Charles Eisenstein [part 2]: Reintegrating our humanity into the tribe of all life on earth
Charles Eisenstein is a public speaker and author of the books Climate — A New Story, The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know is Possible, The Ascent of Humanity, and Sacred Economics.
His work covers a wide range of topics, including the history of human civilization, economics, spirituality, and the ecology movement. And some primary themes that he explores include anti-consumerism, interdependence, and how myth and narrative influence culture.
In this part two of our conversation (listen to part one in episode 263), Charles sheds light on how the responses of various governments to the coronavirus pandemic, such as lockdown, quarantine, surveillance and tracking, censorship of misinformation—justifiable or not—have been authoritarian, and why we should remain critical of these approaches even if we understood their immediate-term purpose; how our dominant use and acceptance of the meaning of certain words, such as 'privilege' to mostly mean financially well-off, cis-gendered, able-bodied, or white, feed into implicitly upholding the same value systems we're trying to dismantle; and more.
To start, get a glimpse below into the conversation between Charles and Green Dreamer Podcast's host, Kamea Chayne.
Musical feature: Trust The Sun by Fight for You by Raye Zaragoza
“... by the way that they narrate ‘privilege’ and they say, ‘okay, these are the privileged, these are the people for whom the system has worked...’
By even doing that, you are buying into a certain set of values, aspirations, and norms that are not actually true.”
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This is a conversation on Green Dreamer with Kamea Chayne, a podcast and multimedia journal illuminating our paths towards ecological regeneration, intersectional sustainability, and true abundance and wellness for all. This preview has been edited for clarity. Subscribe to Green Dreamer Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or any podcast app, and support Green Dreamer on Patreon so we can keep the show going and accessible to a wider audience!
On how institutional bias feeds into ‘media censorship’:
"Where is the funding to run clinical studies on something like The Buhner Protocol or something like Artemesia, which is being used all over Africa to treat COVID-19 just like they've used that to treat malaria and had it be suppressed by the pharmaceutical-industrial-complex? Or [where is the funding to run clinical studies] on the herbal formulas being used in China to very successfully prevent and treat COVID-19?
I'm not going to declare right now that these things are effective. All I'm asking is: where are the hundreds of millions of dollars of research into these to match the hundreds of millions or even billions in research into pharmaceuticals?
It's a matter of priorities. Once that research isn't happening, then of course there's not going to be authoritative information on it that will get censored by Facebook because it hasn't become part of the canon of acceptable official information. [The problem of censorship is] more subtle than outright censorship—it's an institutional bias where some things are funded and some aren't.
It's not because scientists are evil; it's because there's relatively no funding, publishing opportunities, or academic promotions available if you're studying things that can't be patented or can't be made into profitable genes or that don't fit into the paradigm of killing something as the solution of illness."
On excavating the dominant meaning of words that uphold the same value systems we're aiming to dismantle:
"Even leftists fall into this trap by the way that they narrate ‘privilege’ and they say, ‘okay, these are the privileged; these are the people for whom the system has worked.’
By even doing that, you are buying into a certain set of values, aspirations, and norms that are not actually true."
Final words of wisdom:
"Any naivety that you have, any innocence, anything daring to do something unrealistic is such a treasure.
According to what we've been taught, a truly healed world is impossible. But how much else have we been told that's impossible but it's actually possible?
That impulse—which is especially a characteristic of young people—to disbelieve the limitations that society has offered, that's a treasure.
That doesn't mean you won't make mistakes or that there aren't limitations—but they aren't what we've been told that they are."
