Charles Eisenstein interview

Here Eisenstein talks about the Sacred earth, Climate change and more...

Some time ago in 2007 I did a review for the Journal of the Society for Scientific Exploration of Eisenstein's magnum opus of the time, The Ascent of Humanity: The Age of Separation, the Age of Reunion, and the Convergence of Crises that Is Birthing the Transition. This tome exhaustively and lengthily expounded his view of the nature of humanity and its transformative future.

As I explained in my extensive review, I didn't like Eisenstein's book - I considered it at once deeply naive, and also fundamentally wrong about the nature of man in not recognizing evidence for the reality of spirit and mind existing apart from being an epiphenomenon of matter. In my opinion he was an unrealistic visionary. Following are some excerpts of just some of the criticisms from the review, in JSSE Vol 21 No. 3 (2007) pp. 643-648. The review is on the JSSE website at https://www.scientificexploration.org/jo...ber-3-2007.

" ....the first and most important problem (of this book) is the foundational philosophy of this work and which underlies much of the thought therein. I believe that this is seriously flawed. Because of the importance of this issue to the basic message of this book, I will devote much of the space of the review to this area. This is the assumption that dualism, the notion that both spirit and matter separately exist and have fundamentally different natures, is dead.
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This book proposes instead a philosophy of materialistic emergence. A quote from chapter 3 expresses this quite clearly: "This book proposes a conception of self that is not a discrete, separate entity but an emergent property of complex interactions encompassing not just the brain but the entire body and the environment too, both physical and social." Another quote, from Chapter 6: "But my dear reader, when I say "life is more than a collection of enzymes, fatty acids. . ." please don't think I am proposing to add yet one more ingredient, an immaterial spirit to inhabit and animate the body. The truth is far more marvelous. I do not believe in an immaterial spirit, but I do believe in a material spirit! Spirit is not separate from matter, it is an emergent property of matter."
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The negative human qualities and behaviors of cruelty, selfishness, greed, etc. are claimed to not be part of inherent human nature (and therefore do not need to be prevented through early upbringing and fear of punishment). Rather, these are due to ". . . human nature denied, human nature contorted by our misconception of who we are". This "human nature denied" is supposedly a sort of inborne natural goodness, which Eisenstein has decided we "really are". It seems to me that this ignores a mass of observations and other data that show to the contrary that these negative behaviors, thoughts and emotions are a natural result of man's animal heritage, and that children do in fact need to be educated starting at early age into having things like conscience and empathy.
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Another problem is that I believe this work idealizes the non-technological and pre-agricultural past. The "separation from nature" is viewed as fundamentally misguided and leading to much of the modern dilemma. Hunter-gatherer societies seem to be idealized for their supposed freedom from any form of slavery to the necessities of survival.
Of course there were some primitive societies where living was generally easy, but I do not think this applied to even the majority. I believe that in reality, before modem technology and medicine inevitably separated us from nature in many ways, the "human condition" or life in general was generally short, physically miserable and brutish. This especially contrasts with modem life in "developed" countries of the Western world. This modern way of life may be shallow, anxiety-ridden, unsustainable and have many other problems, but it is still preferable to preindustrial and preagricultural conditions.
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Lastly, Eisenstein apparently hopes that a near future collapse of world technological civilization will bring on a major transformation in world consciousness. This is similar to messianic and apocalyptic views often expounded by various New Age metaphysical movements. It is an idealistic assumption that ignores the realities of human (animal) nature, not realizing that necessity, the pressures for survival, have a strong tendency naturally to reduce man to a "survival of the fittest" law of the jungle. In order to survive, those with superior strength and intelligence will almost certainly subjugate or exterminate the weaker survivors. In a general social collapse there is little possibility for a transformation of consciousness.

I doubt that Eisenstein has changed his mind on any of the important tenets of his book.

Unfortunately, the review download is behind a paywall. It only works for SSE logged-in members. I'll furnish another few quotes from the review:

The conception of man and the world unfolded in this book is assumed to be an inspiring vision. This quote from Chapter 7 seems to encapsulate this: "That force (life) is the immanent purpose of an intelligent universe seeking always higher and higher levels of fulfillment. It is the emergent order that arises from organic complexity and that is fulfilled only in relationship to the Other, the environment, the planet, the cosmos." That this is actually inspiring is questionable because its system of thought does not deal with the question of whether such a wonderful understanding of human evolution really has any relevance to individual human beings in their difficult lives. It would be most relevant if it supplied something to assuage human existential fears of annihilation, if it would say something about the ancient theological problem of suffering.

But it doesn't seem to. This book seems to go along with modern scientific materialism to reject any notion of a spiritual metaphysical reality, and with it any possibility of human personal survival of death and of the reality of human notions of love, good, etc. Perhaps the author would contend that these very concerns are symptoms of the ancient separation from nature.
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Further, the work begs the question of where this incredible manifestation of intelligence came from in the first place by deliberately refusing to implicate either a supernatural Source behind the Big Bang or any other concept of origins. Intelligence is simply implicit in the universe, no need to explain why or how. This is an incompleteness, a loose end left dangling - accepting as real the incredible (apparent) design and overall purpose of life and the universe, but not answering the first question that common sense would ask. This is: since in our experience complicated designed things with purpose are always the product of intelligence (namely our own), what is the intelligent source behind nature that would make sense of a human process of evolutionary transformation? If man is "meant" to progress to a new stage of consciousness and society, what is the teleological cause behind this? How can it be simply the matter and energy of the physical universe? 
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Eisenstein states in his introduction, "More than anything, The Ascent of Humanity is about how to create the more beautiful world our hearts tell us is possible. I have long found most prescriptions for "what you can do" to reverse humanity's trajectory of ruin quite empty. . . ..This book offers an entirely different approach that begins with the reconception of our very selves." I agree with his opinion of the existing literature, but unfortunately, for the reasons explained in this review, I find his new concept also sadly wanting. I greatly respect his idealism and attempt to find a better vision, but a "true believer" I am not. I too feel that a more beautiful world is at least possible, but I do not think we really know anywhere near enough to propound a valid synthesis of this scope.