging on every day to read the latest evidence...
Charles Eisenstein · 11,832 views
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In the wake of terror attacks, politicians are fond of proclaiming, “We will not be intimidated.” By this they seem to mean that we won’t cower in fear, but will boldly root out the...
Charles Eisenstein · 11,176 views
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Charles Eisenstein has a radical idea: instead of greeting violence with the threat of punishment and more violence, let's seek understanding instead. Rather than dehumanize our enemies...
Charles Eisenstein · 4,838 views
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Focusing on minimizing a number hasn't worked that well so far. Maybe it's time to try a whole-systems approach.
Charles Eisenstein · 8,101 views
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Do you live in a developed nation or a developing nation? If your nation has an extensive system of roads, rail and airports, if it is fully electrified, if it is mostly urban and...
Charles Eisenstein · 4,501 views
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The economic and legal system rewards corporations that bulldoze, stripmine and burn. A new law against ecocide could halt this destruction.
Designer Vivienne Westwood expressed anguish...
Charles Eisenstein · 4,388 views
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Considerations such as 'what do you really care about' and 'who do you serve' should be drivers of sustainability, not profit.
Charles Eisenstein · 5,333 views
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Things are getting better and better and worse and worse faster and faster simultaneously.”
– Tom Atlee
Charles Eisenstein · 3,229 views
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Does the concept of a living planet uplift and inspire you, or is it a disturbing example of woo-woo nonsense that distracts us from practical, science-based policies?
Charles Eisenstein · 4,737 views
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Sometimes I feel nostalgic for the cultural mythology of my youth, a world in which there was nothing wrong with soda pop, in which the super Bowl was important, in which America was...
Charles Eisenstein · 45,078 views
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Why is the American public so unenthusiastic about bombing Syria? Certainly the case for war is weak and hypocritical
Charles Eisenstein · 3,272 views
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The war on germs is just one expression of a medical system based on control. Control, in turn, arises from our sense of self, that we are separate beings in an alien and indifferent...
Charles Eisenstein · 4,087 views
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"What is keeping us from thriving?" asks the new movie, Thrive. The answer it gives is "the global elite," the people who control the financial system that in turn controls everything...
Charles Eisenstein · 12,029 views
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Looking out upon the horrid ruin we seem to have made of the planet, in spite of the kind hearts and good intentions of the vast majority of human beings, it is hard to avoid the...
Charles Eisenstein · 28,489 views
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A new initiative is re-energising the Occupy movement. Called the Rolling Jubilee, it is a plan to use money from donations to buy distressed consumer debt from lenders at a marked down...
Charles Eisenstein · 7,751 views
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