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Greed is not a fundamental aspect of human nature. Greed is a consequence of scarcity.
If you and I are living in an incredible abundance, such as used to exist 200 years ago – the fish were so thick one the water that it looked like you could walk across the rivers.
Under those conditions greed is ridiculous. If we’re sitting among piles of apples that have fallen on the ground, it would be ridiculous for me to gather them all to myself and, “You’re not going to get my pile,” when there’s other piles sitting all over the place.
If you do not have a perception of scarcity, then greed is a foreign emotion. What we’ve done is we’ve created scarcity. The money system creates artificial scarcity where there need be none.
It’s an abstraction. It’s bits in computers, but we associate it, we use it to exchange things that do come from nature. If you use something that’s unnatural and use it to buy and sell things that are natural, then you’re going to have a problem if the unnatural part expands exponentially and forces the natural part to expand exponentially, too. We’ve got a problem.
The economy, at least a healthy economy, shouldn’t be thought of as a separate entity from the natural ecology but as an extension of the ecology. What do we have to do to make an economy operate according to ecological principles?
The main principle is waste is food. There’s no externalities. You don’t start with raw materials and end up with toxic waste. Everything that’s produced, like the manure of a cow is food for the worms. The manure of the worms is food for the soil organisms, and that’s food for the grass, and that’s food for the cows. It’s a closed loop, a circle of the gift.
That’s another reason why I like the decaying currencies is because they obey natures law of return. They decay and then can be reborn in a different form. The challenge today is how to recreate the gift economies of yore in the context of a mass society.
Sacred economy is an economy in which everybody is an artist and in which everybody’s gifts are applied toward a beautiful purpose, a purpose that’s beautiful to them.
In the future, career counselors, they won’t say, “Okay, so you have these gifts. How can you use these to make a living? How can you commercialize these? How can you make money from these?” The career counselor will say, “What would you like to give to the world? What do you do that feels good?”
Collectively, we will reorient our thinking to, “What can we, as human beings, create that’s beautiful to us?” Beauty will become the new motivating program instead of security or survival or domination. That’s what our divine gifts are for. We’re supposed to look upon our works and say, “That’s good.”
Charles Eisenstein is an American public speaker and author. His work covers a wide range of topics, including the history of human civilization, economics, spirituality, and the ecology movement. Key themes explored include anti-consumerism, interdependence, and how myth and narrative influence culture. According to Eisenstein, global culture is immersed in a destructive “story of separation”, and one of the main goals of his work is to present an alternative “story of interbeing”. Much of his work draws on ideas from Eastern philosophy and the spiritual teachings of various indigenous peoples. Eisenstein has been involved in the Occupy, New Economy, and permaculture movements. His work has also been popular with countercultural and New Age audiences. An advocate of the gift economy, he makes much of his work available for free on his website.
“That is such a beautiful way to look at the economy.”
“Thank you Sustainable Human. Your videos raise morale. Please keep posting them.”
“‘What do I do that feels good?’ This makes me take a breath on and the tears spring from my eyes! Truth! Beauty is the new motivating program. I claim this now.”
“Love this way of thinking. It’s plan to see that as humanity continues to create more abundance competition for resources will fade out and our current systems will become obsolete. Competition will be replaced by collaboration and people will start to want to give more than what they take. As this happens, there will be a paradigm shift in the way humanity interacts and thinks. Humanity has never had more abundance than we have today.”
Greed is not a fundamental aspect of human nature. Greed is a consequence of scarcity.
If you and I are living in an incredible abundance, such as used to exist 200 years ago – the fish were so thick one the water that it looked like you could walk across the rivers.
Under those conditions greed is ridiculous. If we’re sitting among piles of apples that have fallen on the ground, it would be ridiculous for me to gather them all to myself and, “You’re not going to get my pile,” when there’s other piles sitting all over the place.
If you do not have a perception of scarcity, then greed is a foreign emotion. What we’ve done is we’ve created scarcity. The money system creates artificial scarcity where there need be none.
It’s an abstraction. It’s bits in computers, but we associate it, we use it to exchange things that do come from nature. If you use something that’s unnatural and use it to buy and sell things that are natural, then you’re going to have a problem if the unnatural part expands exponentially and forces the natural part to expand exponentially, too. We’ve got a problem.
The economy, at least a healthy economy, shouldn’t be thought of as a separate entity from the natural ecology but as an extension of the ecology. What do we have to do to make an economy operate according to ecological principles?
The main principle is waste is food. There’s no externalities. You don’t start with raw materials and end up with toxic waste. Everything that’s produced, like the manure of a cow is food for the worms. The manure of the worms is food for the soil organisms, and that’s food for the grass, and that’s food for the cows. It’s a closed loop, a circle of the gift.
That’s another reason why I like the decaying currencies is because they obey natures law of return. They decay and then can be reborn in a different form. The challenge today is how to recreate the gift economies of yore in the context of a mass society.
Sacred economy is an economy in which everybody is an artist and in which everybody’s gifts are applied toward a beautiful purpose, a purpose that’s beautiful to them.
In the future, career counselors, they won’t say, “Okay, so you have these gifts. How can you use these to make a living? How can you commercialize these? How can you make money from these?” The career counselor will say, “What would you like to give to the world? What do you do that feels good?”
Collectively, we will reorient our thinking to, “What can we, as human beings, create that’s beautiful to us?” Beauty will become the new motivating program instead of security or survival or domination. That’s what our divine gifts are for. We’re supposed to look upon our works and say, “That’s good.”
Charles Eisenstein is an American public speaker and author. His work covers a wide range of topics, including the history of human civilization, economics, spirituality, and the ecology movement. Key themes explored include anti-consumerism, interdependence, and how myth and narrative influence culture. According to Eisenstein, global culture is immersed in a destructive “story of separation”, and one of the main goals of his work is to present an alternative “story of interbeing”. Much of his work draws on ideas from Eastern philosophy and the spiritual teachings of various indigenous peoples. Eisenstein has been involved in the Occupy, New Economy, and permaculture movements. His work has also been popular with countercultural and New Age audiences. An advocate of the gift economy, he makes much of his work available for free on his website.
“That is such a beautiful way to look at the economy.”
“Thank you Sustainable Human. Your videos raise morale. Please keep posting them.”
“‘What do I do that feels good?’ This makes me take a breath on and the tears spring from my eyes! Truth! Beauty is the new motivating program. I claim this now.”
“Love this way of thinking. It’s plan to see that as humanity continues to create more abundance competition for resources will fade out and our current systems will become obsolete. Competition will be replaced by collaboration and people will start to want to give more than what they take. As this happens, there will be a paradigm shift in the way humanity interacts and thinks. Humanity has never had more abundance than we have today.”
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