 It's my pleasure and my honor to introduce Charles Eisenstein. Well, thank you everybody for showing up here for your trust in spending a couple of hours of your evening. Yeah, I was listening very attentively to Josie's story. And the words like speaking, she said something like speaking truths, like they're truer than anything you've ever heard before. And I'm like, oh gosh, but I think it's something fast here. Because I thought instead, maybe I can do something else, you know, like maybe a little bit of comedy improv or something like that. Which actually, before I get started, let me do share an idea I had with you. I mean like the next five years, that's the topic of tonight, it doesn't have to be grim, you know. Like there are incredible inventions that are transforming life. For example, artificial intelligence. So, you know, maybe many of you are familiar with the tedium of a lot of work in academia. And in fact, basically the idea that we're going to replace tedious, degrading and laborious work with machines to do that part so that we can all do the fun part. Like this is a very old idea. Hundreds of years ago, people were proclaiming that the steam engine or electricity or robotics would render work obsolete and usher us into a glorious future of leisure. And so AI has that promise too. So I know like a lot, I was very briefly sort of kind of in academia. And like reading all those papers, you know, I mean, gosh, it would have been so tempting if it existed to just feed it into chat GPT. And it just, it makes like a little summary or maybe even like, you know, if it has enough examples, it could do the grading by itself. Like, so, so like that's great, you know, it saves teachers so much work. And at the same time, it can save students a lot of work too. They're already using it to write papers, you know, like please write me a paper on such and such, right? So I'm like, wow, hey, I could do both parts. Education could be fully automated. Yeah. So yeah. Yeah, so it's not all dark, you know, and I want to, we all laughed at that. And that is significant because if there were truly no hope, then we wouldn't be laughing. There's some part of us that recognizes a possibility that justifies the laughter. Like it's not so serious, really. And of course, humor can also be a way to deflect and distract from what's real and in front of us. But there is a truth in humor as well. There's a truth in the joke. When all else fails in a time of conflict, such as our time today, if you can at least laugh together, then there's a chance of peace. Because to share a joke says, yeah, we're not really taking a lot so seriously. There's another reality that we're both standing in that we can laugh at it. We are coming into very turbulent times. And a lot of what has been hidden, what has been pushed aside, swept under the rug, the can that's been kicked down the road, and I can think of some more cliches. I'll share them with you later. When the chickens are coming home to roost, we've been seeing it already happening. For example, the recognition of the slavery and genocide and other horrors that were cut out of American history were not fully acknowledged, not fully understood, not fully seen. Those are starting to come back into the public consciousness. The ecological destruction, degradation that has also been kind of shielded from it because it has been possible to avoid it, has been possible to, and still is possible actually. I don't want to say that our transcendence of the current human condition is an inevitability that will be brought to us by crisis and collapse. It's not quite so easy. Some of you were there last night, I spoke a lot about this last night, that it's a choice. That crisis and breakdown offer us not deliverance, but a choice. Which kind of sucks. I've been hoping that we would just be rescued by collapse. First it was Y2K, and then peak oil, and then 2012, and it's been one thing after another. Climate collapse even. Or financial collapse. There's a part of us, at least in me, that kind of wants it to happen. Wants this deliverance, wants to escape the world that we have created for ourselves that we feel stuck in. I think even that's why COVID lockdowns were so easily accepted by the population. Because we wanted out. We wanted a disruption. We wanted to change. And that's not going to come from the outside. It's something that we have an opportunity to choose. And when breakdown and crisis visit our society, then that choice becomes more obvious. Choices that had been unconscious become conscious. So those are the times that we are facing in the next few years. Where old certainties and reliable institutions reveal their impermanence. So where was I? I was talking about humor, the joke, standing outside. Yeah, AI, automation. I kind of lost my thread here. Choice, yeah, I covered that one. Well, right. And that which had been invisible becoming visible. So we are actually have it. We have an opportunity to become sane as a society. Sanity meaning that we accept all of reality. Not just parts of it. So these neglected parts of reality are coming back in. Sure, if you quotation from since we are in Boulder here, Chagum Trunkva. He was certainly fallen out of disfavor. But one thing he said was, if you can hold all the pain of the world in your heart. All of the darkness. While never lifting your gaze from the great eastern sun. Then you can make a proper cup of tea. I think we all understand what the darkness refers to. Positivity and optimism do not come from avoiding the actual situation. They're on the other side of that. However, if we only bring in that part of reality and not the miracles that are also and and and the the. Outreach is from a larger reality. That's beckoning to us. Then we're insane as well. And we enter the pit of despair. I was today walking up in the mountains. And it was actually in a town. And we stopped at this. Like this kind of thicket, these bushes, you know, which were full of birds. And they were pouring forth their song. Way more than they would have to if they were just marking territory or trying to attract a mate. You know, like, if you just want to attract a mate, you know, and mate once. Like, you don't have to sing that much, you know. Especially if you're a bird. But they're just like, maybe they've already made it. I don't know, maybe they were new. There is like even, okay. Really what I'm talking about, I'm going to talk about is how to hold sanity in crazy times. So these birds are pouring forth their song out of their joy and exuberance of being alive. Because life is flowing through them so strongly that they cannot help but express who they are. At least that's my interpretation. Another interpretation is that this song making behavior is the result of millions of years of survival of the fittest evolution. Because you see the birds that sing louder, those attract mates more easily and so their genes get passed down. So it's kind of like this automatic program that runs and better for it to run too much than too little. That's like the evolutionary biology explanation. Like better to sing too much than too little. So they're singing all the time. Like kind of a wind-up toy. And it confers an evolutionary advantage for them to sing. And for them to look pretty too. Like that's another story that we can hold about this. Which story is true? That is a choice. It's not an objective fact. Just the same as are we going to, in 20, 50 years, are we going to be in a totalitarian, techno-fascist, ecologically destitute, concrete world? Or are we going to live on hippie planet? Are we going to live in a world so beautiful that even catching a glimpse of it makes you cry? What's it going to be? That question can be taken two ways. One way to take it is as a request for a prediction. The other way to take it is a request to make a choice. What world is it going to be? It's up to us. And that doesn't mean that we have to know how to get from here to there. Step, though, is to know that it's possible. That there is a way from here to there. When we take in the information encoded by those bird songs, the knowledge of how to get from here to there develops inside of us. We may not be able to explain our choices, but life knows what to do. And the more of life that we take in, the more related and intimately connected we become, the more alive we are, and the more we know what to do. Life knows what to do. You know, they used to think that the genes coded for the structure of the body. They were like a blueprint for how to make a body. They're nothing of the sort. They do code for the building blocks, the proteins that make the body, but it's not like there's instructions that say, this cell, you go here and become a liver cell, and that cell, you go there, and we have a whole plan for where everybody's going to go. That's why when they take planarians, flatworms, and they cut off their heads, and they grow a new head. But if you cut off the tail, it grows a new tail. How do the cells know what to do? Each one knows exactly where to go and what to do, how? Life knows what to do. I guess this is related to what Josie was saying about the mystery works. We don't have to know the path in advance in order to walk it. I feel like I'm kind of speaking a lot of abstractions here. Yeah, but what I want to point to is the different feeling quality of those two stories. Of the story of, well, it's just survival of the fittest. The word just actually is a clue to the whole thing. It's dispiriting, it's just that. You feel different occupying those two stories. You feel different occupying a story of a more beautiful world than a story of techno dystopia. We are going to be offered in the next few years a lot of conflicting stories about what is real, what is true, what is happening in the world. This is inevitable because the dominant story is breaking down. The story of what a human being is, what the destiny of humanity is, how to relate to the earth. These stories that seem to be working well for many decades, many centuries even. The story of progress, the story that the betterment of humanity will come from our progressive mastering of life and matter. That we will achieve paradise when we perfect our ability to control reality down to the nano level, down to the molecular level, down to the genetic level. When we get everything under perfect control, when we apply the same means and methods of engineering to society and convert the whole world into a data set, then we will have paradise and replace all the labor with machines for greater efficiency and mathematically scientifically run society. This was part of the mythology that gave life meaning, that gave individual human lives meaning and that spun off these sub-mythologies, these defining stories and narratives such as the story of politics, the story of money, all of these are stories, all of these are agreements. And in coming times that truth will become more and more obvious. Sense and meaning will break down along with the institutions that rest on top of it and people won't know what to think. This is already happening. You see it in the proliferation of conspiracy theories, of like extremism, of fundamentalism because when the story of the people breaks down, people are desperate for something else to explain things. What's going on here? The old story that I grew up in isn't working. It's obviously not working. Whatever it was, America, Land of the Free and Home of the Brave bringing democracy to the world, that might be one aspect of the story. The story of medical advances bringing greater and greater health to humanity every year. Like chronic disease has increased from something like 5% to 64% now of the population suffering chronic disease, at least half of all children. Obviously it isn't working. Even life expectancy is starting to go down. That was the triumphant proof of our success. Life spans were rapidly increasing for the entire 19th and first half of the 20th century. Then it slowed down. The bigger stories are breaking down and people are like, well, I need another explanation. This is the insanity that we've already caught a glimpse of and it's already gathering. As the breakdown intensifies, it's going to be way more of that. When I said conspiracy theories, as if I'm assuring you that all of us would believe in no such thing and that it's easy to occupy a place of reason and critical thought and then if you do that, you will not fall into a conspiracy theory. I don't want to actually disparage them in that way because I think that many of them, and this is my opinion, but many of them actually illuminate shadows of our society that are otherwise not visible. That's my fancy way of saying that they're true. They can't all be true, though, because they violently contradict each other. Obviously, it's becoming more and more obvious to most of us, though, at least that the story that has been dominant is mostly untrue. What do we do with that? How do you know which story to live in and live from? These are not just intellectual constructs. These are not just castles of opinion. They are a state of being. As you can feel, like I mentioned, a different feeling quality. I don't know if some of you have maybe gone into some of the conspiracy theories that are a type of fundamentalism, really. They're not that different psychologically from other versions of fundamentalism, which is also on the rise. Mainstream religion is on the decline. Jewish fundamentalist religions are on the rise. Whether it's Islamic fundamentalism, Jewish fundamentalism, Christian fundamentalism, Hindu fundamentalism, there's kind of an assurance there. There's a relief from the discomfort of the bewilderment of the not knowing. The core of sanity, the starting point of sanity in the next five years is to be comfortable and willing to abide in not knowing. To hold paradox, because paradox, the message of paradox is to say that your system of truth is incomplete, and this paradox proves that. Do you run away from it? Do you try to just solve it? True paradox is unsolvable from the terms of its construction. Here's a paradox. The more beautiful world or hearts to know is possible is actually inevitable, but it will not happen without the firm commitment and choice of each one of us. Another paradox. The more beautiful world or hearts to know is possible will only happen if not just some, but everybody chooses it. And it hinges on your personal choice, and it doesn't matter where everybody else chooses. You can feel truth in both of these things, can't you? So that's how to hold paradox. You feel the truth of both, and you don't run away from it, and you hold that question, which then magnetizes to you a larger understanding in which the paradox is resolved. And in this case, the paradox has to do with what is a self. How are my choices related to the choices of everybody else? What is the causal principle that we have ignored and denied in the story of separation that we live in, the story of a separate self? Like that's who you are. This is the core of the defining mythology of our civilization. A separate self in a world of other. That's who you are. And the world is not a self. It's just the environment. It pervades our language, doesn't it? And so of course, human betterment, human progress is to control the random forces of nature, to insulate ourselves. So to be able to stay in the unknowing, to hold that empty space until something new is born within it, genuinely new. Because really on a subtle level, the conspiracy theories, the fundamentalisms, the totalizing discourses that we run to, that's another one. To explain and see everything in terms of race, in terms of gender, in terms of capitalism, in terms of patriarchy. Each one of these lenses illuminates something. It offers a vision of things that we could not otherwise see. But they do not explain everything. And that retreat from that which we do not understand into a narrower and narrower box, that is insanity. And that is what we are facing in coming times. I've maybe been kind of philosophical here, but everything I'm saying is very practical. I'm hoping to draw it into something practical. The practical question is how do we maintain sanity? How do we hold sanity? Not just for ourselves, but for our community, for our city, for Boulder, for our country, for the world. And as the paradox that I referred to, of it is up to you and it requires everybody, as that paradox suggests, sanity is a group project. Sanity is not something that you can hold by yourself. That is actually part of the insanity. That is part of the cult of the individual, the story of separation. It's really hard to hold a story in opposition to the story that surrounds you. And we are immersed, still, in the story of separation, in the story of competition, in the story, and what that story tells us about human nature, and what that story tells us about change and possibility. Like many people here have probably had an experience that does not fit into consensus reality. I was listening to Maladoma Some of Water and Spirit, a beautiful book. I really urge you to get the book. And actually, as is rarely the case, the audiobook is better. Because it's him, he himself is reading it. Not even reading it, actually, he's speaking it. The book originated by recording what he spoke and transcribing it. So powerful transmission. And he describes these daguerre initiation practices that he went through personally. And some of them, and some of the things he describes are impossible from what I learned growing up and with a scientific education. And not just a scientific education, but the unconscious philosophy and unconscious metaphysics that suffuses our education, our indoctrination, our whole society. We've got to take that stuff in. Like for example, his grandfather would have had a farm six miles away. And the animals would be subject sometimes to predation by lions or whatever. And so he would lie down in his hut. I don't remember exactly what it was, but he had like an arrow fit backwards into a bow. And he would go into a trance and kind of check on his animals. And if there were a lion, he would fire the arrow in the hole in the roof. And so he did that one time and then the next day, they go out to the farm and there's a dead lion. Can we take that in as part of reality? Or do we put that in a separate category? And I'm talking about, that's an example, many people have had experiences of healing from medical conditions that were considered impossible. If you or someone you know firsthand hasn't had that experience, or a precognitive dream or like an incredible synchronicity that you just can't explain away. Well, you can explain it away. You can. You always can. And this brings me to the point that I've been dancing around. How do you decide which explanation is true? One time when I was in teaching a class at Penn State University where my job title was Temporary Employee Type 2. Because I was lower than an adjunct professor. Like I was, because you know I don't have any, I mean I had no, I was totally unqualified by conventional qualifications anyway. Like I don't even have a master's degree. So somehow I found myself teaching this class and it was about the history of technology. And so I was like, okay we're gonna learn about what science is and we're gonna learn about what's not. Everybody bring a story into class that doesn't fit into scientific reality. So one kid after another after another shares these stories and like they're kind of afraid to share them. What are people gonna think? It's not like oh I'm gonna get attention you know by sharing some weird story you know. Like people are, like someone would come up to class after. Like one, I remember one frat boy comes up. And I hope I haven't like because really I mean this is part of the story actually. Part of the insanity is dehumanization which is the foundation of racism, sexism, misogyny, exploitation of all kinds. Dehumanization. And I just dehumanize this guy by calling him a frat boy. But I'm kind of humorous. But that's the why is that insanity? Why is that not just immorality or ethics? Why is that insanity? Because it's not true. Dehumanization is not true. Any time that you are in judgment and say well that person is just less than human because if I were them I wouldn't do that thing. They're like less of a full being than I am. That's what I mean by judgment. If I were you in the totality of your circumstances I wouldn't have done that. And it's a lie. And a lot of the hysteria and insanity that we see on a political level is exactly that. We are invited to dehumanize each other. We are invited to hate each other. To scorn each other. To join. It also appeals to a desire for connection. Let's connect with what we call ostracizing and excluding and dehumanizing those people. So it preys on a powerful unmet need for acceptance. That's the unmet need behind judgment is acceptance. Self-acceptance, acceptance by a group and safety. Because if there's a witch hunt going on if you don't conspicuously accuse somebody of being a witch then maybe you're a witch. That's something that we have seen recently and could see a lot more of in coming years. So I remember one story this kid he comes up after class he doesn't want anybody to hear his story. But the one I remember was he said when I was in sixth grade we were studying the gold rush and I had an intense dream in which the dream was an entire lifetime span of years as a gold miner as a prospector. I went out there and suffered these setbacks but then I staked a claim and I found gold and I hired people and he told this entire story and then I woke up in the morning and I'm like wow that was a really strange dream and I went to school and at lunch he reached into his pocket for a lunch ticket and there was a hard object in there he pulls it out it's a $20 gold piece with a picture of like Pike's Peak or something that had been in his dream. So there's different ways to receive this story either it points to an intelligence in the world beyond our own that can influence what happens. In other words a principle of causality that we may not understand a mystery that suggests for one thing that our despair over the future our very rational despair that says any real transformation is impossible because look at the powers that be look at the military industrial complex look at the banking cartel look at the satanic human trafficking elite or whatever the Illuminati the reptilian aliens they have the propaganda they have the money they have the force they have the surveillance they're listening to this conversation right now like what hope is there and just the inertia of industrial society and things are getting worse and the tipping points and like you can make an airtight case for despair but does it take into account things like that does it take into account the most amazing miraculous healing experiences that you have had or witnessed does it take into account that a gold piece can appear in that person's pocket that's one story I can tell about that event the other story is and this is what I did in the class I was like Zach nice try what really happened was that you stole a $20 gold piece from a human collection and confabulated this dream and decided that oh it just magically appeared in my pocket and then you forgot that you even did that that's what really happened because we know that objects cannot spontaneously appear things only move in the world when a force is exerted that's what science says when a force is exerted on a mass then it moves and the ascent of humanity has come because we've gotten better and better at exerting forces on masses and that's why we live in the brave new happy world that we do okay so I debunked his story and every story that came up I debunked it pitilessly but then I relented I'm like okay guys but notice how you feel with that other explanation it's not just an intellectual construct these stories they have a felt component they have a consciousness they have a beingness so here is the navigating principle I want to share with you for coming times when confronted with these new fundamentalisms with these conspiracy theories with these totalizing discourses with all of these different beliefs systems of belief ask yourself who am I who do I become when I inhabit this story when it inhabits me is this who I really am how do I feel does it make me more energized does it or does it paralyze me what's the feeling state is this a food that I want to take into my body and maybe it might be something that you have inhabited for a while but now it's no longer hospitable and you feel uncomfortable in that story a lot of people are feeling uncomfortable in the dominant story even if it's still working for them even if they study hard and get good grades and they do get a good job and they do buy a house and they get sick and they go to the doctor and the doctor does fix them and they send their kids to school and they excel and they don't get addicted to something or depressed or start cutting themselves and the story is working for them even then a discontent a discontent grows and it does take less and less of a disruption for the whole thing to collapse and then they're in the space between stories where you just don't know what's real anymore you don't know what to think you don't know how to do this thing called life you don't know who you are that's such a sacred place to be many of us in this room have been there and when we were in there long enough maybe a new story arose that's about to happen to a lot of people and if you are fortunate enough to have some grounding in a new story and some allies to help you hold that story even when it's under assault from the stories around us from the economy that says no no no what you're doing is not valuable it says it in a very explicit way it's not valuable right money is the representation of the story of value that a society holds and your work with whatever animal rescue, that's not value valuable your organic gardening that's not valuable your silent work taking care of children that's not valuable a lot of the things, most of the things that need done most right now are not valuable so the story that you to keep doing them you have to know better otherwise you're not going to keep doing them you have to be able to withstand the pressure of the economic system and the social attitudes around you and maybe the attitudes of parents teachers, institutions that are all telling you something that conflicts with the story that you know on a biological level is true the story that is you, true what does true mean true really my understanding of it comes from like carpentry where you true align or you true aboard something is true if it aligns you with something, beauty is that story true does it align you with who you really are and who you want to become who you're ready to become so a true story, that's a true story it's hard to hold it without allies on your own power and that's why I say that sanity is a group project we remind each other of what's true, we hold the stories together and when one of us is strong we hold the story for our brother when one of us is weak and our sister holds the story for us that's the only way and when you have a group holding sanity together able as a group to take in all of reality the darkness and the great eastern sun which is what trunkla referred to meaning the infinite potential of life the joy that is the ground of reality that we deviate from but always ultimately come back to you see it in the death process sometimes that's the great eastern sun the intelligence of life the intelligence of all things you hold all of that then you can make a proper cup of tea which is precise action correct action and that translates into very tangible preparatory work that brings into actuality a more beautiful world and I know a lot of people are doing that work in this room could be something as humble literally having to do with humus you know as restoring soil restoring water healing trauma building community these actions these that come from the choice ultimately of what story you hold because if you don't hold that story it seems futile to do any of these things they're dropping the bucket you know maybe many of you have that story of despair that assaults you sometimes maybe sometimes you succumb to it I know I do I've been during COVID there were weeks and months at a time where it was so obvious that my entire career was a litany of errors and that I was a parasite on society and nothing I did was any good did I climb out of that under my own heroic power no I was brought out of it by my community by people who held the story more strongly than I could at that time what I'm doing here thank you maybe some of them are in this room maybe you sent me a message at some time that hit me at just the right moment so many yeah so like this like how do you keep doing your work you cannot because it seems futile unless you have allies or maybe there's some people who have incredible inner fortitude and they can hold it by themselves okay maybe there's some I'm not one of them but it sure does help to have allies in holding a good and true story because then you do the work that fits into that story and into that timeline and into that future that invokes that future and here's something else it doesn't even how do I put it even when that work seems to fail even when your marvelous organic farm is downwind of the toxic dioxin plume from the train derailment even when your anti-fracking campaign is sabotage and destroyed and it fails and you spent years on it even when you're crusade to protect children from electromagnetic radiation pollution or I don't know any one of these issues sometimes usually it seems to have failed and you gave it your best anyway those actions are just as powerful as the ones that succeed in an alternate system of causality that understands that change doesn't just happen when a force is applied to a mass I said that that was scientific but actually that's not even scientific anymore hasn't been for a hundred years you know ever since quantum a causality was discovered and things just happen like that really boggles the Cartesian mind like this uranium atom decayed and the other one didn't decay and they were under identical conditions this is done in a laboratory identical conditions the mind wants to say well that one decayed because something made it decay something pushed that proton out of the nucleus right something did it to that it didn't just happen how could it like atoms don't make choices maybe they do like a lot of our intuitions that come from science are no longer even scientific so these seemingly failed endeavors operate on another level of causality they generate a morphic field that's one way to put it the theory of morphogenesis I like to quote it even everybody already knows what it is if I may ask your indulgence that any change that happens in one place generates a field of change so that the same change starts happening other places any act of kindness any act of courage any act of compassion generates a field of kindness a field of courage a field of compassion and you kind of start to notice other people are kind of doing it too maybe it's across the world maybe it's because your act of kindness was recorded on YouTube and it went viral and inspired others I guess one way it can happen this alternate theory of causality does not exclude what we recognize already but it's a deeper principle because sometimes it just happens in a way you can't explain and that means you don't have to necessarily capture everything on YouTube and it means that the worth of what you do does not depend on how big it is you need to be able to navigate according to something else than the metrics because then everyone ends up in a competition to be big to get more followers to get more audience to get a bigger platform and we think some people have a big impact and some people have a small impact like in the boy am I going on so many tangents off tangents in the story of separation maybe I'm a pretty important person because I'm reaching thousands of people or more so I get to say yeah I'm doing something about it but what about somebody who spends 20 years taking care of their disabled child which is a lot of people now so many parents out there their entire lives are consumed by caring for children with chronic conditions autism the latest I think is 1 in 38 children now are on the ASD spectrum all kinds of autoimmunity allergies all kinds of things and you had an idea of what your life was going to be marriage family and vacations all that stuff little league or whatever and instead it is an endless ordeal of caring for that child nobody says what you're doing is important nobody celebrates you nobody says you're changing the world those choices radiate a powerful ripple in the psychic underpinnings of our world people who are doing those things the lady getting paid $15 an hour in a daycare center and no one is even watching and she's giving extra love to those babies who aren't even being raised by their parents it's not the parents fault either I mean here's a habit oh those irresponsible parents you'd do that too if you were in their situation anyway giving extra love to those babies beyond what they need to do to keep their $15 an hour job no one's even watching no one's applauding them no one's telling them they're changing the world but they are and their choices are all the more powerful because they are making those choices in the absence of any ego benefit of yeah I'm doing some great thing they're just pure love these people are holding the world together on the psychic level people like me out there doing things I'm not meaning to denigrate what I'm doing that's not important I'm not saying it's not important I'm just saying it's not any more important in the system of causality that I am learning I can articulate it well but it's not fully in my body so that's why I say I'm learning it in that system of causality what I'm doing is not any more important than anybody else that's just the truth and many of you might be people like that holding the fabric together so that people like me can even do anything otherwise the world would have fallen apart a long time ago if it weren't for people like that and the same thing for those failed campaigns that maybe were hopeless from the start but you did it anyway you didn't believe the story of who was hopeless another way to understand it besides morphic resonance is that such choices, such actions are a prayer I imagine sometimes God listening to people's prayers prayers for peace prayers for I don't think I believe you because if you really wanted that you wouldn't be acting this way so a prayer that is aligned with choices that might be lonely and hard is way more powerful it is a declaration of the human being it says in a situation where nobody's watching and it would be so much more comfortable to just like let the baby cry but I overcome my fatigue and I hold that baby in that situation that is what a person does in a situation where you confront somebody who triggers you and instead of dehumanizing them and letting them have it you ask what is it like to be them where is this coming from you declare that this is what a human being does in such a situation to share something that I think the times are okay now to share during COVID I saw what I believed was a brewing medical security technofascist state and I knew the risks of speaking out I know what happens to people when such a thing actually unfolds in society and so I was afraid to speak out and I'm like you know other people will speak out somebody will do something about it we're not going to continue to spiral down into this insanity you know someone will do something about it it can't just stay like this it's too crazy it can't just stay like this but then I'm like I thought you know if I don't speak out then what rational reason would I have for anybody else to speak out and that's why I say that cowardice breeds despair because I'm making a declaration about the human being what a human being does and it becomes irrational then to hope why would anybody else do something when I didn't do it that's how I understand what a human being is and what a human being does for myself so this choice that each of us confronts in various ways every day has world changing power because what it does is it shifts reality into alignment with what you have declared it to be and that is why I say that this question what is the world going to be it's not a request for prediction it's an opportunity to exercise our agency by making choices that are in alignment with a more beautiful world that say here is what a human being is one of our greatest most transformative revolutionary powers is to see that in other people as well it's the opposite of dehumanization it says I know who you are I know why you're here I know what you are capable of I know that you are here to serve life and beauty on earth I know that if the situation on earth were impossible you would not be here none of us would be there's a isn't it like a kind of logic in that we wouldn't have been put here if it were impossible we're not being trolled by the creator that's part of that's one of the truths that it's core to sanity and when we see that in another person we call it forth into being it's not a trick you have to actually see it in order to say it otherwise it comes across as like some kind of false encouragement to see it you have to look for it to look for it you have to know that it's there and our story can tell us whether it's there or not our story of what is a human being in environmental discourse there's like this self-hatred that is arisen the idea that human beings are a plague on this planet that the earth would be better off without us but think about that does that mean that Gaia was stupid in birthing us and dowing us with all of our capacities our gifts for technology and culture she'd be better off without us really would you tell a mother that she would be better off without one of her children this idea yeah Gaia would be fine humanity might go extinct but earth will be fine now she won't be fine what Gaia wants is for us to fulfill our purpose not to abandon it and our purpose is just what I said for the individual it's to serve the continued unfolding of life and beauty on earth to make this world even more alive and some people are doing that asking how can I farm in a way that makes earth more alive how can I create in a way that makes earth more alive that's why we're here that is a new story for civilization anyway it has ancient roots in indigenous cultures including our own you can trace it back through with some lineages but for civilization it's a new story and ultimately that's the foundation of the story that we must hold together to anchor ourselves in sanity in turbulent and crazy times it's the story of the human being the old story was we're here to conquer nature we're here to transcend nature it is progress to enter the digital realm the abstract realm it is a higher calling to be a scientist or a mathematician as opposed to a plumber or a peasant that was the old story no longer and we are gathered here together to immerse ourselves in a new story to be reminded that we're not crazy for holding it so that we're not alone in it anymore so I would like to do a little practice session in doing that it's going to be loud it's totally not an ideal space for this and I have no idea how I'm going to call your attention when I want to but here's my idea which is that you'll get into pairs it's probably whoever's next to you and first you will decide which of you is the most cynical sometimes it's pretty obvious that person their job is to hold the story of a more beautiful world to hold the knowledge unshakably that you and all human beings are here to serve life and beauty on earth and that it's possible and that even if we don't know how to do it we do know how to do it to hold the story of as you take in more life you know what to do because you are life you become more alive and the more alive you become the more you know what to do you're going to hold that story the less cynical person is going to occupy their cynical part so we're kind of reversing the usual role here the less cynical person the more naive person the more idealistic person the more hopeful person they're going to find that part of themselves that you know sometimes does feel it's futile it's impossible the evil is too powerful and it's a war of good on evil and good is going to lose and it's like that whatever version of that is for you you hold that part and you ask three questions to your partner I'm not going to tell you what the questions are whatever comes to you to ask okay and so this is practice in holding in holding a story for another person and I'll give you like your answers maybe don't have to be very long you know sometimes you don't even have to say anything the holding of a story for somebody could be transmitted through touch when you hold it strongly and you see the truth of another person behind the veils of judgment and dehumanization and cynicism and the distorting lens of what a human being is that we've received when you really see them you know what to do because you're alive you know what to do you know what to say in that moment so let's actually have a minute of silence hopefully you've decided who's the more cynical person already the more cynical person occupy your ideals and your knowledge of what's true of a more beautiful world go into that part of you and the other person find a question that disturbs you up to three questions but it could just be one what disturbs you I'll give you five minutes or so when I raise my hand I fall into silence and raise your hand when you see a hand raised you know that thing so begin yeah thanks everybody so that was actually the Q&A yeah I like to crowdsource the Q&A like that so but in case there was something that wasn't covered I'll be available now to take any any other questions or reflections that you might have yeah let's just do that do we have a mic to pass around or should we just be vocal yeah go ahead yeah here we are okay so the subject of your talk tonight is something like I don't remember the title but what are the next five years just that the next five years right and one thing you said is the coming turbulence and another thing you said this is part of what came up in our conversation was it's like this positing of choice and one dichotomy is the propaganda, the techno-fascist you know descending state, the concrete prison surveillance, dragnet all that and the more beautiful world our hearts know is possible which some specific examples regenerative agriculture community like what we're doing here actually having face-to-face conversation but I would love to hear from you a little more specifically if you could sort of dial it down in term because I know that you want to be more practical in terms of what you see for the next five years because my fear like when I succumb to fear is that these are not these are coterminous I believe that these two will just keep it to that dichotomy will be co- extensive and that to me is more division and more turbulence and I think I feel like things are going to get a lot worse before they get better because the old systems that are crumbling are not going to surrender so easily and I just that's the the tension anxiety I just love to hear what you see and I just want to thank you also by the way for your work I don't want that to go without saying when you share what you went through with COVID I want to tell you personally and I know I'm not the only one your essay the coronation that came into my inbox somehow probably through Zach Bush and then you I wouldn't have made it without people like Zach Bush and all of examples there are other for me there are luminaries in the most most light capital L sense of the word like thank you for speaking out thank you because there are so many of us I think who felt so alone if it wasn't for you speaking out I'm sure that I would have succumbed so I just want to thank you so much for your courage and for listening to your heart and intuition that's my question but I did want to thank you yeah thank you thank you for that I don't think I necessarily have anything that illuminating to say as far as predictions you know that you're not already aware of if my understanding of ecology and climate is correct then we're going to see increasing derangement derangement instability that comes from the most alarming thing for me as far as the global ecosystem is the decline of insects insects yeah I'm way way more disturbed by that than greenhouse gases or pretty much anything else and the decline of insects so here I am assiduously not answering your question because I'm about to go off into talking about that but anyway I could go there because there's something important there but yeah part of my point is that that's kind of a escape from the question too I was going to say that it's not a prediction it's really up to even in the short term but certain things every story must be told to its conclusion and the story of of separation and all of its sub-stories the story of money created by interest-bearing debt for example like all these stories they have a conclusion they have a denouement they have like a they have their arc and what that actually looks like in so many ways like economic breakdown it doesn't have to be a full on collapse it could be something that kind of goes from area to area and then there's shortages and you start to get used to the shortages and then there's bigger shortages and in some places people are actually going hungry I mean one in four American children goes hungry every night actually that's where I heard it's up to one in four on any given night one in four children it's already hungry it's already happening but it's still possible to insulate ourselves from it so my prediction is that it will become less and less possible to insulate ourselves from it it's gonna whether it's from food supply chains water electrical power cut-offs like all that kind of stuff wacky weather crop failures like all that kind of stuff is likely to happen and it's necessary for it to happen in the next five years because it's what it takes to give us the choice that we have been blind to not to rescue us but to make us aware of an unconscious choice it's like just from like I know this is gonna happen simply because of my dramatic sensibilities like as a matter of good play writing it has to happen this way so like I hope that's not too vague and I'll also like indulge my tangent on insect death one of the habit insect death somewhere between depending on place the insect decline is between 80 and 94 percent yeah yeah in total insect biomass like do you remember what the bug splatter was like when you were a kid yeah case closed do you remember the lightning bugs part of sanity is to acknowledge loss we have so many ways to keep the loss invisible pop in a movie read about everything getting better progressing or just habits of not feeling grief but when I say to to acknowledge loss I'm what I really mean is to take it all the way in and that's what grief is grief is the physical process of knowing that loss is real then you're in reality like we are Francis Weller's work is really beautiful in this regard everything you love you will lose he says everything everyone you know at the very least because you're going to die and if you are operating as if that were not true you are insane therefore a society that does not have wholesome grief practices will go crazy as ours is Francis Weller yeah celebration also is an integration process that I'm not always so good at to integrate beauty enjoy if you don't do that then you're not operating with a full data set either in your body these are important practices those of you who are doing this kind of work like either directly working with grief and celebration or healing people so that they are able to take in reality this is every bit as important as you know regenerative agriculture or you know campaigning to stop fracking I'm not going to say one is more important the only way to know what is most important is subjectively not as a principle that you can tell everybody else what to do because that's more important but you know what to do because you're life that isn't even what I was going to say about insect death what I was going to say is that part of the insanity also is to try to it's part of this fundamentalism it's to say here is what is causing it it is this one thing that's so much more comfortable to blame all of our ills on one bad thing there's almost a relief there and we're so used to that the bad guy in Hollywood movies that's in any most movies the problem is a bad guy kill the bad guy problem solved you know we have a decaying political system along comes Donald Trump and you can almost hear the relief of finally hear something we can blame for the problems of democracy now granted like he made it pretty easy to do that but like you know still like that pattern like you focus on the bad guy and everything else is invisible so like a deteriorating ecosystem oh carbon if we only reduce carbon dioxide in the atmosphere all of our environmental problems will be solved the one thing and then we're in comfortable territory control something and in all of these cases and or the decline of the United States you know Vladimir Putin like that's the one thing or the 50 year decline in public health here comes a virus and it's almost like a sense of relief here's finally something we can control maybe if we control this we'll all be healthy again no one said that out loud but that's kind of the suggestion so this is one of these these like almost universal patterns that I mean you can see how it even affects our efforts to change things it's so comfortable but that's the kind of transformation that we really need to step out of those patterns because insect death isn't caused by one thing it's caused by everything okay another question it's hard for me to see these lights are really bright how about someone in the way back that'd be cool yeah thank you for letting me talk you and Bernie I'm so thrilled to be here right now our climate group read your book at my son's suggestion and enjoyed it thoroughly the thing that I still kind of wonder about is like I thought of a t-shirt that says more isn't more anymore and that's clearly the problem underlying a lot of most of our problems I love the expansiveness and the quantum physics and all the things that underlie everything you say but so capitalism has gone past the bounds of being checkable and so when you if you were to tell a person who's trying to think of something else like I live on more I'm living on retirement money and because something makes more I get my monthly allotment of an investment is the replacement for what we have a steady state economy is there a word for something that can replace that piece of it dang I wish we were there last night I talked about sacred economics a lot but yeah so fundamentally this earth is incredibly abundant and can meet all of our needs lavishly the problem is that we are over fulfilling some needs and others needs go tragically unmet steady state economy I could say yes or even a degrowth economy but what does that really mean economy in this context when you're talking about economic growth what they mean is growth in the quantity of goods and services are exchanged for money so you could have a wealthier society that uses money less if people are doing things for each other outside the money system and it could be as simple as doing a lot of the work that women have traditionally done taking care of children like nurturing each other preparing food for each other growing food for each other when I was a kid my dad had an amazing garden and he produced way more vegetables than we could eat so all the neighbors got zucchinis as much as they wanted and more that kind of thing does not count as economic value so you could have where everybody's growing gardens there's going to be less and sharing with each other and there's going to be a lot less being bought and sold but people are going to be richer in many ways even in the rudest caloric calculations if we had a society where we put our hands in the earth then we could far outproduce the industrial food system which maximizes yield per unit of labor not yield per unit of land and we could do it in a way that increases biodiversity too so that's just one example so basically the future is that we become way more wealthy in many important ways and maybe we don't have houses as big as we do maybe we don't fly around to go on vacation because where we are is dull and why is it dull because there's no culture anymore maybe Boulder's somewhat of an exception but you know there's nothing to do so let's go somewhere that doesn't actually serve our well-being 6,000 square foot house doesn't serve your well-being well for most people some people maybe entertain lots of people but generally speaking most people in those McMansions spend their time in the breakfast nook and the den so anyway there's a lot more I'll have the recording of last night's talk on my website at some point am I being hinted at that we should wrap up soon I'm not sure what the agreement is with the venue we're going to end at 8 okay so how about one more thing and then here you are this man right here and then I'll say a couple parting words to you all first of all I want to say thank you because my wife just introduced me to your work yesterday I did read the coronation guess my question is this is something she and I talk about a lot 2017 front page of the New York Times we learned UFOs that we are not alone and there are people in this room that are experiencers how much time do you spend thinking about that element of our humanity well why do you ask yeah I spend a lot of time thinking about that actually it's significant that's part of the breakdown you know that's like some of these realities that were not part of consensus reality that were excluded if you really take that in then how much of like geopolitics really makes sense anymore we're not taking it in that's what I mean by sanity we have to take it in the good the bad and the ugly because right now we're living in a very narrow ghetto of reality that's socially enforced doesn't take in the good a lot of it doesn't take in the bad doesn't take in the ugly doesn't take in the beautiful so we got to take that in then we'll be sane then we'll know what to do and there's also like a readiness that is required in order to enter the reality in which UFOs are authentic and the very fact that it was in the New York Times is a significant marker of a shift in the collective consciousness they will continue to migrate closer and closer into reality because that article came and it went you know I mean I was like people should be screaming in the streets oh my god they're real you know no nothing happened at all but it's something waiting to happen yeah so thank you for that um and I'll just say I'm not going to take any more questions because I want to you know people are starting to get antsy some people have to leave and it's really distracting when I'm trying to talk and people are like filing out and like oh they don't like me so I'm not going to do that but I will just say I feel like there's one more short thing to say yeah if anything that I've said has had the ring of truth for you and a feeling of recognition and and you felt also that you were not alone in that recognition that a field has gathered here and knowing that we were about to disperse just take a moment to feel the presence of whatever reached you to feel the presence of the agreement field that has touched us and the part of yourself that knows that this will have an effect on you and to be in trust and confidence that what has what was meant to have happened has happened even if it is a process of disturbance disruption and anger maybe I'm not assuming everybody here has agreed with everything I've said but something's working and it's doing the work and my prayer is that this this field that has utilized me to grow among you people in Boulder my prayer is that this that makes your communities and makes Boulder an island and of sanity and a nucleating island of sanity in the five years to come so thank you very much yes