Are you going to divest in the banks and pension funds? Plenty of people are willing to invest in stock of those companies. You can argue that when a lot of people divest, it makes the stock price artificially low, which makes their price-to-earnings ratio more favorable, which makes it a better investment for the people who don't give a damn - - and is it really going to change corporate behavior? It begins to create a climate of antagonistic opinion, the result might be that the corporate executives will retreat even more into their own selfjustifying narratives.
Charles EisensteinNo one's ever completely broken. It's just a matter of how much has to fall apart before the ember of life is exposed to air.
Charles EisensteinIt's not like activist work is a nice add-on to what's really important, the spiritual work. The two are inseparable and it goes both ways. Many people are hardcore activists for decades, and they encounter burnout, futility, or a feeling of imbalance. Sometimes they need to go so far as to drop their activism and go on a spiritual journey. They're realizing that all the stuff they're trying to change in the world isn't just out there in the world. It's in them, too. And as long as they're blind to what's in them, they're going to continually re-create it in all that they do.
Charles EisensteinWe can't change the fossil fuel companies' behavior in isolation from the rest of the industrial system. As long as they have customers, they're going to continue to operate, whether or not we divest of their stock. However, divesting might be helpful in terms of disrupting the story that what these companies do is perfectly okay. This situation differs from apartheid in a key regard though: racial equality in South Africa was no threat whatsoever to capitalism as we know it. Ending the fossil fuel era is a much deeper change.
Charles EisensteinWhen both sides of a controversy revel in the defeat and humiliation of the other side, in fact they are on the same side: the side of war.
Charles Eisenstein