Sacred Economics traces the history of money from ancient gift economies to modern capitalism, revealing how the money system has contributed to alienation, competition, and scarcity, destroyed community, and necessitated endless growth. Today, these trends have reached their extreme - but in the wake of their collapse, we may find a great opportunity to transition to a more connected, ecological, and sustainable way of being.

Can we have a different economy?

Charles Eisenstein begins this bold and well written book examining why innovation, labor saving devices, and all of the earth's bounty fail to deliver prosperity to most of the people. “After centuries of technological advances, why do we find ourselves working just as much as ever?” he asks, before observing: “For centuries, futurists have predicted an imminent age of leisure. Why has it never happened? The reason is that, at every opportunity, we have chosen to produce more rather than to work less. We have been helpless to choose otherwise.”

Will the work ever stop?

“When 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 slave—one whose actions are compelled by threat to survival. Perhaps the deepest indication of our slavery is the monetization of time.”

Money is created as interest bearing debt. When the interest rate is greater than zero, the debt always exceeds the available money. Servicing the resulting debt requires constant economic growth. Growing the economy requires transforming something that began as a gift from nature or the community into something that can be sold. Nature becomes transformed into commodities and monetized.

Debt Economy

The commons, including land, forests, fresh air, clean water, ocean fisheries, minerals, biodiversity, the genome, and the electromagnetic spectrum, all existed prior to human activities. There is no legitimate right to any private ownership claim to these natural resources. Yet these common assets are continually privatized and monetized to support economic growth. Public goods are privately claimed and sold. Corporations profit at the public’s expense.

Privatization of common assets

“Each tree cut down and made into paper, each idea captured and made into intellectual property, each child who uses video games instead of creating worlds of the imagination, each human relationship turned into a paid service, depletes a bit of the natural, cultural, spiritual, and social commons and converts it into money.”

His solution is an economic system that integrates these seven features:<ol><li>Negative-Interest Currency</li><li>Elimination of Economic Rents, and Compensation for Depletion of the Commons</li><li>Internalization of Social and Environmental Costs</li><li>Economic and Monetary Localization</li><li>The Social Dividend</li><li>Economic Degrowth</li><li>Gift Culture and P2P economics</li></ol>

The solution

“When you hear the phrase “rescue the financial system,” translate it in your mind into “keep the debts on the books.” They are trying to find a way for you (and debtor nations too) to keep paying and for the debt to keep growing.”

“A fundamental premise of this book is that human beings naturally desire to give. We are born into gratitude: the knowledge we have received and the desire to give in turn. Far from nudging reluctant people to give unto others against their lazy impulses, today’s economy pressures us to deny our innate generosity and channel our gifts instead toward the perpetuation of a system that serves almost no one.”

Sacred Economics traces the history of money from ancient gift economies to modern capitalism, revealing how the money system has contributed to alienation, competition, and scarcity, destroyed community, and necessitated endless growth. Today, these trends have reached their extreme - but in the wake of their collapse, we may find great opportunity to transition to a more connected, ecological, and sustainable way of being. This book is about how the money system will have to change - and is already changing - to embody this transition. A broadly integrated synthesis of theory, policy, and practice, Sacred Economics explores avant - garde concepts of the New Economics, including negative - interest currencies, local currencies, resource - based economics, gift economies, and the restoration of the commons. Author Charles Eisenstein also considers the personal dimensions of this transition, speaking to those concerned with ''right livelihood'' and how to live according to their ideals in a world seemingly ruled by money. Tapping into a rich lineage of conventional and unconventional economic thought, Sacred Economics presents a vision that is original yet commonsense, radical yet gentle, and increasingly relevant as the crises of our civilization deepen.

Sacred Economics

"I believe the self is, at least in part, a cleverly disguised deception that allows the social world in and allows us to be “overtaken” by the social world without our even noticing."

Trojan Horse Self

"Materialism in our culture has been growing over time, and this aspiration toward financial success for many of us has come at the cost of our social connections."

More Time Working And Less Time Socializing

"the self exists primarily as a conduit to let the social groups we are immersed in (that is, our family, our school, our country) supplement our natural impulses with socially derived impulses."

Nature Of The Self

"evolution is moving us ever closer to interdependent social living, where we maximize what we can do together in groups."

Harmonizing

"We believe these are our deeply personal private stock of beliefs, and that notion makes us work hard to defend them. It rarely dawns on us that others put them there. When we defend our beliefs, we are usually defending society’s beliefs."

Our Deeply Held Beliefs Are Not Ours

We are profoundly social creatures--more than we know. In Social, renowned psychologist Matthew Lieberman explores groundbreaking research in social neuroscience revealing that our need to connect with other people is even more fundamental, more basic, than our need for food or shelter. Because of this, our brain uses its spare time to learn about the social world--other people and our relation to them. It is believed that we must commit 10,000 hours to master a skill. According to Lieberman, each of us has spent 10,000 hours learning to make sense of people and groups by the time we are ten. Social argues that our need to reach out to and connect with others is a primary driver behind our behavior. We believe that pain and pleasure alone guide our actions. Yet, new research using fMRI--including a great deal of original research conducted by Lieberman and his UCLA lab--shows that our brains react to social pain and pleasure in much the same way as they do to physical pain and pleasure. Fortunately, the brain has evolved sophisticated mechanisms for securing our place in the social world. We have a unique ability to read other people’s minds, to figure out their hopes, fears, and motivations, allowing us to effectively coordinate our lives with one another. And our most private sense of who we are is intimately linked to the important people and groups in our lives. This wiring often leads us to restrain our selfish impulses for the greater good. These mechanisms lead to behavior that might seem irrational, but is really just the result of our deep social wiring and necessary for our success as a species. Based on the latest cutting edge research, the findings in Social have important real-world implications. Our schools and businesses, for example, attempt to minimalize social distractions. But this is exactly the wrong thing to do to encourage engagement and learning, and literally shuts down the social brain, leaving powerful neuro-cognitive resources untapped. The insights revealed in this pioneering book suggest ways to improve learning in schools, make the workplace more productive, and improve our overall well-being.

Social

La mode n'est ni morale ni amorale, mais elle est faite pour remonter le moral.

Plus on est différents plus on a de la particularité.                                                                                                                                                                   POV: C'est Dieu qui donne.

Bite-sized knowledge
to upgrade
your career

#social

IDEAS ABOUT #social

Sacred Economics

Social

It's time to

READ

LIKE

A PRO!

I don't care

Bite-sized knowledgeto upgradeyour career

#social

IDEAS ABOUT #social

Sacred Economics

Social

It's time to

READ

LIKE

A PRO!

I don't care

Bite-sized knowledge
to upgrade
your career