So much of our politics is stuck in patterns of response that aren't working. When student performance is declining in schools, we implement more controls, more testing, more "accountability," more rigor. We apply even more of those things, from security systems to control of students' behavior through pharmaceutical drugs. That's a situation in which doing is only making things worse. You may have to go through a phase of de-programming, letting go of old habits, coming to stillness, before you can even see what the pattern of action was, and what alternatives there might be.
Charles EisensteinProperty is, after all, a social convention, an agreement about someone's exclusive right to use a thing in specified ways. However, we seem to have forgotten this. We seem to think that property belongs to us in some essential way, that it is of us. We seem to think that our property is part of ourselves, and that by owning it we therefore make ourselves more, larger, greater.
Charles EisensteinIs it too much to ask, to live in a world where our human gifts go toward the benefit of all? Where our daily activities contribute to the healing of the biosphere and the well-being of other people?
Charles EisensteinEach person you interact with, is an entire universe unto themselves, a Divine Being, unspeakabley precious.
Charles EisensteinAre 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 EisensteinWhen everything is subject to money, then the scarcity of money makes everything scarce, including the basis of human life and happiness. Such is the life of the slaveโone whose actions are compelled by threat to survival. Perhaps the deepest indication of our slavery is the monetization of time.
Charles Eisenstein