The Ascent of Humanity by Charles Eisenstein

The Ascent of Humanity Reviews

• 
  Justin

  The Ascent of Humanity falls into a selective category of books which has redefined my life simply by the process of reading it. Similar to the breath of fresh air I received when reading Krishnamurti or Arthur Koestler for the first time, Charles Eisenstein is the modern practical philosopher. But to call him a philosopher is to diminish the all-encompassing treatise that Ascent of Humanity is to the modern human.
  
  The modern American culture has persuaded us that everything is ok, whether by focusing on sports or celebrities or through medicating those with alternate views to reality. Eisenstein reveals that is the rest of us who are sick. Sick from separation from "nature", the very representational nature of the word reveals our innate contempt for it. This separation has now become ingrained within our lives through degraded diets, overly sized residences, isolation from community and relationship through shared consumption. But no worries they (the leaders, experts and scientists) say, science and technology will save us. Eisenstein's masterwork here is the complete desolation of the modern technological paradigm, what he labels as the Technological Program, the idea that our problems can be fixed with more technology. Like the addict, technology has become the cause and solution of all life's problems.
  
  This is simply the most important book I have ever read. Not only because of its content but at the point in my life during which I read it. In-between undergraduate and impending graduate school. Perhaps I am tempted to unplug from a spiritually destitute existence, the one promised by the modern exchange of my time for money promised by employment. But my old readings of Rudolph Steiner remind me that true self growth does not occur in isolation. And Eisenstein reinforces that sentiment by expounding on recent discoveries about biology, physics and math which demonstrate that the Newtonian discrete world of equal and opposite reactions does not exist, that our classification as single individuals has now handicapped us past the point of salvation. Perhaps only a crash of epic proportions must occur before we enter Eisenstein's "Age of Reunion", a time in which we once again integrate with our natural world and discover human existence full of meaning far from the modern myth of "survival only". Perhaps that time is beginning right now. Yet, it is nothing to fear, it is only the inevitable result of centuries of separation, separation which has culminated in the super-specialized trivial existences we now occupy.
  
  I can't even begin to describe this book in a simple review, yet I would be honored to tell you about it in person. Read this book. Stop whatever you are reading now and find a copy. He even gives it away for free on his website. The ideas truly are that important. Here are a few of those ideas I wrote down while drinking in the wisdom espoused within these pages,
  
  We think of children as immature adults but we would be more accurate in thinking of adults as atrophied children
  
  Totalitarianism is the inevitable destination of a society completely obsessed of acheiveing complete control over reality
  
  The world of the rational is only one component of a functioning society. Theology looks for the purpose of things as opposed to reason or cause. We are not just here, we are here for a purpose, young people know it most certainly: we call that idealism. Broken to the lesser lieves we offer them, they react with hostility, rage, depression. All defining qualities of modern adolescence.
  
  The modern cell is an autocatalytic set where RNA, DNA, protiens and verious intermediate prodcuts all contribute ot each others success. We could have just as easily named the whole as a unity of life, or a smaller part, just as we could say in a human that our organs are alive or that our cells are alive or mitochondria are alive. True, none are viable on their own but neither are human beings. Without bacteria in their rumens, cows would be unable to digest cellulose and would quickly starve. Is the bacteria part of the cows or is it seperate? Is the discrete classicfication of organisims the source of confusion?
  
  The mandelbroit set is where C is a complex number and Zo=0, Zn+1 = Zn^2 + C // after a given number of iterations, the sequence of Z0, Z1, ...Zn will either exceed the absolute value of 2 after which it either stays in the neighborhood of the origin or diverges into infinity. If C generates a sequence that does not diverge to infinity then it is in the mandelbroit set. There is no way of determining where that divergence will occur so mathematically we say, "After a particular # of iterations C is still part of the mandelbroit set" In other words, it is a reality that cannot be reduced. It seems to possess order and beauty because it is a fractal. The same happens in populations, growth and cells. Systems have emergent properties that will never reduce.
  Cold hard science has its place, but not as the prevaling dogmata of society, merely a segment of a mind, heart, soul almagamation.
  Spirit is an emergent property of matter. When death occurs, the emergent property of a soul may be associated with a bound energy and brings and enormous detangling. The detangling of embedded information and energy is thus equivalent to mass loss. The standard physics has no way for the mass measured to just disappear without being converted to over 9x10^16 joules, where does it go?
  
  Now we are discovering that at the very basis of life, no such "I" from the mind of Descartes, "I think therefore I am" does not exist! The distinction from this reality is an illusion.
  
  Two recent discoveries in biology: 1) life is at its basis cooperative 2)there is no absolute when trying to define the biological self
  
  Matthew Wood, Stephen Buhner and Elliot Cowan all have descriptions of non-deterministic plant worlds
  
  Feldenkrais, EFT, spinal network analysis and applied kineselogy all display hope for new medical approaches
  
  In 1906 Silvio Cessell in The Natural Economic Order proposed a "Free Money" currency that bears a form of negative interest called demurrage. A stamp must be attached occasionally to keep the money worthwile so it does not expire. J.M. Keynes even supported the theory. An in 1932, Worgl, Austria implemented it by requiring a maintenance stamp worth 1% of its full value. It was a huge success as economic activity boomed. It was outlawed by Austria's central bank in 1933 because it was competing with the primary currency.
  
  Gurdjieff's primary perscription for recovering mindfulness was "intentional suffering", meaning an unwaviering intention not to avoid or escape the consequences due. On a psychological level, this closely parallels the internalization of the conomic costs.
  
  What would happen if you lost your willpower? Would you stay in bed until noon, lounge in front of the TV and descend into a vague never-ending spiral of indulgence? Perhaps this is not true human nature but a response to work. Why do we stay up late and dread waking up in the morning? We simply try to avoid the lives pre-calculated for us.
  Base your career decisions not on money, security or status but on what would I most love to give to the world.
  
  We think that art is self-expression which is strange historically. An artist used to be seen as a medium through with the divine operated. The artist was a servant of God.
  
  Language is more powerful than any other technology. Anything we accomplish, we do so through language. Quite often the purpose of our words is control rather than communciation.
  
  The entire world of modern human existence is builg on the interpretation of symbols.
  
  When the investment in something is large enough, we dare not ask ourselves if it has made us happy for fear of the answer.
  After staying in studying throughout school and spending sleepless nights as an intern, after all these sacrifices do you dare admit that you hate being a doctor? lawyer? etc...
  
  
• 
  David Kano

  I read Sacred Economics first. Skipped chapters where he describes his vision for a global shift of paradigms, as it felt like repeat of what he wrote in his other book, only more wordy. Repeats himself a lot in both books, a style I don't appreciate.
  
  I went back and read the chapters I skipped. They did contain some new ideas and information that was worthwhile. If you are going to read one of his books I'd still recommend Sacred Economics over this one.
  
  The biggest problem I have with his vision, is the belief that humanity will make the shift to identification with unity as a result of the failed systems based on the assumptions / paradigm of separateness. I believe that people only make that kind of shift in world view when they raise their level of consciousness. This normally stems from one or more spiritual practices such as meditation, mindfulness, conscious commitment to living kindness, love and devotion to God, etc. Historically, economic and social crises have not caused a mass shift of identification / consciousness. Some people could actually backslide in their spiritual journeys, when faced with hardships that shake their faith and disrupt their spiritual practices.
  
  I also think he idealizes the hunter / gatherer era more than is appropriate. Even though humans were more interdependent with the natural world, I don't think that proves that they had the high level of consciousness needed to identify with unity at the fundamental level that we need to move into the new era today.
  
  This is not to say there is no hope. I appreciate his offers of actions people can take now to address the multiple crises of our era change process.
• 
  Stephen Kiernan

  This book contained so many flimsy and irrational ideas, it was strangely compelling and for a long time I could not step reading.
  
  The basic argument is that our species previously dwelt in a kind of mystical animal joy that was ruined by our adoption of tools (the earliest mistaken faith in technology), that ever since we have existed in a separation from the natural that is the cause of all our problems, that we should seek to return to that divine (if ignorant) state, and that in fact there are signals in contemporary life that indicate our journey in that direction may have already begun.
  
  This is the first scholarly book I have read in which the author, in one chapter, quotes as a source his comments in another chapter. Whole paragraphs begin every sentence with a word like perhaps.
  
  Yet the trick of this book, the genius of it, is how learned it actually is. Descartes is in there, along with Newton and Einstein and the kitchen sink. And of course there are many examples of instances when humanity placed excessive faith in tools to solve problems, in technology to overcome errors brought about by technology.
  
  These are among the flaws in human nature. But to idealize the eons in which a few homo sapiens wandered the world in hunger and desperation is to miss sight of what is good about human nature too: our appetite for understanding, our capacity for learning, our simultaneous fascinations with and fear of the new and unfamiliar. For all our brutality, we remain remarkably capable of the sublime.
  
  We are not shedding our attributes, bad or good. It is how we are.
  
  I stopped on page 169.
• 
  Bryan Winchell

  This book radically shifted my understanding about the world, our cultures, what science is telling us, language, how we use time, education, and I cannot recommend it highly enough. It is philosophy with relevance for the world we live in today. Long, but worth the time!
• 
  Enrique Mañas

  It has a throbbing start.
  
  And then the author starts praising the primitive times. And modernity has been a terrible time, did separate our souls from our body, and we are heading towards the disaster.
  
  And then some bright perks that make sense.
  
  And then again some intentional lies ("English is the richest language that ever happened in the human history").
  
  And then some more bright perks.
  
  And then a furious attack on the Scientific Methods, and praise to homeopathy.
  
  And then I decided to close it, and move to another book.
• 
  David Rush

  BEWARE, from here on the review reveals more about me than the book.
  
  I found some quotes from this book and they seemed so right, so revolutionary, that I was compelled to buy it.
  
  Yes he had some gems that really spoke to me, BUT…. oh why do I see so many big BUTS?
  
  Just to clear the air, I think my worldview is probably atypical and would be discounted by most people from wildly differing political, religious or any kind of leaning. So to bare my soul on Goodreads, "The World", however you define it doesn't make sense. As a species we look for some pattern in existence that explains it all, but I think the moment you think you "understand" you are missing the point. Blah, Blah, Blah, I do go on way to much.
  
  HOWEVER, while I do suspect some Zen type, non-dualism mumbo jumbo may be where we should look, I am wary of easy answers to a complex world. So the thing is, while Eisenstein tickles that emotional itch that "the world" is askew, unfortunately he easily and quickly wanders into some pretty weak new age-y rhetoric
  
  Things that I like:
  
  Xvii. The denial of human nature rests in turn upon an illusion, a misconception of the self and world. We have defined ourselves as other than what we are, as discrete subjects separate from each other and separate from the world around us.
  
  170. Not only does our acquisitiveness arise out of separation, it reinforces it as well. The notion that a forest, a gene, an idea, an image, a song is a separate thing that admits ownership is quite new. Who are we to own a piece of the world, to separate out a part of the sacred universe and make it mine?
  
  311. I have witnessed dramatic healing simply by affirming to someone, “You are right, this isn’t how life is supposed to be” - a realization that empowers change.
  
  311. Remember Zeran: “Everyone can feel the nothingness, the void, just beneath the surface of everyday routines and securities.” Any psychiatry that seeks to adjust us to such a society is itself insane.
  
  THAT is what I'm talking about!
  
  And he goes on to describe how he thinks the way our society has grown, while wildly successful is actually contrary to our "true nature". And even here I have to note that it is tricky business to say what is true human nature, but for now I let it go.
  
  Basically, the current world view is that we humans are objects separated from each other and the rest of the world. So the culture of individualism, capitalism, even the scientific method reinforce our separateness. And his contention is that in the pre agricultural days of mankind “we” were more attuned to the world around, AND healthier. In fact the usual Hobbes assertion that without civilization, life outside society would be 'solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short'.' is in fact empirically wrong.
  
  Let's not argue that point now as we only have so much time.
  
  The upshot is if you have a notion, like him and me, that we are actually connected as a people, an environment, a world, then this kind of stuff really resonates. Mostly because he spends the first half of the book point out how the modern view is so strong people can't see the metaphorical lenses one is forced to put on for the world to make sense. Of course if he, and I are wrong OR if you, dear reader, can't take off your objectifying goggles, then this is all just hokum.
  
  But for me I see (or maybe just suspect) that capitalism, most religion, modern psychology all worked to mold us into shapes were not meant to be. The laws of economics for instance or not laws at all but just agreed upon conventions that only have bearing because people believe in them. So all of our successes are built upon a tinker bell type bedrock.
  
  So, more stuff I like.
  
  242. When “I” is defined not as a discrete individual but through a web of relationships with people, earth, animals, and plants, then any harm to them violates ourselves as well. Even as moderns we sometimes feel and echo of this violation when we see the bulldozers knocking down the trees to build a new shopping center. This is because our separation from the trees is illusory.
  
  246. The socialist solution to the Marxist crisis fails because it doesn’t get at the root of the problem, which is not the private ownership of property but rather the concept of property to begin with.
  
  247. We conceptually separate ourselves from the environment in order to manipulate it; our successful manipulation of the environment spurs our conceptual separation from it. The concept of property naturally flows out of such an objectification…
  
  .
  Then came the big BUTS...
  
  But then…he goes into how we should NOT discount holistic medicine and while he doesn't explicitly denounce modern medicine there is definitely a derogatory tone about it. He really got my attention when he implied Autism is caused by childhood vaccinations. I mean is he really going down that road?
  
  305. Sometimes the causal link is quite specific, for example the link between the increasing universality of childhood vaccinations and the rise in various immune disorders afflicting children. Best known is the link with autism which can be understood as an autoimmune attack on myelin in the brain.
  
  And at some point he brings up Carlos Castaneda, I mean really? Even 10 years ago it was widely known the guy made up most if not all of the stuff in his books.
  
  And then, he comes up with how young people’s idealism is the real answer to life’s problems and those perky kids know we are here for a purpose! But he never says how that purpose is exemplified by the yutes! Plus if they come up with their own purpose and feel great, what about the billionaire class, surely they are idealist too! Or even the old speaker of the house Paul Ryan, he and his buddies had idealist keggers dreaming about a beautiful world where if you don't have health care or can't afford college you have the freedom to fail, or maybe die.
  
  So yeah, idealism is a powerful force.
  
  Nits to Pick
  
  I'll calm down, but one nit is that at one point he says people in the 19th century were more literary and basically better educated than now. But then he says schools were invented in the 19th century expressly to prepare children for industry and were designed to crush the soul to make them less independent. So which is it?
  
  Overall it seems like for all his claims that the modern way of thinking puts blinders on us it seems to me he just wants to have it all his own way. He can’t say life and living is complicated and sometimes it doesn’t work out. It’s all bad, really bad now but when we were hunter gatherers it was be good, BUT he then says he isn’t claiming he is calling for a return to the hunter gather way of life. It is never that there is simply a trade-off and science and mechanization help in some ways but detract from the good parts of a simpler time. Of course the pro-technology people are laughing at me for even suggesting tech is anything less than a positive force in civilization.
  
  THEN...the last part of the book he takes the really confusing parts of physics like the double slit experiment or the Schrodinger’s cat kind of stuff and says it proves the ambiguous results or stuff like holistic medicine. So he is using that to PROVE his point. He can’t just say something is confusing, this guy "KNOWS" everything, and if you don't believe it, just ask him
  
  Oh well, I am just getting muddled now, and this book wore me out. Good-ish book but for me it was like having to dig through a LOT of not so clear stuff to find some gems.
  
  NOW that I'm over that, I really need to get some Terry Pratchett in my brain.
  
  ....
  
  UPDATE: for some reason a year later I started thinking about this book. There was some weird economic idea I could not remember but it was tickling my brain and I had to revisit this to get some relief. For now this is just a note to myself about the devilishly interesting notion of "negative interest" and currency designed to loose value or "decay".
  
  I wish I could buckle down and study to find out the difference from or similarity to normal inflation which seems to me to be currency in decay. How does that figure in this idea?
  
  Anyway here is my bookmark of sorts.
  ...
  From Chapter 12
  
  Given the determining role of interest, the first alternative currency system to consider is one that structurally eliminates it, or even that bears interest’s opposite. After all, if interest causes competition, scarcity, and polarization, then might not its opposite create cooperation, abundance, and community? And if interest represents the proceeds from the ancient and ongoing robbery of the commons, might not its opposite replenish it?
  What would that opposite look like? It would be a money that, like bread, becomes less valuable over time. It would be money, in other words, that decays—money that is subject to a negative interest rate, also known as a demurrage charge. (1)  Decaying currency is one of the central ideas of this book, but before I lay out its history, application, economic theory, and consequences, I would like to say a bit about the term “decay,” which I have been advised to avoid due to its negative connotations.
  ..
  Gesell advocated currency decay as a device for decoupling money as a store-of-value from money as a medium of exchange. Money would no longer be preferred to physical capital. The result, he foresaw, would be an end to the artificial scarcity and economic depression that happens when there are plenty of goods to be exchanged but a lack of money by which to exchange them. His proposal would force money to circulate. No longer would the owners of money have an incentive to withhold it from the economy, waiting for scarcity to build up to the point where returns on real capital exceed the rate of interest. This is the second reason for calling it “free-money”: freed from the control of the wealthy, money would circulate freely instead of coagulating in vast, stagnant pools as it does today.
  
  Gesell saw the interest-bearing property of money as a brake on prosperity. As soon as goods become so abundant that returns on capital investment go lower than the minimum rate of interest, the owners of money withhold it from investment. The money to perform transactions disappears from circulation, and the familiar crisis of overcapacity looms, with its paradoxical accompaniment of scarcity of goods for the vast majority of people.
  ..
  
  Both the wara and the Wörgl currency bore a demurrage rate of 1 percent per month. Contemporary accounts attributed to this the very rapid velocity of the currencies’ circulation. Instead of generating interest and growing, accumulation of wealth became a burden, much like possessions are a burden to the nomadic hunter-gatherer. As theorized by Gesell, money afflicted with loss-inducing properties ceased to be preferred over any other commodity as a store of value. It is impossible to prove, however, that the rejuvenating effects of these currencies came from demurrage and not from the increase in the money supply, or from the economically localizing effect of a local currency such as the Wörgl.
• 
  Amanda

  An orchestrated deconstruction of our collective technology-as-dues ex machina wish fullfillment fantasies, weaving together strings of history, psychology, mythology, and physics, in a straightforward fashion simple enough for my comparatively simple brain. However, this is NOT a fast read. The result is an elegant culmination of disparate variables; events, myths, and obsessive fanatical scientism that offers an explain for our current human condition--notably a misguided Cartesian conception of humans and the world as machines, "separate" from the natural world and a curious un-shakeable, pesky preoccupation with "Gee Whiz the Future!" technological fixes to the problems our technologies created. What to do about this? It's an amazing, uncanny work by a remarkably insightful and surprisingly young person.
  
  TLDR: How and maybe why we got ourselves into this pickle.
• 
  Chani

  Every human being on the planet needs to read this book! It is a very clear deconstruction of culture and an explanation of how things came to be as they are. Read it!
  
  
• 
  Rudyard L.

  This book combines being very intelligent about understanding the problems of modern society, of which it has done a better and more profound job that any other book I have read, with the author also being a messianic hippie. From looking at the historic and evolutionary record the author’s view of a conflict free, perfectly in tune, utopia is insane. Just another example of people trying to bring Christian Revelation into the modern world. However, this book’s critics about the limits of modern society, especially education, the economy and depression are brilliant. The author’s economic ideas seem a bit foolish
• 
  Bonnie

  I found this book several years ago and have taken quite a long time to finish it. It is densely written with lots of thought provoking ideas. I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to see the world in a new way.
• 
  Julie

  if you read one book, make it this one
• 
  Joslyn Dmello

  
  
  Life Changing! Stellar to no end!
• 
  T. P. Alexanders

  Ready to take your mind for a walk. I have just the book. Eisenstein challenges your every belief. He pushes you to see your life and the world around you differently. Filled with current science the book jumps from fact to philosophy almost seamlessly unifying the two in unbelievable ways.
  
  This can be purchased or read as a e-book for free
  here.
• 
  Nick Scott

  Highs and lows. Extremely disappointed in the chapter attacking the scientific method and other parts attempting to lend credence to quack quantum physics, biodynamics, homeopathy and other empirically invalidated "alternatives." While there are some dogmatic scientists, the enterprise of science is a dogma remedy. The author is at his best addressing irrational technofixes and the erosion of social, spiritual, natural, and cultural capital. A mixed bag of a book
• 
  James Chin

  A personal brush with death, or even the passing of a loved one, connects us to a reality beyond the constructs of me and mine. Death opens our hearts. Death reminds us, with a clarity that trumps all logic, that only love is real. And what is love, but a melting of the boundaries between self and other? As many poets have understood, love too is a kind of death.
• 
  Cbphoenix

  Any person who considers him or herself enlightened, or wanting to become enlightened, should read this book.
  
  The very first sentence -- in the preface to the 2013 edition -- hooked me: "For my entire life a foreboding of doom has lapped at the edge of my attention."
  
  If you identify with that, read the book.
• 
  Bejinha

  This is an excellent book that has changed my views on many topics.
  
  The book is about how our illusory 'separated self' (Alan Watts' bag of skin encapsulated ego) creates our science, economics, medicine, and religion.
  
  Although I don't agree with every detail, I know that if I read five years ago, I'd disagree much more – which may show me a path to pursue.
  
  Sometimes he repeats himself to reinforce the connection between separate subjects, making the book 500 pages long. But worth it.
  
  It's his third book I've read. But it should have been the first since the others are expansions on subjects he has described on this one.
  
  If you want to better know the guy before dive on the 500 pages, he has many great talks on Youtube.
  
  I do recommend this one.
• 
  Jason Boldt

  Update 7.2.2022 - I just finished Thomas Berry’s “Dream of the Earth” and Eisenstein clearly ripped the entire structure and overall argument of Berry’s book into Ascent. Berry calls for a new mythology for humanity and a new story - it’s clear that Eisenstein read Berry and answered the call. I won’t change the rating because Eisenstein did two great things: 1) He perpetuated the framework Berry created which is essential for a new story to take hold, and 2) He deepened the exploration of how we got to today and what a new mythology could be.
  
  Original review:
  
  In short, this book has fundamentally changed the way I view my life, my relation to the world, the structure of modern society, and how we got here. Charles Eisenstein is, if not enlightened, a storyteller of ancient wisdom in a modern context. Ready yourself to examine your assumptions in a deeper way than you currently believe possible. Open your mind, and receive this gift.
  
  There are aspects of this book that I don’t like: the writing can be clunky, repetitive, and inconsistent. The jump from clear, incisive diagnosis of a flawed assumption straight to concepts like energy healing is jarring and off putting.
  
  Eisenstein’s core idea is that we have progressively entrenched the illusion that we are separate from nature deeper into our structure of society and sense of self-awareness. The illusion of separation is at the core of all modern crises, from environmental ruin to rising autoimmune and metabolic dysfunction, to our personal crises of anxiety and depression, to our collective and individual myopia about how we choose to live our lives.
  
  The reality is that separation is an illusion - we are by definition of our existence, intertwined and interdependent on all beings and spaces and things that comprise our universe. This recognition of interbeing allows us to regain our lost and ancestral knowledge of our role in the universe, and thereby live accordingly and return our world to its more beautiful path.
  
  This book integrates so many different ideas and concepts I’ve thought about it experienced directly throughout my life. Perhaps this priming is necessary to receive the gift fully.
  
  Regardless, these ideas are the gateway to a higher and sacred mode of being.
• 
  Carl Arthur

  Trippy book. But just because it's trippy doesn't mean it's false.
  
  Main idea: Humanity's obsession/belief that we are separate from the world, separate from nature, is the cause of all of civilization's problems. We believe technology and science will allow us to explain, predict, control, and transcend nature. We believe we can create a world free disease, hunger, and suffering. But that isn't the case. Things are actually getting worse. We have new diseases. Climate change is devastating the world. We are still as violent and suicidal as ever. The problems we've caused - depletion of Earth's resources, mass pollution, economic inequality - are quickly coming to a head, and civilization as we know it will collapse because of it. I know it. You know it. The process is already in motion. You can feel it.
  
  Our current way of life is untenable and hollow. Instead of living as if we're separate or above nature, we must embrace and cherish nature. The Earth has supplied all of life with everything we'll ever need. We are nature. Nature is us. Instead of accumulating and hoarding resources, let's share and be thankful for this world of plenty.
  
  This book touches on so many topics, from physics, to economics, to biology, to agriculture. It's a great read, and makes too much sense.
  
  It's never too late to change.
  
  
  
  
• 
  Richard

  Wow. I've been captivated the last three weeks reading through this masterpiece. I became aware of Charles Eisenstein from the East Forest 10 Laws podcast with Duncan Trussell. As I trust both of those voices, I joined Audible again and dove in. It's been wonderful. Immediately, his words were transmitted to me as trustworthy, and he outlined the state of humanity in a way that was approachable, familiar, novel and radical all at the same time. The core of who I am connected with the truth of what he is saying, and that feeling never once stopped. The book is enormous, but by the end, I was left wanting more. I want to buy the hard copy and read it again and make copious notes. I want to buy everything else he has written. I want to read his online essays and listen to his podcast. This is, with out a doubt, the most important writing I have encountered so far this millennia. I had just about given up hope that humanity had lost all voices of elders, and that we were alone facing destruction. I am ever-so-grateful for discovering this book. Thank you, Mr. Eisenstein, for your profound wisdom. Thank you for delineating the problem. Thank you for providing hope as we await the better world our hearts know is possible. Thank you for understanding, distilling and delineating the human condition so beautifully.
• 
  Anita

  This was a long and somewhat difficult read. Even so, it was not a book I could abandon, because it was so thought provoking. What I liked most was what I took as his main idea: the problems humans have stem from believing the lie which says we are bad and need to be controlled and that we are separate from everything else. If we realized that all we do to other humans and to nature is actually done to our very own selves, we would create a different world. The book says a lot about economics, health, government, education, social interactions, and science based upon that worldview of who we are. Much of it I did not understand. There was also a lot of speculation that didn't resonate with me, but the idea that we might let go of this insane economics that cannot keep growing--even that eventually we actually must let go it--made sense to me. Rating the book seemed impossible, so I took the middle road since some I loved and some of it I didn't like at all. He has this book available on his website to get more of an idea of what it is like.
• 
  Nicklas Karlsson

  You should Play more. It's good for the world.
  
  This work is clearly a great edifice of curiosity. Eisenstein, to me, makes no presumptions about being "academic" (although I would say the structure shows he is well aware of how to write academically). Instead I find this refreshing reflection of passion in his work. I get a sense that he is really curious about the things he write and he wants to tell others about it. Instead of bickering or trying to outshine others in intellectual sparring. He tells a story, I think it's a good story with many deep insights and calls for ontological adjustments, others might not agree.
  
  Yet this makes it so appealing to me. This sense of I know a lot of this is "out there" to most, but if you hear me out maybe you'll get a little seed that will start germinating too.