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“May you live in interesting times." A curse once assigned Chinese origin, now thought to be apocryphal, is deceptively mild until you realize you have no resistance to a novel, viral load of interestingness. We feel like we can’t blink, yet our eyelids are getting very...
Delicate Balance 3 min
Centered around an extensive interview with Jose “Pepe” Mujica, the former President of Uruguay who gained notoriety on the world stage as a rare politician: one that lives according to the ideas and principles he preaches, Delicate Balance is a contemplative essay on the...
Coronavirus Will Expose Capitalism Like Never Before 6 min
“Coronavirus casts a light on every single part of our society. We will see the best of humanity and the worst of Capitalism” - Kevin Ovenden
We must think, act and organize locally, while simultaneously cultivating a global vision and global solidarity.
Iowa’s Vision of a More Beautiful World, 10 Years After Passing a Green New Deal 8 min
What would America's heartland be like, 10 years after we pass a Green New Deal?
How to get from here to there in the next 10 years
"It’s all a question of story. We are in trouble just now because we are in between stories. The Old Story—the account of how the world came to be and how we fit into it—sustained us for a long time. It shaped our emotional attitudes, provided us with life purpose, energized...
If millions of Americans started driving electric cars with Federal tax breaks and an end to gasoline subsidies, American petroleum demand would plummet.
Charles Eisenstein - Why We Need Community To Live In the New Story 6 min
In this excerpt from LOVE SCHOOL, author and visionary Charles Eisenstein speaks to the importance of surrounding ourselves with a supportive community that can give us the courage we need to step into the unknown, into new ways of being.
Navigating Echo Chambers 10 min
The beliefs and stories that we hold are not the result of an independent choice by the neo-liberal separate self choosing from the marketplace of ideas. Belief is a collective function. The echo chamber effect can operate both ways. - Charles Eisenstein
The Goal of Life is Not to Survive It |  Charles Eisenstein 7 min
With climate change and biodiversity loss worsening every day, we're all asking ourselves: will humanity survive?
It’s time to make the profit-maximising, shareholder-controlled corporation obsolete.
The ‘design’ brief to redesign the human impact on Earth from predominantly exploitative and destructive to by and large regenerative and health-generating invites us to ask fundamental questions that define the story we tell about the world and our role in it. Innovating...
The Church Forests of Ethiopia: A Mystical Geography 8 min
Nearly all of Ethiopia’s original trees have disappeared, but small pockets of old-growth forest still surround Ethiopia’s churches, living arks of biodiversity amongst the brown grazing fields. In this film and essay, Jeremy Seifert and Fred Bahnson travel to Ethiopia to...
Beyond Sustainability: A Call for Regeneration | Sierra Robinson 12 min
Sierra Robinson is a seventeen-year-old farmer, homeschooler, and environmental activist from Vancouver Island, BC.
Some people are starting to talk about regenerative cultures as possible pathways towards a thriving future of people unfolding their unique potential within the context of the communities and regions they help to regenerate — cultures that are healthy, resilient and...
SCARS 14 min
Journey with us to Pelican Bay State Prison in California, to see how HUSTLE 2.0 is empowering incarcerated men through Entrepreneurship + Emotional Intelligence training.
Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming | Paul Hawken 33 min
The visionary goal of Project Drawdown, founded by Paul Hawken, is to actually reverse global warming by drawing carbon out of the atmosphere back down to pre-industrial levels. All the practices and technologies documented in Paul’s best-selling "Drawdown" book are already...
Films For Action's $5/mo+ supporters can watch all of the films below for free. Visit our Patreon page for details.
"Voting is a chess move, not a valentine. And here's the joy of being politically engaged all year round every year; you get to work with a whole lot of chess pieces and players and strategies and longterm visions, so you don't agonize over whether this little hop with a pawn...
The Living Planet View 17 min
"The overarching theme of Climate: A New Story, the book that I wrote, is really the living planet view of the world." - Charles Eisenstein
One Nation 31 min
The future of the political party is here. Welcome to the OneNation Party (USA). Our Purpose is...
I made my way from the dark side to the light. And I hope it wasn’t too late.
Action in the Anthropocene: The Inevitable Transition Requires We Go Beyond Activism 18 min
In the face of economic, social, and ecological breakdown, the inevitable transition is comming. And what it requires from us is beyond the realms of 'activism'.
We can create the more beautiful world we want for ourselves and future generations with a simple and powerful idea: "sharing"
The River of Vision - On the Works of Daniel Quinn, Author of Ishmael 55 min
Timothy Scott Bennett director of the film What A Way to Go: Life at the End of Empire and author of the novel All of The Above shares his thoughts on the works of Daniel Quinn, author of Ishmael, The Story of B, Beyond Civilization and other novels.
We face a perfect storm of environmental, social, technological, economic, geopolitical and other global stressors. These global stressors interact in unpredictable ways. The pace of future shocks is increasing. The prospect for civilizational collapse is real. We need to...
[…] have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and do try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to...
Envisioning The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know is Possible 8 min
"I use the phrase the more beautiful world our hearts know is possible because our minds think it's impossible." - Charles Eisenstein
Signs that Humanity is Returning to Loving a Living Earth 8 min
I see a lot of encouraging signs that civilization is returning to an understanding of a living Earth. - Charles Eisenstein
How we build a better world in the face of climate catastrophe and social collapse.
Running Back and Forth with a Fire Hose 7 min
The opioid addictions, the school shootings, the dronings, the prison industrial complex, the rising number of homeless, the one-crisis-after-another and for a while you might run with your fire hose, trying to put out one fire after another. But at some point you burn out...
Will We Have to "Make-Do with Less" to Sustain Life? 8 min
When we talk about sustainability, there's an implication there, that is present in the question "what is it that we want to sustain?" Read "Climate: A New Story" for free at CharlesEisenstein.org/books
Thirty years ago, a friend of mine published a book called 50 Simple Things You Can Do to Save The Earth. It described the huge environmental benefits that would result if everyone made some simple adjustments to their way of life. Six hundred thousand gallons of gas could be...
You Can't Evict An Idea - Occupy London On Film 71 min
You Can’t Evict An Idea reveals the strengths and weaknesses of leaderless activist groups and 100% consensus decision making. The challenges inherent in using disruptive protest to change the world are as relevant to the climate change protests today (such as Extinction...
Localism taps into a deep need for community and a sense of place. Nationalism, on the other hand, destroys our sense of interdependence with human-scale community and the living environment.
We must organize to replace existing structures of power with ones capable of coping with the crisis before us.
From cohousing and agroecology to fisheries and land trusts and open-source everything, people around the world are increasingly turning to “commoning as a way to emancipate themselves from a predatory market/state system.
As civilization faces an existential crisis, our leaders demonstrate their inability to respond. Theory of change shows that now is the time for radically new ideas to transform society before it’s too late.
What we are witnessing is not a passive geological event but extermination by capitalism.
Good food is key to our survival and well-being. Eating local food is a powerful solution-multiplier — it reduces our carbon footprint, pollution, and waste, while creating dignified livelihood opportunities, strengthening communities and local economies, and strengthening...
Planet Local Short Film Series - Part 1: Intro to the New Food Movement 56 min
Every person on earth needs food every day. Every day food is tended, harvested, transported, stored, and served up on our tables. In a very real sense, food cannot be separated from life itself. And so it has been said that changing the way we grow and eat food is one of the...
Planet Local Short Film Series - Part 2: Diverse Farming Systems 63 min
‘Use and value diversity’ is one of the ten core principles of permaculture — for good reason. Studies have shown that small, diversified farms can yield more than twice as much food per acre when compared to large monocultures. Crop diversity significantly contributes to...
Planet Local Short Film Series - Part 3: Local Food Webs, Exploring Systems of Distribution 53 min
When it comes to helping people and planet, the way we grow our food is important. But building a healthy “food web” — healthy connections between producers, retailers and consumers — is also key.
Planet Local Short Film Series - Part 4: Local Food Processors AKA Making Delicious Food 58 min
These days, it can be difficult to find processed foods that aren’t made by mega-corporations; foods that aren’t full of added sugars, genetically modified corn, and chemicals we would rather not put in our bodies; foods that weren’t made in factories that harm the...
Planet Local Short Film Series - Part 5: Challenges & Solutions 83 min
Small farms around the world may be thriving, but farmers, particularly those just starting out, face a lot of challenges. Accessing affordable land is a BIG one, along with finding start-up capital, and competing with traditional producers in the market. But so are things...
Planet Local Short Film Series - Part 6: Ecovillages & Networks for New Farmers 45 min
For young people not raised on the land, getting into farming can seem daunting. Even for people who have worked on farms before, it is easy to feel isolated and overwhelmed when it comes to starting a farm of one’s own.
The Land for Our Food 34 min
👎Industrial Agriculture:  - Destroys soil  - Produces tons of emissions  - Pollutes water  - Destroys biodiversity
An excerpt from a new book by Samuel Alexander and Rupert Read
Charles Eisenstein Full-length Interview from Living the Change 71 min
“Going around New Zealand making a film … like that's not gonna get you anywhere, that's irrational, impractical, unrealistic…”
Anthropocene: The Human Epoch 3 min
A stunning sensory experience and cinematic meditation on humanity’s massive reengineering of the planet, Anthropocene: The Human Epoch is a years-in-the-making feature documentary from the award-winning team behind Manufactured Landscapes (2006) and Watermark (2013) and...
Leading spiritual teacher warns that if people cannot save themselves from their own suffering, how can they be expected to worry about the plight of Mother Earth
How can we create a worldwide, permanent shift to regenerative culture in every sphere of life?
Love School 4 min
In the Oak-dotted countryside of Southern Portugal lies the Tamera Healing Biotope, one of Earth’s most radical social experiments in human futurism. Tamera began in the “free love” utopian movements of the 1960s’ and 70’s, building upon the insight that the liberation of...
Robots And AI: The Future Is Automated And Every Job Is At Risk 16 min
Robots are already changing jobs as an endless array of robots enter our everyday lives. From trucking to service work to high-end jobs like doctors and lawyers, this documentary explores how robotics and artificial intelligence are changing the workplace.
The Sustainable City 16 min
Fully Charged spent an amazing day at the Sustainable City, a housing development in Dubai with 3,500 people already living there and it's still not quite finished. This truly is a remarkable achievement, a stark lesson to building contractors the world over. It's not more...
Where is the clear image of a decolonized society we are to emulate? There isn’t one. Yet if we are to free ourselves, we need practical steps.
Charles Eisenstein: Unlearning For Change Agents - Full First Session 28 min
Hi everyone, I’m pleased to announce a new online short course I’ve created called Unlearning: For Change Agents.
Our way of being — the intentions, attitudes, and quality of the energy that we bring to an interaction — is more important than the particular words we choose to speak. The heart of Nonviolent Communication is not about speaking using a particular recipe. Rather it is about...
Green New Deal advocates in the United States should look to the Nordic countries for inspiration on how to overcome the 1 percent and address climate change.
Successful social movements combine resistance to injustice with the affirmation of alternatives.
In the face of climate breakdown and ecological overshoot, alluring promises of “green growth” are no more than magical thinking. We need to restructure the fundamentals of our global cultural/economic system to cultivate an “ecological civilization”: one that prioritizes the...
Thanks to the filmmakers we've partnered with, our $5/mo+ supporters can instantly watch the 12 pay-per-view films below for free, and we plan to add more to this support tier over time. Check out the video below to watch the trailers for 5 of the 12 films back-to-back.
A Message From the Future With Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez 8 min
What if we actually pulled off a Green New Deal? What would the future look like? The Intercept presents a film narrated by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and illustrated by Molly Crabapple. Set a couple of decades from now, the film is a flat-out rejection of the idea that a...
Facing oncoming climate disaster, some argue for ‘Deep Adaptation.’ What we really need is ‘Deep Transformation.’
Sustainability: Beyond Political Categorization - Peter Joseph, ZDay 2019 31 min
This presentation addresses the problem of communication, categorical associations, the rise of anti-intellectualism and other issues related to discussions surrounding social progress. It works to address the tendency to view all ideas as ideologies, as if the foundation of...
Robert Reich: A Bold New Idea to Boost Wages 5 min
Robert Reich explains how expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit would boost wages for millions of working Americans.
The growth of white supremacy and fascism has been noticeable in a number of countries lately, prompting the question: What can we learn from each other? Each country might find “best practices” elsewhere that could be applied at home, in addition to learning from its own...
It’s very clear that conservatives have one plan for dealing with the popularity of the Green New Deal: scaring the hell out of people.
Douglas Rushkoff's just released book "Team Human" is a passionately argued manifesto "for human dignity and prosperity in a digital age." Released this week, the manifesto's 100 points outline the many reasons and ways to"“reassert the human agenda." In true Shareable style...
Unist'ot'en and 150 Years of Resistance 3 min
150 years ago, the architects of Canadian confederation dreamed of a Canada united from coast to coast. They dreamed, also, of unfettered access to Indigenous lands, of the elimination of the “Indian problem” standing in the way of a white settler future.
"Either we choose to go on as a civilization or we don't. That is as black or white as it gets. There are no grey areas when it comes to survival."
I have not found a word that captures the exact line that I am looking for. Commitment may be a bit too strong, and tends to connote “should,” thus invoking the non-choiceful energy of obligation and duty. “Intention” is not strong enough, in my mind, to carry the unwavering...
The Problem with Wokeness | Ayishat Akanbi 5 min
Has wokeness replaced compassion with moral superiority?
How to Use Personal, Inner Development to Build Strong Democracies | Tomas Björkman 19 min
Tomas Björkman is the author of three books: The Market Myth (2016), Världen vi skapar (eng. The World we Create) (2017) and, together with Lene Andersen, The Nordic Secret (2017).
“…we lack an overarching narrative to connect the many smaller ones: a powerful ‘meta-narrative’ to serve as a new foundation for our shared symbol world that we are all co-authors of. This book has been written in search of such a narrative.” — Tomas Bjorkman, The World We...
Or Whatever Number You Choose
To address the dramatic increase in mental and emotional distress in the U.S., we must move beyond a focus on the individual and think of well-being as a social issue.
Ted Franklin argues that climate activists must seize the time and get to work on the Green New Deal proposal.
A Force More Powerful: A Century of Nonviolent Conflict 154 min
A Force More Powerful is a documentary series on one of the 20th century’s most important and least-known stories: how nonviolent power overcame oppression and authoritarian rule.  It includes six cases of movements, and each case is approximately 30 minutes long.
As the Brexit negotiations wrap up and Theresa May’s deal is lambasted by Remainers and Leavers alike, it’s still far from clear what the future holds for the United Kingdom. On March 29 2019, it is due to leave the European Union.
Our food system is linked to an economic system that is fundamentally biased against what’s good for people and the planet.
[Note: This essay was just published in the Fall 2019 theology journal, "Oneing," by Fr. Richard Rohr and the Center for Action and Contemplation. To order a copy, visit: www.cac.org ]
An emergency plan to meet the climate emergency
INTRODUCTION TO JUST TRANSITION“Indigenous prophecy meets scientific prediction. What we have known and believed, you also now know: The Earth is out of balance. The plants are disappearing, the animals are dying, and the very weather – rain, wind, fire itself – reacts...
First, you have to admit that you have a problem . . . Hi there. If you are here, it is probably because you have come to the conclusion that our political system is no longer “fixable” by ordinary means and that some sort of deep structural changes need to be made. If you...
My headline is provocative, so let me quickly explain, starting with a huge claim about what’s unique about our world in this moment. Then I ask, What, right now, is most required of our species? Our era has been dubbed the Anthropocene because for the first time we humans...
I want to be a member of a thriving and diverse social movement, not a cult or a religion.
If success or failure of this planet and of human beings depended on how I am and what I do […] HOW WOULD I BE? WHAT WOULD I DO? — R. Buckminster Fuller We cannot individually comprehend the range, depth and detail of the consequences we are collectively generating for...
In response to my recent newsletter, which I named “Tenderness, Vulnerability, and Mourning as a Response to Patriarchy”, I received two comments from men that led me to choose to write this piece. In two very different ways they pointed me to the reality that the word...
Ecovillage Pioneers: A Journey Towards Low-Impact Living 49 min
Tony Wrench of Wales had a natural building that radically challenged and altered the government’s policy on low impact housing. This paved the way for Lammas - the UK’s first planned ecovillage, on brilliant display in this film.
Future Dreaming 54 min
Future Dreaming is a remarkable documentary that will challenge the way you think about humanity. The film explores the narratives that drive our economic, social and political thinking and offers a new way of understanding the Human Condition.
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 is born into a new world.
Voices of Transition 65 min
This inspirational film presents innovative and very concrete solutions to the food security challenges of our crisis-ridden age. Its powerful images showcase community-led agriculture in Cuba, ingenious woodland farming methods in France and the influential Transition...
Movement, perception, thinking, effortless achievement and healing are inherent to life—they happen by themselves. When we observe children learning to walk or speak, ecosystems regenerating themselves, or animals self-organizing, we notice there’s a masterful way of...
Precisely 50 years ago, the international anti-imperialistic students’ movement culminated in the uprisings in France. At that time, Dieter Duhm, a psychoanalyst and sociologist, was a spokesman of the “new left” in the German students’ movement and coined the slogan...
We Have a Choice to Make. Growth or Life? 3 min
Every day, we are told that global economic growth will save us. But think about it: How is it possible to have infinite growth on a finite planet? #GrowthOrLife
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