Duncan Trussell Family Hour - 332: Charles Eisenstein

Episode Date: March 30, 2019

**Charles Eisenstein**, philosopher, author, and speaker for a finer, adjacent reality joins the DTFH! You can check out Charles' website at [charleseisenstein.org](https://charleseisenstein.org/). This episode is brought to you by [Robinhood Financial](http://duncan.robinhood.com/) (get one free stock when you sign up) and [BLUECHEW](https://www.bluechew.com/) (use offer code: DUNCAN at checkout and get your first shipment FREE with just $5 shipping).

Ghost Towns, Dirty Angel, out now. I'm dirty little angel. You can get Dirty Angel anywhere you get your music. Ghost Towns, Dirty Angel, out now. New album and tour date coming this summer. Greetings to you, beautiful friends. It is I, Dee Trussell, and you are listening to the Ducatrussell Family Hour Podcast.

If this is your first time listening, we welcome you. And by we, I mean not only the buzzing swarm of hyperdimensional entities that make up my personality, but also the hyperdimensional entities that exist within the undiscovered chambers of the metaphysical mansion that you are currently residing within. I've got baby brain right now.

Some serious damn sleep deprivation. So forgive me if I mumble or stumble or meander off course or meamble or do preambles or do unacceptable ambling and end up simpering, groaning, or placing extended spaces in between words as I try to summon language from my synaptic clefs, which seem to be a little low

on whatever thought fuel they need to produce coherent sentences. Regardless, we have a glorious episode for you today with Charles Eisenstein. This conversation really reverberated through the chambers of my brain. We're gonna jump right into this episode, but first some quick business.

An eternal thank you to the wonder beings over at robinhood.com. Robinhood's an investing app that lets you buy and sell stocks, ETFs, options and cryptos all commission free. While other brokerages charge up to $10 for every trade, Robinhood doesn't charge any commission fees. So you can trade stocks and keep all of your profits.

Plus there's no account minimum deposit needed to get started. So you can start investing at any level. The simple intuitive design of Robinhood makes investing easy for newcomers and experts alike. View easy to understand charts and market data and place a trade in just four taps on your smartphone. You can also view stock collections

such as 100 Most Popular. With Robinhood, you can learn how to invest in the market as you build your portfolio. Discover new stocks, track your favorite companies and get custom notifications for price movements so you never miss the right moment to invest. Robinhood is giving listeners of the Dunkin' Trussell family hour a free stock

like Apple, Ford or Sprint to help you build your portfolio. Sign up at dunkin.robinhood.com. That's dunkin.robinhood.com. If you've ever had the experience of watching somebody that you love pass away or if you've had the experience of watching a baby come into the world,

then you have probably for a moment been in the presence of something that doesn't seem like it could necessarily be defined by the language that is available to us as a species. You get this sense of like, holy shit, this is so incredibly big and so incredibly real that it is as one of its qualities in the way a fish is wet, it's revolutionary.

And within that experience, it happens on psychedelics, of course, it can happen with DMT or mushrooms. It happens during peak experiences and lots can happen after that experience. Some people go absolutely nuts. I mean, I'm not saying nuts in a way to stigmatize it. It's kind of awesome if you go a little nuts because you rub shoulders with the divine, that's okay.

That's a cool kind of crazy but it isn't necessarily going to sort of bring that experience into this realm. And I think this is what's wonderful about language is that if you are lucky enough or blessed enough or diligent enough or capable enough, you can actually sort of take the transcendent realm and put it into the confines of human language

and people who read or hear you talk about the thing can actually get a taste of that thing that you experienced. I've had this happen, man, contact highs just from listening to Terrence McKenna lectures. I don't know if that's ever happened to you but if you spend enough time listening to Terrence McKenna, whether you're high or whether you're not high, you can really start feeling something

that seems to be very similar to a psychedelic experience. I don't know what that is but Terrence McKenna was interested in maybe being able to go into the DMT realm and bring an object back. I mean, he didn't bring some shiny, jeweled and possibly complex dimethyltryptamine dimension bobble back into the world

but he sure as hell brought back an incredible body of work that has as a byproduct of reading it, a feeling of being high as a fucking kite. And not only that, but a sense of holy shit, maybe I'm not quite as insane as I thought I was. And somehow just by being able to become the linguistic outflow valve for the transcendent, you allow the transcendent to begin to inhabit the world.

You essentially become a runway for a linguistic UFO and through your mouth or through your writing or through your art or through your work, something comes into the world that creates a kind of ripple or an echo or kind of a shift that has the opposite of creating war or catastrophe but has the effect of creating peace. I mean, in the super broad scale,

this is every prophet that ever lived, but in a very small way, this is every great musician or artist or poet or writer, but it doesn't have to be a great poet or artist or writer. I mean, that's the problem. That's where my brain goes. What I learned from this conversation with Charles Eisenstein is that how easy it is to forget all the people

who are out there writing poetry through action and doing incredible things with no reason behind it other than having this sense that the best way to express themselves in the world is not through accruing bullshit and getting stuff but through giving. And I think that Charles Eisenstein has really come up with a pretty simple yet incredibly profound way

of talking about how this is maybe what life is all about. One last commercial and then the podcast. And I recognize the irony of breaking up this rant with a boner pill commercial. According to a study I just did, over 90% of my male friends are unable to achieve an erection if they know that I am in the room. Much thanks to Blue Chew

for sponsoring this episode of the DTFH. BlueChew.com, that's blue, like the color blue. Blue Chew brings you the first chewable with the same FDA approved active ingredients as Viagra and Cialis, so you know they work. You can take them anytime, day or night, even on a full stomach. Blue Chew works twice as fast as a pill

so you can be ready whenever an opportunity arises. And I know what you're thinking, when am I gonna have an emergency need for an erection? You can't imagine how many men find themselves in the presence of an angel or a succubus ready to hump and because of the radiant glory or the sulfuric demonic power emanating from their velvet breasts, the men are not able to get it up

and how disappointing, not just for the men but for the angels who wanted to be impregnated by a human man and spawn either the Christ, an antichrist or just a very powerful baby. Also, this isn't just for guys like me who haven't been able to get an erection ever since the last episode of Game of Thrones. This is for any guy who wants extra function

to enhance their performance in the bedroom. Blue Chew is prescribed online and shipped straight to your door in a discrete package so no in-person doctor visits, no waiting in the pharmacy and best of all, no more awkwardness. They're made in the USA and since Blue Chew prepares and ships direct, they're cheaper than a pharmacy.

Right now we've got a special deal for our listeners. Visit bluechew.com and get your first shipment free when you use our special promo code Duncan. Just pay $5 shipping. Again, that's bluechew.com promo code Duncan to try it for free. This is Ram Dass, hanging out in Neem Karoli Baba and coming back here and being able to talk about it

in a way that we could understand, knowing how to express the realizations he had in a non-threatening, non-alienating, non-elitist way. And anytime anybody takes up that incredibly important work, it's a really good thing for the world. And I think Charles Eisenstein is doing that very thing. If you like what you hear today,

check him out at CharlesEisenstein.org. And if you're confused by what you hear today, I don't know, reach out to me and give me some questions because this is only part one of this conversation with Charles Eisenstein. This is the first time we had met and I feel like I just scratched the surface but I'm definitely ready for round two.

So without further ado, everyone please open your heart chakras and explode transcendent love all over the etheric form that is Charles Eisenstein's eternal soul. Here he is everybody, Charles Eisenstein. All right. Welcome home to you. And you are with us. Shake and glory to be moved.

Welcome to you. It's Duncan Chasen. Charles, welcome to the DTFH. Thank you so much for coming on the show. Hey, thank you, Duncan, happy to be here. I've been looking forward to this conversation. And almost like, I guess, coincidentally, I just stumbled upon some interesting stuff relating

to quantum computing. And the video I was watching, I thought it must be from a UFO convention or something at first, because what the guy was saying was so wild, which is these quantum computers are dealing with multiple realities. And somehow they're using the overlap between two multiple realities to solve problems. And this, of course, if you get into quantum computing,

then you start getting into quantum super positioning. This strange idea that things are simultaneously in two separate states at once. And to me, you seem like someone who is plugging into the other universe that we're not quite in yet, but could be in the universe that tortures people like me, because you've since, like, yeah, this is a possibility. And I wonder if you could start off

by describing the differences between the potential world that you write about and talk about and the world that we keep hearing over and over again whenever we turn on the news. Yeah, that's an interesting way to frame it there, Duncan. I do often have the feeling that I'm describing something that is real, but that doesn't exist yet, which is kind of a paradox, because in the mythology

that we live in, real and exists are the same thing. In the world that we're used to, truth is the same as facts, what's actually there. And so when I'm describing the world that could be, even though it doesn't exist yet, or even if maybe some part of myself, even not to mention other people, thinks that it's impossible and some idealistic pipe dream, I never have the feeling that I'm making it up.

I have a feeling that I'm describing something that already exists. And it's almost like trying to, it's almost like there's like multiple realities that just like in quantum mechanics that exist in a superposition of states, and whichever one comes into manifestation is the one that we communicate with or that we align with. So yeah, one more thing I can say about that.

I think the reason that my words evoke something in people, it's because I'm not the only one who has seen it also. Like everybody who I've ever met has at least one experience in their life that feels like the incursion of some other reality into this one. And I don't necessarily mean it's like something supernatural or anything like that, but it's an experience that's like maybe could be a forgiveness or generosity or healing

or something like that, cooperation, community. And there's the feeling that the world could be built on this. This is real. I'm seeing something that wants to happen on Earth. And yeah, I guess where I am, kind of like you were saying, I'm coming from that world and trying to describe it. What are the qualities of that world versus this world? For example, the gifting economy, ideas of pure sharing,

this sense of not just rehumanizing each other and recognizing that everybody wants to be happy, but in a weird way, rehumanizing the Earth itself. This is what I've gathered from your writing. Yeah. Yeah, so the basic quality is that we are rehumanizing and re-sacralizing each other in the world. A lot of the problems in the world today

are based on dehumanization. For example, racism is a fundamental kind of making somebody else less than what I am, lesser being. But more subtly, any kind of judgment also makes somebody into less than fully human. Because you're saying, yeah, if I were you, Duncan, man, I wouldn't be doing that. I'd have a much more tidy beard if I were you.

You'd be right. You know, like this idea that I'm fundamentally separate from you. If I were in the totality of your circumstances, I wouldn't be a racist. I wouldn't be a greedy corporate executive. I wouldn't be X, Y, or Z. That is almost universal kind of dehumanization.

And then, of course, seeing nature as just a bunch of stuff, something to be insulated from or to be dominated or harnessed or exploited, that's also a reduction of the sacred into something that is valuable only for its use to myself or to us. So to rehumanize and resacralize is a profoundly different way of seeing the world. And it's not just a philosophy, but it also

leads to different kinds of relationships to people, to land, to place, to community. And I mean, I guess that's still a bit abstract. I don't think it's that abstract. I think it's the language. I was delighted when I took this plunge into studying superposition only because the descriptions of this aspect of the universe are so weird

that it made me feel less crazy in the sense that when you say things like this, it makes me think, oh, this is a form of traveling. This is a form of moving through states of possibility. And the moment that I am looking at a tree with my baby and I'm telling the baby, that tree is alive. That tree loves you and has a spirit in it and loves you. It's like I pop into a different dimension temporarily

that is different from the one that I have been taught to be in. I can't maintain that state, though. Another thing that has happened since I've had a baby is I've really lost my ability to be as much of a dick as I was convenient. Because any time I find myself judging anyone, which is lots of fun, the idea keeps popping in my head. That person had a mom, has a mom who held them and loved them.

And you're looking at them like they're furniture walking down the street or something. And then it destroys the ability to create that space. And man, if you need that space, you need that barrier if you don't want your heart to hurt. It's quite intense to accept the concept that, yeah, all this stuff around you is as alive as you are. All this stuff around you is as deserving

of joy and safety and comfort and love as you are. Wow, man, that hurts. That hurts. Do you think maybe that's the reason people are resistant to the sort of relationship with the universe that you are so good at articulating? Yeah, maybe because, like you're saying, when we open up to that, the level of suffering out there

becomes intolerable. Also, it makes life in the matrix less tolerable, too. Because the whole system that we live in only makes sense in separation. So when we understand, like, really feel the cost that's being extracted from other beings, like, we don't want to participate in that. And that's pretty inconvenient.

I think that what you're talking about with your baby and stuff, in a way, and saying, yeah, the tree is alive and stuff, and you're talking about how hard it is to hold that belief sincerely, in a way, the baby probably knows that more than you do. Yes. Because this is an inborn knowledge, like, to be born into an enchanted world full of beings.

You don't have to ask the child to imagine too much to say, yeah, the sun is looking at us. That's a native intuition that gets crushed out of us. And I really think that I write about environmentalism, economy, like all kinds of stuff like that. And I always have the conviction that this is not, the solution is not going to be to switch to some more sustainable fuel source

or to come up with some nerdy tweak to the money system. And these kind of technical level solutions, they're not irrelevant. But unless the revolution goes down to this level of seeing the world as alive and sacred, then nothing's going to work. The revolution we're being invited into by the multiple crises of our time

goes all the way down to that level that you might call spiritual or whatever. But everything is going to change down to the depths or nothing really is going to change. Well, I mean, based on the every single bit of data that is being shown to us right now, something is going to change. I don't think the change is going to be as pleasant.

Or as it seems like there's a catastrophic, it seems like it's a difference between fusion and vision. Or society is at the brink of either just being completely fragmented in a kind of apocalyptic, catastrophic way or fusing together, which is where we're already at. I mean, this is why I thought it was so cool. I was reading this stuff about superposition. And maybe in my lack of understanding about it,

I'm turning it into something it's not. But this idea of like simultaneously being two things at once, the apocalypse and rebirth, the Garden of Eden and hell, all of these things happening sort of simultaneously. And what you're saying is something that I have thought, which is if there were to be a revolution, a real revolution, one that was completely unstoppable, it would happen inside of every single individual's heart.

And it would be a shift in perception that would be impossible for any kind of power, principality to reverse. For example, if suddenly everyone started seeing a mountain that for whatever reason was invisible to us, it doesn't matter if there were people saying, no, that mountain's not there. You're wrong.

No, it's clearly there. We can see it clearly. And even though there might be people who have made a great deal of profit from ignorance, if the ignorance fades away, they have no method for extracting energy in the way that they currently are. Because this is the, how are you going

to create a good, strong, functioning economy based on getting people to work for you and you pay them less? And then the CEOs get 1,000 times more. And then there's certain people get 1,000 times more. And in it, you kind of justify the starvation based on a sense of like, well, they probably brought it on themselves. How are you going to do that if the person is your hand?

No one has ever looked at their hand when it's bleeding, because they cut it and been like, well, it's my hands problem. I'm right. I guess it sucks. It's stupid. Cut itself on a knife, dumb hand. Not my problem.

Now I'm up here in my head. I don't have to worry about that. That's how close we are, I think, to paradise. It's just that shift. And the moment that happens, I suppose, in some ways, it is an apocalypse. That is an apocalypse in its own right, isn't it? Yeah, I love that analogy and how

it illustrates the changes that come to us when we start seeing others as not really separate. But as understanding, yeah, the rainforest, if that gets cut down, that hurts me, too. If there are people being locked up in prison or being bombed and droned and walled off, et cetera, that's hurting me, too. But it's more than that.

It's not just some self-interested rational calculation that, oh, I guess we'd better save the whales because if we don't, bad things will happen to us. It's just like, I have children, too. And I'm not saying, well, I better feed and protect and take good care of my son, otherwise, bad things will happen to me. That's, and I'm sure you're the same.

It's that your being has expanded to include your son, is it, or daughter? A son. Yeah, so your being includes your son now. If he's happy, you're happy. That's right. If he's unhappy, there's a part of you that cannot be completely happy.

You're not just you, the separate individual anymore. And I think that this something analogous is going on with us with our relationship to the rest of life. I'm not even sure if I'd like to use the term environment, which makes it into this kind of passive thing that environs us. But it's like the rest of life and the rest of this planet

and this cosmos even, when we fall in love with these other beings and this vast being we call Earth, then the question no longer is, are we gonna survive or not if we continue the fossil fuel economy or whatever we're talking about? That's not the right question. The question is, are we contributing to the flourishing of life?

What part are we playing? What do we want to be? What world do we want to live in? How do we take care of the world that we love? So it's a revolution of love, not of more enlightened self-interest. Ah, cool, that's cool. It's hard though.

I mean, this is hard. Our language is so, it's based on self-interest. So much of our very language is based on an economy that's an economy of self-interest. And this brings me to something I wanted to talk with you about, which is debt forgiveness. And you know, on the, it's an idea that's floating around right now

along with universal basic income. This concept of like, look, what if we just let go of debt? What if we just forget it? It's gone, no more debt. Everyone's out of debt now. And people, if you think stuff is owed to you, well, you're out of debt, but you're not gonna get what you thought was owed to you.

It's sort of complete reset. And I wonder if you could talk about that a little bit. Yeah, I'd love to. It's like, don't get me started, but you got me started. So let's say a few things about it. So that idea that we could just cancel all debts, that is a really good starting point

because it makes debt into something that we understand to be a human creation, a story. It's, it doesn't exist in physical reality. It only has the power that we give it to. And we could rewrite that story. It's not like this, whatever the $20 trillion debt as if it's this unalterable thing.

But once we go there, then the question becomes, okay, how do we want to rewrite that story? And it may not be like a blanket cancellation of all debt because your grandma's savings account is a debt that is owed to her by the bank. Right. Are you gonna cancel all pension funds? Are you gonna cancel everybody's savings?

Oh, wait, I'm sorry, I'm confused. I thought you meant that I get to cancel all the debts I owe to people, but they still owe me. This sounds like a terrible idea. I'm sorry, go ahead. Yeah, so obviously we have a situation where debt is a tremendous burden on people and on society. It is driving entire nations

to liquidate their natural resources. It makes people kill themselves. People hang themselves and shoot themselves and jump out of windows because of this constructed story that they owe someone so much money. Right. And so the question comes up, are these debts legitimate? Because there's some kind of moral calculus that says,

well, we have a moral obligation to repay our debts. Yes. And that makes sense unless people are put in a situation where they have no choice but to go into debt and they're in conditions where debt is inevitable and they never get out of it. Then maybe those debts aren't legitimate and this is arguably true on an international level

where countries are forced to go into debt and if they refuse, then they get regime changed and CIA-ed and invaded. They get help. No, no, no, they get food trucks filled with soldiers. It's so fucked up. Yeah, okay, so it's right. That's like a whole other topic we could go into.

Well, let's keep. The construction of narratives, but so yeah. So basically what I wrote about, I wrote a book called Sacred Economics that is basically saying what would the story that we call money look like embedded in a new story, a new mythology of interbeing, interconnection, interdependence, gift, reciprocity,

mutual care and so on. And one of the things that I came to was, there are two basic things. One is changing the way that money is created. Today it's created as debt. So it's inevitable that there's always gonna be more debt than money and we're always gonna be in competition

with each other for never enough. It's like a design feature of the system. So I explored reversing that, having money that bears negative interest that if you hold onto it, it gets less and less and less valuable. Cool, that's cool, man. Yeah.

And the other thing was as what you mentioned, it's universal basic income, which only makes sense with a very different view of human nature. Because if you believe that everyone out there is seeking to maximize their self-interest and you're giving them enough money to live on, then you're like, well, why would they ever work?

If you don't make them work, if you don't make them contribute to society, then they're not gonna do it. They're just gonna sit around and play a world of Warcraft all day. They're not gonna give, they're not gonna create, they're not gonna heal, they're not gonna take care of other people.

And that, I mean, that view of human nature, like, are we going to just assume that that's the way people are? That's not what I see in human nature. I see people who are burning to give something to the world, who want to start permaculture farms and work with homeless people

and do all kinds of things and create art and create music. And the only reason they're not doing this work, some of which is the most important work to be done right now, is because they do not have the money to do it. So the story of money that holds certain things valuable isn't encouraging what the planet needs the most right now. This story that you're telling,

and I'm sorry to cut you off, this story you're telling, it is the boundary, isn't it? It's like the wall between us and the Garden of Eden is made of this story. Every brick in that wall is made up of this very sad story, which is that humans are self-interested. Humans, if they need that universal basic income, they're probably lazy.

They shouldn't care about that $1,000. They should have already been working, figuring it out. You're just giving them handouts. It's gonna poison them. It's the last thing you should do to someone, the best thing for a person is to face the cruel, hard world and become someone strong like I did

because I was down in that dirt. I was fucking roaches were crawling. I have a story that's really good based on me pulling myself out of the dirt and it's bullshit, but if I'm drunk enough or if I'm feeling really sanctimonious, then I can plug into that story and produce a situation where I don't have to feel bad

for people who aren't doing okay right now because I can think, well, I did it. If I could do it, anybody can. And this is the shittiest feeling. So please continue. Sorry, I love what you're saying. I love what you're saying. I'm imagining you in the dirt, in the roaches and stuff.

And the moment before that change happened, you were probably feeling completely despairing and completely helpless. And I'm curious, what changed? Was it something that you did or was it something that happened to you? Oh, yeah, it was a series, it was good luck. It was privilege, it was a lot of various things

intersected, love of the universe, good friends. And these things led to some form of success, but the reality of it is that when I was, there and when I'm here, there wasn't much of an internal, I still feel kind of the same. It's like the balm of success, it really, I don't know. It didn't do much. But to get into this idea of sharing,

I'm assuming you go to Burning Man. I was there once. And they have this gifting economy. And you can only buy ice and coffee there. I see you kind of rolling your eyes a little bit. You think it's like, it doesn't fit in with your idea of it. I'm not rolling my eyes. I appreciate the beauty of Burning Man

and the ideal towards which it strives and the compromises and imperfections of it. Oh yeah, imperfections galore. And I, listen, by the way, I hope that I didn't make you feel bad for rolling your eyes. It's almost done. No, I don't mind.

Okay, cool. Well, good. The, but okay, so let's just imagine instead of, that it's some like utopia. Let's imagine it's a Renaissance fair where you get to pretend you're in a utopia. And, but still within it, there's this chance to give something to someone

with no expectation of return. And people are giving you stuff with no expectation of return. And right away it produces this very interesting mirror which is shame. If someone, if people give me stuff, I feel this sense of, oh, thank you. I mean, you shouldn't have.

I just don't, I, and it's, and when, and when there, when you give people stuff and they overreact or you can see this lifetime of conditioning based on this sense, if you give me something, I'm now in your debt. I owe you something back in some way or another, or if I give you something, you owe me something back. And it completely reduces, if not annihilates

this basic joyful feeling when that kind of transfer happens with truly no expectation of return. It's the craziest feeling ever. It's better than any feeling. It's, and what's really sad about it is that it seems like the way things are supposed to be. It reminds me of when you see those depressing videos of when it snows in the polar bear part, in the zoo.

And the polar bear comes out and it gets to be in snow. He gets to be in snow that he was supposed to be in. And he, and suddenly you see him joy, delight, rolling around in this stuff. He's experiencing what he was born for, snow. No big deal for a regular polar bear, but a polar bear in a zoo, it's gonna be one of the best days of his life.

Similarly, when you put a person in a situation where they could just give with no expectation of getting anything back, that person almost instantly, at least this person, feels like this is what I was supposed to do all my life. This is what we were born for, to give to each other, to just give, to just outflow and not inflow. And that is why I love Burning Man.

Even if all the other stuff's surrounding it, it's one of the only things that's ever really given me that experience outside of having a child. Yeah, no, I think Burning Man really can be really powerful in introducing that new data point that doesn't fit the story that we've grown up in and the world that we are immersed in usually. I feel it too, like when I'm in that kind of situation

of just universal generosity, I have a feeling of safety, of liberty, that it's okay to give, it's okay not to guard, it's okay not to hoard, it's okay not to control, because nobody else is either, and I'll be okay. If I give away everything, I'll be fine because everybody's gonna be doing the same thing and giving to me too, and if I'm in need,

somebody will pick up on that and they will meet my need. So this is the thing, the system of scarcity that we have in the world, it creates the conditions that generate the story of scarcity, and then the story of scarcity turns around and creates the system. So the system and the story go together, if you're in this society, like you better be on guard,

because people are trying to take advantage of you all the time. Every time you log on to the internet. So you have to be on guard. That's right. That's crazy. The internet is like, it's milking us. It's like, it's a milking machine for human energy

and human activity, and but I have been experimenting a little bit with interpersonal debt forgiveness or the concept of like the variety of currencies that exist in the world that aren't just money or cryptocurrency, what do you think are the other currencies out there besides money and cryptocurrency, besides the general ways that we tabulate debt?

Are you talking about like social currencies, gravitational guarantees, that kind of stuff? Yes. I'm a little wary of attempts to make those things into currency or into something like money in the sense of something that can be counted and quantified and exchanged because the reduction of relationship and nature and the experience of life

into numbers, I think is part of the problem. No, this is an excerpt. This to me is one of the ways to, for people who maybe seem a little confused or supremely skeptical or even offended by the notion of universal basic income or debt forgiveness who think this is an unnatural state. It doesn't work like that.

One of the tricks is okay, but I want you to start keeping track of the currency of love in your family. And I want you to start writing down every time you give the baby food. And I want you to start writing down every time you call someone in your family back and listen to them talk about Trump for 30 minutes. And I want you to start making little debt charts

on how much people owe you for what you think you're giving them. And that your reaction is right. It's disgusting. I mean, if like my- Yeah, cause those things are already written onto the ledger of the heart. You don't need to keep track of them.

Well, there is no heart ledger. This is the thing when I've started like looking at my own patterns that are not conducive to a happy family. They all are rooted in a ledger that is non-existent. They're all rooted in a sense of like this. And I used to believe this shit. A relationship is like deposits and withdrawals.

You've got to deposit a certain amount of love. You can't just keep taking and taking. And if you do, you're gonna fuck everything up because you oh, oh, oh. And it's like, I remember hearing that when I was younger, I mean like, yep, that's how it is. This person, this is explains why I don't like so and so. Cause they are deeply in love debt to me.

Cause boy, have I been given to them. And it's bullshit. And so that's why I mentioned it to you just cause I think I agree with- Yeah, I'm speaking more metaphorically. It's the opposite of what we normally think of as a ledger, but it's true that any act, any time somebody shows love to me,

it is recorded somehow in my body and it shifts me into the reality of love. And I think it's also recorded into the ledger of the world. It's not a plus and minus ledger. Ledger, it's not that if you give love to one person, you're taking something from somewhere else. It's additive. The more love that you give, the more love you have,

it's the opposite of money in fact. So- Or maybe it's more like there isn't, it's like in the ocean giving water to someone. You know, like if we are on the ocean and I gave you a nice gift of seawater, it would be ridiculous because we're in the fucking ocean.

And but if I'm like, here is a nice glass, seawater for you, my friend. This, it's similarly this concept of love, being a thing that you get more of is like being in the ocean and thinking, if I swim over here, I'll have more water. And it's like, you know, you're in the ocean. So to me, I love the debt forgiveness thing.

And I love your idea of like, this is an internal revolution. And I've been trying to quantify or to look into the ways that I've been holding accounts for people and then trying to apply debt forgiveness there. Because- I see, yeah, yeah. People don't owe me a lot of money, unfortunately.

Yeah. But the ledger of my heart and the, and the, how do you say it, Dickinsonian? The Charles Dickens style banker in there, this bank needs to be shut down permanently. And by quantifying this currency of love, it's given me real leverage to do debt forgiveness. And because debt forgiveness of the heart

is just forgiveness, isn't it? Yeah, I think you're letting, I mean, you're talking about letting go of resentment too. Resinment is the feeling of holding somebody in our debt. Oh, yeah. Oh, whoa. Resinment is the feel, so like, oh my God, yeah. The more, oh, that's so,

so resentment is the pain of being owed love by someone. It's the pain of telling a story or creating a paradigm where love can be given back or you can run low on love. And then you start feeling resentment because your whole brain is attached itself to a conceptualization of the universe that does not match what's actually happening,

which is that we are in an infinitely abundant present moment-ness, I guess you could say. You can't run out, we're not gonna run out. It's not gonna happen. Does that make sense or do I, am I? Yeah, and that coexist with the lived reality for many people of tremendous scarcity, not only material scarcity, but scarcity of love,

scarcity of fellowship, scarcity of community, scarcity of intimacy, scarcity of beauty, scarcity of authentic communication, scarcity of silence, scarcity of connection, so much scarcity in this society that there's more to it than just say, oh, well, that's just an illusion because it's a constructed illusion that we live in.

And I'm interested in how to deconstruct that. And there's the perceptual level because a lot of times there is abundance. The very things that we need are actually right there if we just change the way we look at things. And then there's also like the social and political level, the abundance of the world, the abundance of food, for example, something like one in seven children

in this country go hungry sometime during the year. I mean, there are millions of people literally starving to death on earth and we waste something like 40 or 50% of the food that we grow. So over abundance, side by side with scarcity, these two realities coexisting. And the reason that people are starving

is also because of a constructed reality called the money system or the economy that makes people not eat simply because they don't have enough, it's not because they don't have enough food really, it's because they don't have enough money and money is something that we just create. So yeah, it's about changing the narrative,

the story and the system. And where do you begin in this chicken and egg thing where a story creates system and system creates story? That's not a trivial question. Give everything away. Can I, before we answer that question, may I go Tucker Carlson on you for a moment? Yeah, do whatever you want, man.

I'm not even sure like what, I'm game for it for any way you wanna play. I'm completely aligned with your POV, by the way. But just because people listening when they hear this sort of thing, they think, no, it's an impossibility. So I'm going to take on the role of Tucker Carlson, only because I wanna come up with in this conversation

some actionable things people listening can do that can really demonstrate that your conceptualization of the economy or what the economy could be can happen. It's not just a pipe dream, but let me be the devil for a second, okay? What are you gonna do? What's your idea?

You're gonna take money away from people who don't wanna give the money away? What are you gonna do? What are the millionaires and the billionaires out there and the trillionaires out there? This is theirs. The mansion is theirs. The yacht is theirs.

The armies are theirs. They own it all, man. And they got it or their parents got it for them. And if you're suggesting that they're supposed to forgive debts, that they, money that they loaned, trusting they would get it back, then what's the difference between that

and just outright theft? What's the difference between, isn't this just a sort of a hip-fied way of rationalizing, stealing from the rich and redistributing the wealth to the poor? And how is that even possible without some form of violence?

And in that, don't we find ourselves back in the same place that we were trying to get away from, which is that we now are the conqueror. We now are pillaging. And what we're pillaging is the bank accounts of the rich. And so how does this even work?

There's no way to make this happen. I can possibly imagine outside of some form of violent revolution because revolution has to be violent, because people are holding on very tightly to what they got. Yeah, beautiful. That's very well said, Tucker.

Thank you. Thank you for your question. Yeah, so facing the situation, there are basically two ways to address it. And you named one of them, which is to violently take from the rich and give it to everybody else. And you could muster up

plenty of very valid justifications for doing that. Going back to the origin of wealth and the way that it's maintained and justice and so on and so forth. And these people don't really deserve that much. And they're only able to make that much because of a social contract that allows them to engage in commerce

and that enforces property rights. And they should be compensating the polity for the maintenance of this social contract, contract, et cetera, et cetera. If they don't wanna let go of it, then we're gonna have to take it by force. Or if not outright violence, the imposition of political will

upon these people against their will. And that is conventional political thinking. But there's another piece that needs to be in the mix because if we rest our hopes on the violent overthrow of the ruling classes, sooner or later, I think we end up in despair because the fact is that the ruling classes, as Tucker was saying there,

have more guns, more money, obviously, more media, the surveillance state, the propaganda machine, et cetera, et cetera. Like how are we gonna overcome them at their own game? So the other piece that's essential is to understand that the millionaires, and trillionaires, as you put it, aren't actually benefiting in the way that we think they are.

That they're not, the system is not working for them either. And that this vast pile of wealth that goes way beyond any conceivable material need is a compensation for what they're actually missing in life. What are they missing in life? Yeah, and if you're coming to them with the knowledge that what I want is for you to be happier, what I want is a better world for you.

Not what I want is to take something from you and make you make do with less, but I want a better world that you'll be happier to. And how do you know what that looks like? Go to Senegal, go to some remote place where people are in joy. Even places that have been affected horrendously by war and strife and economic extraction,

there's a lot more joy there than you'll find in the wealthy enclaves of America where suicide and depression and opioid addiction are sky high. There's something not working for anybody, not even the 1%. And as long as we, if we do not accept that and understand that,

then we will have no other option, but war against the rich. But when we understand that it's not working for them either, then there's no enemy. I got you. And yeah, and then like it takes skill to speak to that part of them. To speak to that part of them, you have to actually see it.

See the part of them that wants a more beautiful world, that wants to be in the gift, that wants to contribute to something meaningful. You have to see it. And to see it, you have to look for it. And to look for it, you have to put down the fog of judgments that prevent you from seeing that divine peace,

that magnificent human being in front of you. And to put down the judgments, that requires healing of trauma because the judgments are the external winds that's part of an experience of, so yeah, inner and outer, they're all, they all need to change at once. Holy shit.

That's crazy. It requires healing of trauma. So it's, you're saying that the revolution, or this thing that you're talking about, starts with healing your personal trauma. It starts with getting in there and finding where the trauma is. And then from that,

there'll be a natural reduction of the judgments for others. And then in that, the separation, the density of the separation, maybe will become a little, it'll seem less dense. Yeah, I wouldn't necessarily say it starts with that. I don't wanna lead us to trauma fundamentalism, where it's all about trauma,

but it's an important piece for sure. I'm sorry, I have to stop you. Is that a concept trauma fundamentalism? No, well, I just made it up. Holy shit. That's awesome. Ah. Everybody's like, here's the thing.

Here's the one thing. And if we change this one thing, then everything will change. I got you, that's me. I want that. I need, that's my, that's cause I like easy things. So if I can, I was just, anytime you can find the one thing, it's fantastic.

But okay, keep going. Sorry about that. That's cool though. Well, yeah. So that's just an example of how the inner and the outer are so intimately entwined and how you cannot separate personal healing, relational healing, community healing

from political and ecological healing. They all go together. They're all part of the same movement. Right. And that means that as an activist, you have to, you can understand that maybe one person's working on the level of government policy or trying to save a forest from being cut down

and somebody else is doing, I don't know, men's work, you know, or community healing or some working one-on-one with people. And to understand that we are all allies in the same thing, serving the same thing. That creates solidarity and liberates people to exercise their unique gift in, in their unique way. Understanding that really everything is a political act.

When you understand that the only hope lies in ending the war on the other, which could take the form of the war against the rich, the war against the corporations. Yeah, this is, this seems actionable. This seems like it's a, there's not, it seems like the kind of thing if people were to start experimenting

in small ways with this, it could build up some kind of momentum. As you're saying, as you're talking about this, particularly like just we're all allies and not everyone has to be working on a specific, like it's a massive undertaking here. When it's like, it's building a house requires people with varying levels of expertise in many different things.

And that we don't all have to be working in the same situation, but it sounds like what you're saying is just if you can find one little corner of the house to start working on, and maybe that corner is your own hangups, maybe that corner is your own family, or maybe that corner is your direct circle of friends. And to me, this is what Jack Cornfield says, which I love, tend to the part of the garden you can touch.

Because when I start thinking about the melting ice caps, or when I start thinking about the rainforest, it's a distant kind of suck. You know, like I think, oh, that sucks, but it's like a suck with a volume turned way low. But, and so it's hard for me to get real passionate about the rainforest. It's hard for me to get passionate about the ice caps.

But when I think about friends in my life that I know are depressed, or people in my life who need help, or even if I just think, what could, how much could I give away my shit? And who would I give it to? Something in there, that's sparked something for me. And, yeah. And then sometimes it was just like the thing

that gets under your skin. And it might be the rainforest, or it might be, I was just in, where was it, Orcas Island, on, you know, near Washington state. And there's these whale watching companies, you know, and I learned that what they do is they go out in the morning with helicopters, and they search for where the Orcas are.

And then they bring these really loud ships, like really loud motors out to, and chase the Orcas all over the place. The Orcas never get to rest. They're getting harassed by helicopters, and motors, and stuff like that all the time. Just so people can have the experience to put into their experiential backpack of,

oh yeah, I saw the whale. They're like George Clooney. They're like George Clooney of the sea. That guy can't go anywhere without people taking pictures. You know, they're like the celebrity, it's the sea paparazzi, poor Orcas, that sucks. Yeah, yeah, it sucks, you know? And somehow like that one got to me.

And maybe if I were in a different station in life right now, like that might become my, if I lived there probably, I might become an activist about that and try to change that and stop that from happening. Is that going to end climate change? Is that going to end racism? Is that gonna make any difference to anybody

except for those few Orcas? It's hard to say. But if something calls to me, calls to my heart in that way, then I like to just trust that. And trust that somehow this is part of the global revolution that I'm talking about that is not primarily a revolution of force. And it's amazing, like it is the power of seeing somebody

in their divinity or in their magnificence, we're seeing the best version of who they are, who they can be, it's amazingly powerful because the story that we hold about somebody is an invitation for them to step into that story. And I'm reminded of one of Gandhi's, gosh, I wish I could remember his name, Singh maybe, one of his most prominent followers

who basically traveled around India talking to the wealthiest landowners and persuading them to give up, I think it was a sixth or a fifth of their land to the poor, to the landless peasants. And he would just show up and speak to them knowing that that's actually what they wanted to do, holding them in the story, not of greedy landowner,

but in the story of somebody who would really like to make this gift, but is afraid to do it because of his upbringing, because of his cultural surround. He's afraid, but I'm gonna help him because I know what he really is. And imagine how powerful we would be if we were able to hold that about other people. We could create the invitation

and it's not to like blind ourselves to the horrible shit that people are doing. You have to actually see it to be able to exercise that invitation. And as I said before, to see it, you have to look for it. And to look for it, you gotta put down the judgments. And where do the judgments come from? I mentioned trauma, but every time that we judge,

say Charles Koch or Donald Trump or somebody as worse than ourselves, we're actually also elevating ourselves in comparison. And we're saying essentially, when we're in judgment of somebody, we're saying, yeah, I'm good. I get to like myself. I'm lovable.

I'm deserving of approval. And that points to the trauma. Like why would we need to do that? Only if we've had experiences of not being approved of unconditionally for who we truly are, of not being loved, of not being respected. So yeah, so there's a lot of healing.

And then we can also, well, anyway, I could go on and on, but you get the picture there. I get the picture, but still it's, to me, it's, it feels exciting, but I'm, I want something, I'm just trying to think of something like truly actionable based on this. Like as you're talking, I'm thinking of like,

is it a some kind of repository where, you know, collectives can put money in and fill it up. And then that becomes the universal basic income source. You know what I mean? Like some way of like, instead of always depending on the governments to do this shit, like if enough of us just started giving

away, and there was some like, again, you have to do this as a thought experiment and imagine some utopian system where this, this type of resources could be pooled and then an administrative body that could then like, give this out. I mean, this has been the church, you know, and tithing, you trust your church

is going to do charity for you. You don't have time or you don't know. And some people have charities they give to, but as you're talking, I just keep thinking like, whoa, what would happen if like enough of us just started filling up some repository with art, with dough, without just giving to that. And then there was a way to like dispense that

so that people started getting checks and it wasn't based on the state. And in that, this kind of weird in a dream, this weird revolution does start happening, which is that if we start equalizing or balancing where there are imbalances in this particular way, then it seems like it would naturally begin to lessen the potency and the control factors

that allow the exploitive elements of our society to continue to solidify this type of hellscape that we call modern life. And, but it requires first, it seems like detaching completely from the idea that anybody else is gonna do it for us. We don't, it's not gonna be the government. It's not gonna be the president.

It's not gonna be Bernie Sanders. It's not gonna be this, it's not gonna be, it's gonna be a global consciousness that springs up and begins to store its resources in a shared pool that is somehow distributed in a way that is unexploitable. Boy, that sounds like a real pipe dream. Well, let me talk about actionable and more practical and what we actually mean by that.

You kind of mentioned two levels of it. Actually, one would be what we as a society could do. How would we implement a system like that, that brought the spirit of gift and the spirit of interbeing into economics. Then the other thing, that's actually not practical if you're talking about what we should do because you're not, we, you're you.

So then there's the action step that we as individuals, like people listening to our conversation can take. And that's really different. Sometimes I get a little bit tired. I call it political bypass of like, you know, your spiritual bypass, right? Well, political bypass is something that takes the onus off yourself to actually do anything

because you're just going to talk about ideas. We could do it, gang. We'll do it. We'll make this thing. Isn't somebody else fucking do this, please? Cause I'm not going to. I'm just going to say we should do it and hope maybe if somebody-

Here's what we should do. In the meantime, I'm just going to keep doing whatever I'm doing, right? Guys, we should do the dishes. We really should. Not me, but we as in you. Okay, that's cool. Right.

Not to say that, I mean, there are, and not to take the other way too, and say, well, forget about political action, just be the change yourself. Like, I think both are necessary. So I'd like to say a little bit about both. Please. Starting on the collective level,

the basic, basically the way I see it working is starting with massive debt cancellation or actually it's more of a debtor's bailout. Next financial crisis, there's going to be trillions of dollars of unpayable debts. Last time this happened, the creditors were bailed out.

But did the debtors get bailed out? No, they still owed. It was just the Federal Reserve or the government bought the debts and they still owed. A debtor's bailout means that the debt is either canceled completely, your student loan is gone, for example, or the interest rate or it's canceled partially

or the interest rate is cut to zero or negative. That's the first step. To do that requires massive monetization of debt. Like the Federal Reserve has to, will have to buy trillions of dollars in debt and replace them with money. So the creditors are not destroyed either. Whereas, so if I'm a creditor

and the people out there owe me a hundred billion dollars and they're not going to pay, the government gives me the hundred billion dollars. So I'm good, but this money now is negative interest money, which is implemented through a liquidity fee on bank reserves. So money in the Fed is subject to say a negative 5% interest rate,

which means that if I've got a hundred billion dollars now, I don't want to just hold on to it and watch it shrink by 5% a year. I'll lend it out even at zero interest, which allows a zero growth economy to flourish. Because today in our current system, it's impossible to have a healthy economy without strong economic growth,

which demands the depletion of nature. Anyway, that's a whole other thread, but to say, so the money gets, so money is subject to a negative interest rate, trillions and trillions of dollars of newly created base money subject to a negative interest rate, that's what funds the universal basic income.

Wow. So it all kind of goes together. How do you, why though? Who's going to do that? How do we make that happen? I can't imagine that happening. Like, how does that, that seems like, I mean, I, that, like,

I'm definitely not going to start a pool of like, blockchain money to give to the people of the world. But the thing you just said, I like, barely, and like, I feel like I would have to go to school for, I'd have to have your brain. I need to have a, just Charles Eisenstein brain to understand what you just said.

The thing you just said is like high math to me. And I think, I don't- I've been, yeah, I mean, like, yeah. I mean, I spent years thinking about it. So I apologize for taking shortcuts and not explaining it, but I'm also feeling like I don't have a huge amount of time, but it can be explained. And like debt cancellation,

that's pretty darn easy to understand. I understand that. But I don't understand why, what would motivate the state or creditors- Because, because, because it's a crisis, because nothing else working. And because like central banks already kind of want to do this. They kind of, because monetary policy is not working anymore.

For it to work, they have to be able to go below zero. So there's, there's reasons. This is not an unknown concept in central banking circles that I'm talking about. So it already kind of wants to happen because it's the only way to allow a steady state or degrowth economy to function. So they're like people who are, you know,

the cognizantie will understand what I'm talking about. The barrier to overcome is that it is not in the interests of the rich to, they, they are going, it's like inflation, you know, if, if interest rates are negative, then you can no longer become richer and richer merely by owning money. Yeah. I mean, to me, it just seems, it seems like-

So there needs to be political will. Political will or like to me, it goes back to, you know, a general sense of like, look, you guys have to let the steam out of the pressure cooker. And if you think that you can keep sucking the dough in and not giving any of it back and the people are not, are just going to like walk around like that's cool.

Look at what's happening in Paris. Look at the yellow vest. Look at what happens. This shit will break out. And, and to me, that's the, that's what, that's the reason behind it is like, there's way more of us than you. And that's the bottom line.

Eventually people are going to blow, man. You can't suck it all in and then expect people to be like, oh yeah, it's just fair, man, the game's fair because the game, people will start seeing and right now you can see it's not fair. But when it gets to more and more extreme levels then it becomes so apparent that, okay, sure. Well, maybe we're not supposed to violently take their shit

but the reality of it is, is they're violently keeping us away from what we should have. So someone's going to fight back. And I don't want that to happen. But maybe we can bring it down to someone listening right now who wants to be part of this sort of unfolding into a new reality, into the part of the multiverse

where we are experiencing not a slow shift even though that may be it, but in our own personal lives you can experience a dramatic radical revolution. And to me that means emotional debt forgiveness. That means looking at all the accounting you've done in your own mind of shit people owe you and having a, you don't even have to tell them

you've done it, but just forget it, you're not getting it back and that's fine. And I love what you said about resentment being the burn that comes from feeling like somebody has an emotional debt to you because that gives a little X on the treasure map, so to speak, which is like who the fuck are you resenting? Who's somebody, just make a list of the people in your life

that you resent deeply. And if you don't have that list, congratulations, you're enlightened, but make the list and then look at why you're resenting them. And if it has something to do with a sense that they owe you something, you help them move and they didn't say thank you, whatever the fuck it is, forgive that, start there.

Because I think that what I love about what you're talking about is that these debt economy, the story, it seems to be a symptom of a shared interior resentment. All of our individual resentments have gathered together and formed this massive shadow, the gestalt, the reflection of all of our interior resentments, debt, the Federal Reserve, the national debt,

all of this stuff is actually just a reflection of the sum total of all of us thinking somebody owes us something. It's like, how the fuck can I suggest that the Federal Reserve forgive all debts when I'm still pissed at my brother? Right, you're not living in the universe in which that is even possible.

That, yes, right. Right, and this gets back to the quantum reality shift. And there is this mystical level of it that I am just gonna put out there without scientific proof, which is that any act that we commit that is aligned with a different world than the one we live in helps bring that world

into alignment with the choice that we've made. And this is this mysterious intimate connection between the inner and the outer. So if we are in, yeah, so if we forgive, if we are generous, if we are able to see others that way and act from that place, then we're basically making a declaration to the universe or a prayer saying,

here's the world that I wanna live in. And it's not just an idea I have, I'm willing to commit to it through my actions, even when I'm afraid to do it. And I think that ultimately when enough people do that, we're going to kind of vibrate the world into alignment with those choices. I think it's a migration.

I think it's a multiverse migration. Listen, don't worry about saying things that aren't scientific, by the way, because I can spew it, man. It's a multiverse migration. I think there is, we're living in a universal world, a society where there's a specific type of density that is completely unappealing to what it is,

it was antithetical to what it is to be alive and to be a human and to be part of nature. But we're in it right now. I don't know how we got here, but we're here, we're here. If you're listening to this, you're in it with us, we're here, but I think we can migrate. And I think that we see birds migrate all the time. How do they know where they're going?

What are they doing? What is that? But similarly, I think, and I know this sounds so insane, we can migrate between these multiverses. And right now, there is a world, there is a human society that did it, that did it, that pushed past the boundary created instinctually or over time or something

that was coupled together by consciously nefarious people, but mostly unconscious people who are just scared. And I think we could just all start moving away from that. And I don't know, I think that if you were, if like after this podcast, I was to just take a bunch of money and give it to some, a school, you know? I know there's a website where you can just look,

classes need money for paper for their students. I feel like if I did do something like that or found some other profoundly scary way to give a thing with just to give, I think maybe I would start moving out of this creepy society that we're in into some other place. And I've noticed that there's a magical thing that does happen and I feel crazy talking about it,

but come on, the moment you start giving, synchronicities do appear in your life. Now I sound like a televangelist, plant the seed in the tree, but it's true. The moment you just start giving, I'm sorry, your universe gets more magical and it happens almost instantly. Yep, I have, I ran this online course

called Living in the Gift. Yes. And I'm gonna wait till your friend starts barking there. Living in the Gift, that's the gift. Living in the Gift. That's the gift of Poodle Bark. And one of the things, so one of the themes that came up

was exactly what you're saying. People would, I suggested people do something generous that's a little out of the ordinary of their normal flow of generosity, because actually all of us are very much in gift all the time when you realize it or not, but something a little bit, you know, not normal. And people had some amazing experiences of synchronicity

that followed that. And I think that it happens because in giving, there's a release of control. When you release control, then another order of things, another intelligence that's not based on what you can make happen comes up. So it creates the release of control allows space for synchronicities to emerge.

Wow. And yeah, and it comes from an orientation. Like the first, so the starting point might not be to, you know, send a bunch of money to the school. The starting point is an orientation and a recognition of a willingness to take that next step into gift. And that orientation then makes you receptive

to the right gift at the right time, the right opportunity, which may be something that you can't even recognize before, but that becomes apparent to you. And I think that, yeah, there's no formula to doing this. And that's why I can't say, if someone says, well, where do you think I should give my money, Charles? I'm like, what speaks to you? What calls to your care?

Because the listening organ called the heart will orient you toward the best application of whatever gifts that you have. So that's the orientation. And then to be able to awaken it in others. Like you talked about forgiveness. And my thought is, well, why? Why should you forgive other people

and let go of resentment? Give me a practical reason. Because the goal of all of this is not that you get to be a good person now. There's, like, why are we doing this? There's a reason that is mostly invisible that answers that question. But it's not that you'll benefit in any way.

Where is it? Oh, wow. But yeah, really practical here. Like, why should I? Why should I forgive? Because it hurts, man. It hurts. It fucking hurts to be angry.

And what I read some, I don't know who said it, but anger is the way we punish ourselves for other people's mistakes. Right, but resentment is like drinking poison, hoping that the other person will get sick. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, something like that, yeah. Yeah, so just that.

It's like, why? Because it's like, why should you not run your car on shitty fuel? It's burning your car up. And it's like, why should you, why should the circuitry of who you are be fueled by resentment and anger and fear? All of these things to me are qualities

that harmonize you with a type of world that is really quite wretched. And so I don't wanna say like why, all this revolves around benefit. But, you know, I don't want my heart to wonder how it can like do better than my other organs. You know, I don't need a successful heart. I need a functioning ecosystem where everything's,

where it's working out for everything, or I'm in trouble. No one's ever gone to the doctor and been like, bad news. You're fucking pancreas is just failing. Good news, your heart. You got a really, really healthy heart. It's, you know, this is, so we need the whole thing to work. You know? And I don't know how to talk about it.

Unfortunately, I wish I could come up with a thing. Right now, my sense is benefit-based. And maybe that's okay. Isn't it okay to start there just to think, well, okay, I am gonna get something out of this. You know, I can't get- Yeah, the problem though, the problem though is that when you come from that place,

you often end up with fake forgiveness or attempted forgiveness. Yeah, right. I find that real forgiveness comes as a side effect of seeing something true. Ah, okay, cool. Yeah. And the basic template of that truth is that,

is it's the understanding of the other person's situation. Understanding that, oh yeah, this is what they were thinking. This is what they were experiencing. If I had been in that situation, I might have done that too. Oh no, but then I'm the asshole. God damn it, damn it. The moment you do, you use that part of your brain, it's like the whole thing backfires and it's painful.

I mean, I love it. You're right, you're absolutely right. It's just you don't get to be, that's funny, I'm saying you're absolutely right. Yeah, you don't get to be the good guy anymore. You don't get to be better than. You don't get to be the hero. You don't get to be the conquering victor.

You don't get to be the Conan the Barbarian. What is it in Conan the Barbarian? Yeah, and why do you want, so then you can take it another level though. Why do you want to be that? Is it because you're bad? What happened to you that you're craving to be the good guy that you have sanctimoniousness and self-righteousness?

Right. What happened? The same thing that happened to that other person maybe, that made them do that shitty thing. Right. We're all in it together. Yeah. And if we could look at each other through those eyes,

we would have a lot more access to creative solutions to our personal and social problems. Man, you are so inspiring. And I'm, this is like, this really has given me some good motivation for doing some emotional debt forgiveness that needs to be done and not being the fucking hero, man.

And it's like when that dumb song came out with one of the Mad Max's, the Tina Turner song, I never understood it. We don't need another hero. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. It's such a cheesy song. But they, you know, all we want is the thunder dumb, really dumb, but heroes are the problem right now, man.

And it's really messing everything up. We've got all these heroes out there, man. And the problem is a hero depends on catastrophe to exist. By wanting to be a hero, you're wishing there to be some catastrophe that you could then function within to elevate yourself. And it's a really innately rotten thing to wanna be. So yeah, I think surrendering the concept

of wanting to be a hero or understanding why we want that in our lives. Why do we feel that starved that we wanna be a hero in the world? Yes, and to ask that question without an agenda of blame or guilt, and I'm gonna, you know, uncover this bad thing about myself, but with real gentleness.

When we ask ourselves that, when we ask other people that too, when we ask them, yeah, why did you do that thing? Help me to understand and to really mean it, not as an attack, but- That's so good. Yeah, I want understanding so that I can change the conditions.

It's the opposite of Superman. It's like we all need to go into phone booths and walk out in normal clothes. Yeah, it's true. Like what we need now is not heroes so much as warriors. You know, in the layout of Moore and Gillette, they talk about the male archetypes of the warrior, magician, lover, and king.

The hero is the immature version of the warrior. It's a boy archetype. And the hero's journey ends with, I did it, you know, look at me, you know, Luke Skywalker getting the medal in front of him. Yeah, and you know, that's a valid archetype, and it's part of the process, but what we need in this world is people

who do not need to get the recognition. They'll settle for the world changing. They'll settle for healing, even if they're never even recognized. That takes courage. That's a warrior. He doesn't need the glory. He's passed that.

Wow. Okay, okay. Thank you very much for your time today. I really appreciate it. And thank you so much for the work that you're doing in the world. If I had a medal to give, I would give it to you whether you like it or not.

You could have all my medals. Thank you so much. How can people find you? CharlesEisenstein.org. Great. Yeah, where they can. That was Charles Eisenstein, everybody. If you enjoy the DTFH, do me a favor,

support our sponsors, order some boner pills and get some stocks and subscribe to us on iTunes, won't you? And if you would like to hear some extra rambling, opening monologues, no commercials, just me yapping. This month's episode is titled The Quantization of the Soul or Jamming the Clown Nose of the Universe through the Keyhole of Time.

It's all over at patreon.com forward slash DTFH. Until next time, Hare Krishna. You can get Dirty Angel anywhere you get your music. Ghost Towns, Dirty Angel Out Now. New album and tour date coming this summer. When life gets crazy and when doesn't it, Shoprite helps you keep it all together, now with a little extra help from Instacart.

If you want to see more of this, check out Dirty Angel Out Now. You can get Dirty Angel anywhere you get your music. Ghost Towns, Dirty Angel Out Now. With a little extra help from Instacart. If you need your groceries now-ish, but your options for going to Shoprite are later-ish or never-ish, you can get everything you need delivered through Instacart

right to your door in as fast as an hour. Skip the shop and savor more of your crazy, busy life with Shoprite and Instacart. Visit instacart.com to get free delivery on your first order. Offer valid for a limited time, minimum order, $10 additional terms apply.