The Lifeboat Hour – 05/27/12

My guest is Charles Eisenstein, author of “Sacred Economics” and spiritual light for a new paradigm. He’s also just about everybody’s best-choice for Finance Minister in new paradigm with a new consciousness.

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  • Traphole100

    “Cannot solve our current problems with cartesian tyranny…” I’m not sure what michael meant by Cartesian tyranny, but I assume he meant the scientific method. If my assumption is correct, then mike you sir are wrong. The problem was created due to the LACK of approach scientifically. And you know what there are scientific solutions, but the public must be spiritually and socially prepared to accept them since it involves giving up the old paradigm of instant self-gratification:

    for food: hydroponics and permaculture, there is an interesting video in the zeitgeist movement blog about a guy who showcases his own nearly self-sustaining aquaponics facility that he got for $700. And he is just a regular joe like you and me. Various cultures across the world practice some form of permaculture to vary extents. EX: in natgeo documentary they mentioned a chinese tribe that uses sun loving plants to provide shade to shade-loving plants both of which can be consumed for food and the various other parts of the plant providing food for their chickens.

    for water: the vast majority of water is in the seas and oceans. Its we tap that: desalination plants. Only drawback is that they consume vast quantities of energy.

    for power: I would suggest solar power-plants. Small units that can power a house to large units that can power a town or city. For heating, you can use your compost bin: the chemical reactions that occur during the decaying of organic matter. One can use other means as well: wind, geothermal, tidal etc and for large scale projects like CERN and their LHC one can use fusion. Yes Fusion is cartesian control-based tech, but to completely throw it out of the tool kit is to be equally stupid and ignorant as considering them as the only viable tools. Another possible tech is to put solar power plants in space to collect solar energy that does not reach the earth, make use of the fusion reactor that nature has provided to us already stocked with 10 billion years worth of fuel (1/2 already used but still)

    The under-lying problem is how tech is used. Even the more progressive tech like solar-power and permaculture methods lack conscious just like the “evil cartesian” tech as fusion nuclear etc. Permaculture, despite being environmentally friendly, still stands to disturb the natural ecosystems: it will shift animal populations and cause them to gravitate towards these farms (like what any other farm does) as these farms hold massive amounts of food that animals want. But they will also have to adapt to new conditions: living with humans. Some will not survive while some will succeed greatly and those who succeed will evolve to become dependent on these permaculture farm. No tech can fully avoid disturbing the surroundings.

  • shastatodd

    wow, a cornucopian listening to the lifeboat hour

    • Traphole100

       So? is there a problem? I like what Mike says and agree with alot of what he has to say. There really needs to be a major spiritual change in the way we view the universe and our place in it. Far too many people think we are gods who can do anything we want without consequences. Nowhere did I say that continued growth is acceptable, in fact I’m just as much against unrestrained growth as mike is. One way or another growth is going to stop in this finite planet and either we consciously do it or nature does it for us, and when nature does it it gets ugly…REAL UGLY.

      What I was saying was that our current paradigm was not the result of scientific and critical thinking; rather it was the result of us following our animal instincts to continuously copulate and reproduce and using science to make it possible. IE, we did not use our logic and reasoning centers of the brain to figure out whether it is a good idea to continue growing exponentially; it was already decided by our instincts. SO to throw away scientific method IE what I assume that mike was referring to when he said “cartesian way” is to be foolish.

      In fact permaculture itself is a result of science: specifically application of our understanding of ecology and the interconnectedness of ecosystems and the biosphere as a whole to agriculture.

    • Traphole100

       Also to further add, lets see how much love and wisdom there will be when everyone is practically starving. Spirituality lies at the very top of the maslow’s hierarchy of needs, and you can’t reach that without meeting the other bottom needs first. Developing various technologies (or thinking in cartesian 1s and 0s as mike would call it) that do not destroy (or at least destroys very little) is to key to meeting these other needs. And as I mentioned before permaculture is one such tech that has been developed this way and this method of farming was already being used by tribes that we would classify and backward and primitive. If only I could remember the documentary and at what part they mentioned that chinese tribe. It was a natgeo wildlife documentary about the wildlife in china.

      However, if mike meant destructive tech or technology designed to destroy the environment to yield resources in large numbers, and the associated thought processes behind them then YES I COMPLETELY agree with mike 100%. Such tech are outdated: nuclear has no place, fossil fuels have no place, factory farming and genetic modification has no place, weapons tech has no place, tech associated with mass consumerism and does great damage to environment (like ipads and other consumer electronics) has no place etc etc etc.

  • http://www.facebook.com/matthewleathers Matthew Leathers

    I agree with Traphole. Michael sometimes slips into an anti-science/anti-technology mindset. Seems to be getting worse. This is why he doesn’t fully get it imo. The solutions will come from technology and a shift in values…not going backwards. We may have to go local and low-fi to survive the collapse and transition to sustainability but to actively/consciously want to go BACKWARDS to a more primitive world is the enemy of progress…sorry….

    • Traphole100

       Exactly, we will end up going back to worshipping and begging the gods and godesses for rain, wealth, good harvest, fertility etc etc. Other primitive cultures went as far as sacrificing humans in the hopes for a good harvest. Do we really want to regress that far? Science and the resulting understanding of nature is what delivered us from those times.

      There is no going back, it will only create the fertile grounds for this mess to happen again in a future date. NO, the best thing to do is to change our values through education and learning of how the universe works and our place in it (IE cultivate wisdom) and keep going forward. I mean our current knowledge is enough to show how pathetically insignificant we and our petty problems are and how easily we can be excreted like shit out of existence in so many ways if we want to act like the imbeciles we are today. We think we are gods but as science continue to show time and time again that we are not. It is time we incorporate this SCIENCE FACT ( that Cartesian 1s and 0s have verified) to our values and culture.

  • http://twitter.com/Gixxer17 Richard Baron

    A 100 million Americans without jobs?!
    Things are even worse in America than i thought.