00:02:17.440So in 2011, Charles, you wrote Sacred Economics, which, quote, traces the history of money from ancient gift economies to modern capitalism, revealing how the money system has contributed to alienation, competition and scarcity, destroyed community and necessitated endless growth, end quote.
00:02:35.680and while demonstrating how these trends have reached their extreme Charles you advocate that
00:02:44.180in their collapse we actually have the opportunity to transition to a more connected respectful and
00:02:50.540sustainable way of living now in 2012 Ian you created such a powerful beautiful 12-minute film
00:02:57.960inspired by the book and this video has been viewed almost a million times on YouTube and
00:03:03.400inspired so many, including myself. And so this year, Ian, you have now embarked on an endeavor
00:03:09.080to update the film. So I'd really love to begin this conversation by asking you each a little bit
00:03:14.840about the motivation behind sacred economics, as well as the impact and relevancy over the years.
00:03:23.460Sure, I might as well go first. Basically, the reason that I got interested in the topic
00:03:29.840was that any problem that I examined in the world usually ended up having something to do with
00:03:35.500money. If you ask why are oil companies fracking and digging the tar sands or something like that,
00:03:43.580or why are we overthrowing the government of Venezuela, you get down to the reason that
00:03:51.200there's money to be made by doing this. So I felt like it was this inescapable topic,
00:03:57.140Whether I was looking at systems or even spirituality, you can't ignore money.
00:04:06.880So I just began investigating money and why should it be a force for evil when it's fundamentally just an agreement among human beings about what's valuable and how to conduct transactions.
00:04:25.160Like, why should it be this evil, destructive power?
00:07:13.000You know, I ordered the book pretty quick after and read through that.
00:07:16.760And it certainly was deeply moving to me.
00:07:20.520And so actually, I think I did, Charles, we did do an interview, I think, written at the time for an online magazine that I was editor of.
00:07:28.020Then later when sacred economics came out, that was such an important articulation, I felt, of the prism of money and how that itself was so much was reflected within that prism about the current story that powered modern civilization.
00:07:45.100And there was in the closing chapters of that book, there was something along the lines of Charles saying, you know, if you had surplus of some kind or the capacity to invest that, you know, we are in a time where the best investment you can make is in community or in this transitional shift.
00:08:06.000and so for me I remember lying in bed and I I finished the book at that time and you know I
00:08:11.320just had a flash and I got up and I think I messaged Charles like two o'clock in the morning
00:08:15.380I just said hey you know can we hop on a Skype call and soon after we were talking and I just
00:08:21.380asked I was like you know could I come and make a film about the book or at least some of the most
00:08:27.380you know pressing ideas and Charles you know fairly quick said sure and you know pretty soon
00:08:34.840after I'd booked a ticket and flew out there, uh, and stayed with Charles for, I think it was about
00:08:39.220four or five days with, you know, in this family. And it was very gracious of them to do so. And
00:08:44.240during that time, you know, I collected footage. That's when the main interview was done.
00:08:48.620Uh, and then I was also at the time working on another film though, like alongside of it, uh,
00:08:53.160which eventually became Occupy Love directed by Velcro Ripper. And so those two were wove together
00:08:59.900in that Charles, you know, we were able to go to Occupy Wall Street, which burst onto the scene,
00:09:04.340right, right around that time. And I think that there was something in, you know, those things
00:09:08.320colliding, like Charles had been on to the money thing, you know, since the crash. And like the
00:09:14.280Occupy itself was like the delayed reaction to the fact that it didn't seem like anything had
00:09:18.860happened in the economic system. You know, no, none of the, you know, big, big wigs had gone to
00:09:23.120jail or nothing had really changed. And so Occupy was like the kind of frustration mounting, but
00:09:29.680also the imagination of the time you know bursting on the scene and so that film for me I guess
00:09:36.060really became a way of trying to transmit even more than the ideas per se but I actually I
00:09:41.460really appreciate how Charles laid out so many of the sort of viable ideas like they're not
00:09:45.940just like hypothetical a lot of them are examples of actual you know things that had been tried
00:09:51.660before and had worked in different ways but for me the transmission that I was attempting to do
00:09:57.160through film was really like a type of frequency of I don't know what to call it like possibility
00:10:03.220or imagination creativity that that it could be otherwise and in that sense I was grateful that
00:10:10.460that seemed to be the case by what it evoked in others this sort of mimetic detonation that
00:10:16.160provided a new possibility yeah I think I just want to add a little bit I think that the film
00:10:23.160works really well on an emotional level to convey a certain frequency, if you want to call it that,
00:10:30.200that is, it underlies the concrete proposals and the information. But the book, I always pay a lot
00:10:40.780of attention to the language, to the cadence. I mean, really anything I write is a vehicle for
00:10:46.320love. My secret agenda is to make people feel better about themselves and more willing to
00:10:54.320live in the gift and to carry more peace with them. So the film, I think maybe even better
00:11:01.400than the book conveys that vibration so much so that people will watch the film and they won't
00:11:09.820be able to even say really what any of the content was. But I hope at least, I hope it's not just a
00:11:17.100momentary emotional high that they get. I hope that it actually seeds some kind of process inside
00:11:23.540of people and opens them up to a different way of seeing the world. But I know that because it has
00:11:30.840a strong emotional impact, the film, the first version of it is used for these pyramid schemes.
00:11:38.300Fractals is the latest one, but there's been other ones too where you have people in your
00:11:45.020fractal and they each give you $5,000 and then when they go, they can start a piece of it and
00:11:50.380then everyone gives them $5,000 and it's a classic pyramid scheme, but they use sacred economics on
00:11:56.400their website and try to establish an association between that and my work. The reason that they do
00:12:03.080that is because it does have such a strong emotional resonance and calls people to toward
00:12:09.360a connection to a future world that really resonates in the heart. You know, it's like
00:12:14.400there's part of us that knows that economics doesn't have to be this cutthroat war of each
00:12:20.440against all, but that it can be cooperation and co-creation and generosity. And like this part
00:12:27.540of ourselves that is so narrowly confined in modern society desperately wants expression.
00:12:34.980And that yearning for a future world of this possibility, it's what draws people to the
00:12:44.380And it's also what makes people susceptible to manipulation.
00:12:49.680Yeah, I definitely want to talk more about manipulation and boundaries when it comes
00:12:56.660to working with money, whether intentionally or selfishly. I think it can come up in many ways
00:13:05.780because of our conditioning. But before we dive into that topic, I want to also just kind of
00:13:13.980start foundationally again with the economic system. And it's really interesting how Occupy
00:13:20.820wall street um in a sense even brought the three of us together because i was there i started the
00:13:27.120environmentalist solidarity working group and was really drawn into this work through the madness
00:13:33.700of this economic system and then found both of your work so it's it's really incredible and
00:13:39.340just looking at the economic system and which we currently operate in is you know it's one of
00:13:45.100domination and deception and separation. And many of us have been negligent when it comes to
00:13:52.380examining what features are inherently built into the money system. Sacred Economics points out that
00:13:58.980both scarcity and growth, despite how contradictory this sounds, are permanent features of our money
00:14:05.240system. So I really would like if you could elaborate, both of you even, on more of how the
00:14:12.240nature of money is scarcity and why it is imperative that we truly create new monetary
00:14:17.340systems rather than simply just changing our attitudes around money from scarcity to abundance.
00:14:24.960Ian, do you want to go for that? I mean, I can do that question in my sleep.
00:14:30.380How about, maybe I have one piece that I could add, but I would love if you started.
00:14:34.900Yeah. So there's various new age teachings that tell us money is just an energy and it's our
00:14:40.280attitudes about money that are important. And if you change your attitude away from scarcity and
00:14:45.140toward abundance, then you will enjoy abundance in your life and so on. But that is not universally
00:14:51.640possible in our current system. Just as if you were playing a game of musical chairs and there's
00:14:59.780nine chairs and 10 people, there's scarcity, right? Not everybody gets a chair. And you say
00:15:05.500everybody, just do creative visualization and visualize yourself getting a chair and don't
00:15:10.880be in the scarcity of chairs and you'll get a chair. That might work for one person, but it's
00:15:16.740not going to work for all 10. So the money system is similar to a game of musical chairs
00:15:22.380in that there's always more debt than there is money. So we're always in competition
00:15:29.360for never enough money. So I do think that a change in attitude and belief is important
00:15:38.920because that's a reinforcing substructure of the money system that makes it seem normal and
00:15:46.340natural and reasonable to have a world of scarcity. The psychic climate justifies the
00:15:53.720economic structure. So I think actually both need to change, but certainly a key part of the change
00:16:03.120is changing the system by which money is rendered artificially scarce, which basically means no
00:16:10.000longer creating it as interest bearing debt. And I could go more into the mechanics of that, but
00:16:15.220I'd say it's in the film and the book. So I guess for now, I'll just leave it with the sense that we
00:16:25.260have that it doesn't have to be this way. And just to notice how pervasive, how ubiquitous
00:16:33.580the mentality of scarcity is as it accompanies money. It's like people who have more money,
00:16:40.680they're not even less anxious. You would think that they have no economic insecurity, but
00:16:45.660they worry even more than everybody else. And they're checking their portfolio every day.
00:16:50.940And what happens if the stock market crashes? And should I shift my investments from
00:16:54.420stocks to bonds? And as far as the actual insecurity and anxiety, the rich are not
00:17:02.900exempt from it any more than poor people are. Objectively, you would think that they would
00:17:07.060not need to be so anxious. But I mean, I have relatives who have seven-figure incomes,
00:17:16.040but are still constantly worrying about money and not buying organic oats because they're too
00:17:22.940expensive. These people are not actually rich. So the way I see it is that money embodies today,
00:17:30.160it embodies the energy of scarcity, which means that as you have more of it, you are not
00:17:38.380exempt from an experience of scarcity. And I think there's even a causal link here because
00:17:44.160the more money you have, the less necessity you have to source your needs from other people
00:17:52.020in a relationship of gift because you can pay for everything. And one of the deep sources of our
00:17:58.920anxiety and our disconnection is, well, it is disconnection. It is being able to meet all of
00:18:06.900your needs without having a relationship. So the wealthier societies on this planet
00:18:12.200have people who are shriveled in their relationships, who don't have any relationships
00:18:21.340except with immediate family and maybe a few friends, but they don't know their neighbors.
00:18:25.660they don't know their community, they don't know the trees and the soil and the beings around them,
00:18:32.400they're so cut off because they can meet their needs in the money economy. They're so cut off
00:18:38.660that they feel insecure because real security only can come from intimate relationships to other
00:18:48.040beings, which disappear as we enter the money world. So there's a causal link there too. It's
00:18:53.400not just an abstract energy of, of scarcity that money carries.
00:19:01.280I mean, I'd love to chime in on something that's, you know, I continually wonder about and, you
00:19:07.860know, as we look out and see and hear again, you know, impact on the coral reefs or how many
00:19:14.740percent of insects are dead and are dying and how many pipelines, you know, they're still trying to
00:19:19.160put through and for me it comes to this question which is both personal and and the collective
00:19:25.700which is how much is enough right like how much is enough how much is enough I mean like Charles
00:19:30.720was saying I think with an individual to feel a sense of security that okay you know now I have
00:19:36.140enough you know and that there's something within the current money system and the lack of intimacy
00:19:42.740that is what causes the sense of not enoughness. So it's not enough is symptomatic. In the same
00:19:49.980way that collectively, in the economic system powers, a continual modification of the biosphere
00:19:56.120into more money. And as if suddenly, we'll have one more pipeline, and then everybody's going to
00:20:01.960say, okay, now we have enough, we can stop. And I've been really struck by this relationship
00:20:06.720actually between abundance and limits and this idea that unless there ever is such a thing as
00:20:13.060enough or hitting such a thing or being willing to be limited then actually there's no such thing
00:20:19.060as abundance you cannot be abundant if you have no limit because you will continually grow to fill
00:20:24.340and that scarcity the hungry ghost of that will continually you know fill any more commodification
00:20:30.160or any more say quote wealth that's generated and so part of the other thread that you know
00:20:35.960I've been really intrigued by is also, you know, what is the function and the reawakening of
00:20:41.480village? Like, how does being embedded in a village context actually be the antidote in so
00:20:49.120many ways to this existential scarcity? The existential scarcity that, you know, unless you
00:20:53.880have money, you will be cast out or, you know, homeless or whatever it is, that is the thing that
00:20:59.460has people hoard and all the rest. And so in a way, and I appreciate this often about Charles's
00:21:03.700work is you know it's there's rare that I hear any sense of kind of blaming the individual in
00:21:08.960terms of a cynical fashion that I hear a lot of the wider commentary is it's once again you know
00:21:14.180this oh humans are just greedy or oh you know humans what are you going to do you know they're
00:21:18.380flawed life would be better if you know humans were gone anyway the planet would be great without
00:21:23.640us as if that's you know an achievement to be cynical or a misanthropic about it and I think
00:21:30.420that there's something in the willingness to both approach and to grieve actually where we're at
00:21:36.340what's been done you know the the arc of species that continually are are exiting the planet right
00:21:42.580now and the capacity to actually begin to to you know make intimacy with i mean ourselves and others
00:21:51.120in a way that truly is a response to these times you know not you know shifting a perspective to
00:21:56.840manifest more you know what you deserve and all the rest that are here and so many of the
00:22:00.720you know the get rich seminars and all those things that again is a shade of what's actually
00:22:06.060the deeper longing which is to be you know in in meaningful connection with other humans and
00:22:12.420the rest of life i absolutely see how money in the economic system has severed our relationships
00:22:18.720with community village mindedness because if you can just buy your way out of things then you don't
00:22:26.540need to rely on other people. You don't need to even be accountable to others. And the accountability
00:22:31.860piece is something I see just completely destroyed in this economic system, especially with how
00:22:40.400things are getting globalized. I mean, hardly do you talk to the same person twice when you're
00:22:45.260calling for an issue regarding anything, like whether it's a banking issue or, you know, going
00:22:51.540back to money again or insurance any of these things it's like we don't even have to be
00:22:56.300accountable to each other because we can just use money to separate from one another and i i see a
00:23:04.960so much pain and trauma that has been created by this all around me and and also you know through
00:23:12.000different conversations i've had on the podcast i feel like this is really a foundational theme
00:23:16.980And something that along these lines, something that comes up for me on a really personal level is how to navigate the gift giving and this new economy while also protecting oneself, you know, because it's really easy to idealize concepts of abundance and benevolence when it comes to money.
00:23:35.660But I also think we need to be honest that we are a very wounded culture that has been forced to operate within this very deceptive system.
00:23:47.760And unfortunately, the system has conditioned many to be manipulative and deceitful.
00:23:54.160So I would love to, if either of you could elaborate more on trust and boundaries and trauma within sacred economics.
00:24:02.900yeah so we kind of have a dilemma here where where we've monetized so many different ways
00:24:12.360of meeting our needs and therefore uh distance ourselves from from having relationships and then
00:24:19.320if you want to to go back and re-establish those relationships you know we don't have the social
00:24:25.260structures to do that we don't have the intact communities anymore we don't have the the networks
00:24:31.360of giving and receiving that are personalized. We don't have kids playing outdoors anymore and
00:24:36.980going into someone else's house to have lunch, like even that basic level of gift economy.
00:24:42.760So you can't step back into it on your own. It's a catch-22. And also the internal habits
00:24:54.020and sensitivities that go along with gift culture that include when is an appropriate
00:25:00.120time to give or not to give? What is an appropriate gift? What is an inappropriate
00:25:05.320gift? This is a skill that it's an acculturated skill that develops over time in a healthy gift
00:25:15.360culture. And by a gift culture, I'm not talking about birthday parties and presents and stuff
00:25:20.560like that. I'm talking about where the dominant mode of economic transaction, even transactions
00:25:28.140not the right word, the dominant mode of economy is gift. And not just economy in terms of things
00:25:34.540that could be monetized, but the dominant mode of relationship is gift rather than barter or
00:25:40.680transaction or something like that. So yeah, we don't have the social structures for it and we
00:25:46.000don't have the inner orientation or the skills. So given that, if we try to enact more gift in
00:25:56.920our lives, to be more giving, to be more generous, to let down some of the boundaries that we have
00:26:02.920erected in a world and necessarily so erected against getting ripped off. For example, you
00:26:09.880got to have some boundaries. You don't just go to buy a used car and just trust the guy.
00:26:15.860You have to be on guard. You go online to buy something. You have to be on guard. Is this the
00:26:20.520best price or is this person ripping me off and is somebody else giving me a better price?
00:26:24.260you know i don't want to get taken advantage of here like those habits are inculcated by the
00:26:30.140society that we live in and they are necessary habits so and it's not even just economics too
00:26:36.660it's on the personal level and we're distanced from each other and we instrumentalize other
00:26:40.860people objectify other people use other people for some personal gain knowing that it's not
00:26:47.860going to come back to bite me because i can move on because we're not in a community and i don't
00:26:51.900have to suffer the effects of what I've done to another another person because we don't have these
00:26:57.140tight social networks anymore and word isn't going to get out and if so that's okay because
00:27:02.560I'm going to move on and establish a new online persona etc so so yeah we don't have we don't know
00:27:08.940how to do it really and so when when you step more into gift you might find I mean hopefully
00:27:15.140you'll be like wow I don't know how to do this I don't know what the appropriate gift is like
00:27:19.980That acknowledgement of your own unskilled, your own skilllessness, that's a good step because otherwise you're going to open yourself to being taken advantage of or you're going to have messy boundaries where you've given too much to somebody and unaware of the ties that are created by that gift, the dependency that could be created.
00:27:46.860There's a whole universe here of gift sensibilities that in modern culture is not well understood.
00:28:37.840And I think what happens is that there's often a kind of confronting discomfort around this
00:28:44.940idea that people encounter because it really confronts this idea of how does one value when
00:28:51.480they're not told what the value of something is and then you know the onus becomes on them to
00:28:56.340be able to give for you know is it is it quote a market rate is it how much something means to you
00:29:04.100or how much it'll impact your life I mean even something simple like say you know buying a cd or
00:29:08.620I don't have cds anymore but back when they did I mean imagine that the cost value of the cd that
00:29:14.180you know the artists that you loved that you listened to maybe multiple times a day for years
00:29:19.260versus the album that you maybe listened to once and you're like oh wasn't that great but you know
00:29:23.360the market says it's the same same price and so in a sense they're they're kind of flat lines
00:29:28.640the value of things um often by these economics of scarcity and so the gift is is such a different
00:29:35.040frequency change that it's it it's something to step into which i've attempted in different ways
00:29:42.640and in a way like invite the discomfort that comes with it you know both in the sense of
00:29:48.720you know myself let's say being willing to trust right to trust that say um you know if i offer
00:29:54.000this and i'm not telling people how much it's worth uh will will i be supported you know will
00:29:59.180it come back in some way and at the same time it's not you're not doing it because of that
00:30:03.600but it it activates this deeper level of trust which for me um and how i see it affect other
00:30:09.400people is that that is the the kind of ripple effect where somebody truly changes because if
00:30:15.640you're in a transaction with something you know literally i think a transaction with money
00:30:19.180basically means once this transaction is over we don't have a relationship you know we're good
00:30:23.960we're clean whereas often the gift comes with actual binds of some kind and also you know a
00:30:31.120kind of experience of uniqueness or or potency where you know somebody can say like wow you know
00:30:37.840when you gifted me that thing, like I was so taken aback because I was so, I thought, you know,
00:30:42.380I would pay for it or not, or like people, you know, people are rife with stories about when
00:30:46.660they were gifted and how much, how memorable that tended to be and, you know, how much it meant to
00:30:50.300them. And so it really is a kind of mysterious unfolding, I think about how it looks. And,
00:30:56.580you know, I think often if we get too caught in the kind of grandiose scalability of these kinds
00:31:01.340of ideas, then I think it can feel a bit, you know, overwhelming, like, you know, how would
00:31:05.000this mass scale, how would a whole, you know, nation operate this way versus how would you
00:31:10.080operate this way with, you know, just a close knit community of people around you? Like, what would
00:31:14.840it mean to begin to lead into these edges to reveal, you know, even just relationship with
00:31:19.300money, how taboo that is for so many people, you know, they say the two biggest taboos are sex and
00:31:23.440money. And how, you know, how we share about these things and how we speak about them with others,
00:31:28.880you know, they're either rife with, you know, shame or guilt, shadow, and all the rest. And
00:31:33.800And as we begin to unfold these places, we begin to heal our relationship, in this case with money, but also to those places of scarcity, of unworthiness.
00:31:44.060And that really is where the system has to go that deep.
00:33:03.800and to follow up on what you just mentioned around instead of looking at it as this grandioso
00:33:24.480plan to change the global economic system to begin with but how do we just do this
00:33:29.860within our more localized communities and I want to ask more specifically that I know Charles you've
00:33:37.900outlined some of the main principles of a new economy as being negative interest, internalization
00:33:43.120of cost, social dividend, relocalization of economic functions and peer-to-peer financing
00:33:49.160so I'd really like if you could share more on what these principles look like in action
00:33:55.260So if there's those out there that are listening who want to practice, begin to practice and
00:34:01.220question these skills to give them some tangible role playing to see what that would look like.
00:34:09.060So in the Sacred Economics book, most of the book actually is about how do we apply the
00:34:16.760principles of gift to a money system in a way that does scale.
00:34:20.180and there are the ones you mentioned there are two that i think are crucial and they come from
00:34:29.080a basic property of the gift well a couple basic properties of the gift uh the first
00:34:35.340is that the gift circulates in gift cultures uh the kula ring in melanesia described by
00:34:44.620Malinowski is the classic example. The gift of these necklaces and bracelets, they go from one
00:34:51.000island to another, to another, to another. And over a generation or two, they come back to where
00:34:55.900they began. It exemplifies the principle that the gift travels in a circle. You can see that
00:35:01.140principle operating in ecology as well, where anything that is created by one being becomes
00:35:09.340the food for the next being and so on and so on until you have a self-sustaining loop.
00:35:16.000So, and in gift cultures, you do not hoard wealth. In a potlatch culture, for example,
00:35:21.600you temporarily might accumulate wealth, but even that you're not actually accumulating wealth
00:35:27.960to hold the potlatch where you give it all away. You're accumulating promises to come to the potlatch
00:35:33.320with things that you can then give away. So you're building your connections. So this is a basic
00:35:38.940principle, though, of non-hoarding, of you can't keep it. That wealth in a gift society comes
00:35:45.320through being at a nexus of flow. So I thought, okay, how does this translate into money? Well,
00:35:53.780if you had money, instead of being able to hold it and bear interest, if you had a system where
00:36:01.180it lost its value, if you held it, kind of a systemic inflation, then money would adhere to
00:36:11.420a basic property of the gift. And that's where negative interest comes in, which also is actually,
00:36:19.100these things are coming up actually in the real world. On the one hand, at least in Europe,
00:36:25.060central banks are still having almost negative interest, in some cases, actually slightly
00:36:29.520negative. There are like Swiss, if you buy a Swiss national bond, it's going to have a negative
00:36:35.440interest rate. So we're actually, oh, and also the idea of a wealth tax, which is different than
00:36:41.600higher taxes on high income, but a wealth tax, something that affects wealth itself. Well,
00:36:47.340how do you do that? Do you have to inventory everybody's wealth? There's actually a really
00:36:50.860simple way to do it, which is to charge a fee on bank reserves. So I'm not going to go into too
00:36:59.340much detail there, but basically it means ramifies through the entire financial system. And basically
00:37:04.320it means if you have money in the bank, you don't get positive interest, you get negative interest
00:37:08.340on it. The money slowly evaporates. Just like in the old days, if you had a big store of grain
00:37:16.500and you didn't give it away, it would eventually go bad and you'd be left with nothing.
00:37:22.280So if you wanted to put that grain to good use, you would have to give it away. And those people
00:37:28.260who received it would know you as a big man, as a generous person, and they would feel grateful
00:37:35.780to you for having given them your excess grain. And so you'd have a secure place in society.
00:37:43.760So, and you would have everything that accrues to a wealthy person today, respect and power and so
00:37:52.480forth, but it wasn't through controlling and keeping, it was through giving. So anyway,
00:37:57.200long story short, negative interest rates on reserves translate into zero interest lending
00:38:05.480in the economy, translates into an economy that no longer needs economic growth for everybody to
00:38:11.060thrive, to have full employment and so on. So there's like, I go into a lot of economics in
00:38:16.100the book around that. And so that's one piece, one principle of the gift. And another principle
00:38:22.000of a gift is that when you give something, you don't have a guaranteed return. If I give you a
00:38:29.420gift in a gift culture, I might have an expectation that you're going to give to me also, or that
00:38:35.540you're going to give to somebody else. In a gift culture, I might give a certain gift to one person
00:38:42.840who never gives anything back to me because they're in that whatever father-in-law relationship
00:38:48.500to somebody else than they give to that person. So you don't necessarily get a gift back from
00:38:53.280the person you gave to, and you don't specify what the gift is going to be. If I give Ian a
00:38:58.120birthday present, I'm not going to say, I'm only going to give you this if you agree in writing
00:39:02.260to give me a birthday present of equal or greater value. I could reasonably expect that if I start
00:39:10.220giving you presents, you're probably going to do the same, but I don't have control over the
00:39:16.100situation. So that leads to the second most important pillar of a gift-infused economic
00:39:25.340system, which is universal basic income. Or in the book, I called it a social dividend.
00:39:31.440And basically, you're saying, we're not going to withhold the means of survival
00:39:36.440subject to whether or not you are doing useful work in society. We're going to give you that.
00:39:43.360We're going to give you the means of survival, and we're going to trust that your basic nature as wanting to give to the world will come out if you are liberated to do so.
00:39:55.880And so this taps into a very different view of human nature.
00:40:00.120Classical economics says humans are motivated to maximize rational self-interest and would say that if you didn't have to work, you wouldn't.
00:40:08.180If you weren't required to contribute to society, why would you?
00:40:11.480Why wouldn't you just sit back and play Mario Brothers every day and drink beer?
00:40:17.620Because you don't have to work, so why would you?
00:40:20.360That is, I think, a really distorted and inaccurate view of human nature.
00:40:26.480I think people are driven and deeply yearned to express their gifts in the world and to contribute to something meaningful to them.
00:40:35.020And that if we allow them the opportunity to do that, they will do that.
00:40:41.100So that's another principle of gift is the principle of trust.
00:40:45.300It's the principle of not controlling the return, which is one of the philosophical
00:40:51.100underpinnings of universal basic income.
00:40:53.160So I think that that together with negative interest are the two most important key pillars
00:40:59.180of what I would call an ecological economy.
00:41:03.080And the one could be used to finance the other.
00:41:05.760So I could speak for hours on these, but I guess just to say that these intuitions and longings toward gift in the personal realm and on the community level do have a counterpart on a systems level.
00:41:23.760It has never been enacted before on a mass scale or a global scale, but I think that our transition is toward that kind of world where our best impulses and our spiritual leanings and our kindness and generosity are no longer the enemy of the systems that we live in, but the systems that we live in are an embodiment of our highest aspirations.
00:41:53.760So I want to take what you just said, and I'm sitting with it, and I think about something that, Charles, I know you've written and spoken about extensively, and you as well, Ian, this idea of the old story that we're emerging from.
00:42:11.820And within this, I think something that almost everyone can, at least everyone listening can
00:42:18.860relate to in this mass messaging that has taken place over several decades around this sort of
00:42:24.400formula to life, you know, that working hard and sticking to the rules of the system will
00:42:29.740amass long-term benefits and financial stability, yada, yada. And I believe you referred to it as
00:42:36.260the quote grand project of civilization. But we know that this story is not true and to continue
00:42:44.100feeding into it will also not make it true. But I can't help but think about how following this
00:42:50.540formula actually enables and strengthens imperialism, strengthens human supremacy
00:42:55.180and extractivism and patriarchal values. So this question around this transition, and I know a lot
00:43:03.940of names have been given to the unraveling of the old story and the recognition of our separation,
00:43:09.600terms like crisis, collapse, coming of age, and even rites of passage. So I'd really love if you
00:43:15.900two could elaborate more on where you see us in this transition from the old story to the new
00:43:22.100story, and what kind of crisis moments should we prepare for collectively? You know, I get curious
00:43:30.380around this idea of I mean linear progression which you know seems suspect if you examine it
00:43:37.260but the story of I think Charles called it the story of ascension I believe the idea that you
00:43:43.480know we started out as cavemen and you know it's been a sort of fairly steady march towards more
00:43:49.460complexity you know more high vibration or you know there's different models that essentially
00:43:55.020are saying somewhat similar, that it's humans from the caves to the stars. And the problem with
00:44:02.440that, of course, it doesn't recognize that there's, I mean, many multiple worldviews
00:44:06.680coexisting, though the dominant one seems to have swallowed many of the diverse other worldviews that
00:44:14.180have existed on this planet. And there's a seduction within that worldview that the dominant
00:44:19.380worldview is is the only way it could be or ever has been for those that are within that system
00:44:25.920and so in a sense like anything it's hard to see the water you're in until you're able to have a
00:44:32.600deep experience outside of it and I think that you know as the examples of this alternate economic
00:44:40.020system or ecological system you know Charles was speaking to you know for me there I feel there is
00:44:44.640this deep resonant kind of core I mean it's like you call it a core story or a core frequency but
00:44:49.100that if we look at the history of the human species and believe that based on historical
00:44:56.540data and all the rest that, you know, for the most of it, we lived in nomadic tribes
00:44:59.940and various versions of village, that the kind of civilization project has actually
00:45:06.620only been a very recent development and that it may be helpful to think of it maybe less
00:45:13.080even as a regression or sort of a return to what it quote was, as many collapses often
00:45:18.680thing but um actually a spiral right a return but also at a higher octave or a different octave and
00:45:25.780incorporating all of the journey of separation you know that charles speaks to in his books
00:45:29.640incorporating into where we are now and and now from a different expression um you know what does
00:45:36.540a deep recognition of interdependence look like now from a globalized society that has been you
00:45:43.540know deeply affected by the ripples of colonization and extraction and all the rest and i think we're
00:45:49.780starting to see it emerge in all these different places and this is also why the the phenomenon of
00:45:55.360emergence to me is such a powerful way of being able to understand um this unfolding or this
00:46:00.720transition that it's not a linear transition as well of sort of everybody all at once you know
00:46:05.940all collapse all at once or you know we're all enlightened all at once but that um there's
00:46:10.640pockets of this future that are emerging everywhere and pockets of this story, you know, from Standing
00:46:15.720Rock and many other places where they're clearly sort of embodying this beacon of this frequency
00:46:22.800of deep interdependence, in this case, from, you know, indigenous communities that have thankfully
00:46:27.700been able to hold on to it. And so, you know, I think all of us have these crisis moments,
00:46:32.880you know, for many, and they maybe look somewhat different on a personal level, as well, though,
00:46:37.620Obviously, we're seeing it at the collective level, but whether from, you know, rapidly shifting weather events to further economic turmoil and, you know, the low key that is in the presidential room, you know, in the United States, that the crises can take many forms, yet the invitation seems to remain the same.
00:46:55.260you know, rather than sort of buckle down, double down, you know, return to what felt safe
00:47:01.340in a fashion that so many are advocating, rather see it as the invitation to step even more into
00:47:08.400this, you know, story that wants to emerge. Without certainty, though, that it will be
00:47:13.300successful. You know, I think that's also the big kind of recognition of this time is that there is
00:47:18.040there's absolutely no guarantee that, quote, it'll turn out for the better. And yet, you know,
00:47:22.740I don't think that's necessary actually to be engaged.
00:47:25.860That's like saying that life's only worth living if you last forever.
00:47:28.740And I think, you know, on a personal level,
00:47:30.460actually that it is precious because it doesn't last forever.
00:47:34.320And I think that there's something now in this time that we're willing to,
00:47:37.080to take steps or to lean into this story, you know,
00:47:41.120for the sake of not just those to come,
00:47:44.520but that it itself is rewarding to do so now, you know,
00:47:49.580to save the little patch of green that's still in your community, you know,
00:47:54.460when it seems ridiculous, you know, that that's still worth doing now,
00:47:57.320despite the coral reefs dying, despite, you know, all the rest.
00:49:54.140I just had a conversation, which I recorded with Daniel Schmachtenberger, who talks a lot about exponential tech and how in nature, the lion doesn't evolve faster than the gazelle.
00:50:09.740The lion evolves to be faster, the gazelle evolves to be faster, but they stay in a kind of equilibrium because their evolutionary mechanisms are the same.
00:50:19.160but with technology the fish are not evolving as fast as industrial fishing methods we can't
00:50:29.060catch up with drift nets and industrial trawlers and and things like that and more generally the
00:50:34.460entire biosphere cannot keep up with exponential technology so that necessarily changes our
00:50:45.380relationship. If we're going to have something called nature in the future, it changes our
00:50:53.080relationship to nature. No longer can we just, as a lion can, take to the best of our ability,
00:51:01.860knowing that everybody else will be able to take care of themselves. But we have to adopt
00:51:08.540a posture of stewardship or partnership that looks consciously at the effects of our actions.
00:51:18.940So this, I think the nature of our transition or initiation is this. It's toward a reunion
00:51:29.940with the rest of life and with the planet that no longer externalizes it as it's just a source
00:51:37.320of resources, but understands that this is a sacred part of ourselves. Not necessarily,
00:51:43.760where I diverge a little bit with Daniel Schmachtenberger is I do not think that
00:51:47.480exponential tech is necessarily an existential threat, that we're going to destroy the ecological
00:51:54.800basis of human life and we're all going to go extinct. I think that there's even a worse
00:52:02.700scenario, which I wrote about in my recent, my climate book, which is that we continue to
00:52:10.220kill the planet, but thanks to carbon sucking machines and bubble cities and synthetic food
00:52:19.640and hydroponic factories and so on, that we maintain human life on a dying planet.
00:52:26.600so part of the evolution part of the transition is away from the mentality of are we going to be
00:52:35.640okay are we going to survive that comes from the survival of the fittest attitude
00:52:44.280that that says the important thing is ourselves when you are in love with something with a person
00:52:52.100for example, the important thing is not yourself. If I love my mother, it's not because I think that
00:53:00.340I got to maintain a good relationship so I get my inheritance or something like that. That's not
00:53:04.620love. Love is I care about her because I love her. I mean, there's no reason for love. There's
00:53:11.100no reason that says, here's how I will benefit. So I think that the time has come to transition
00:53:17.860toward that relationship to nature, which other cultures had, and that we have forgotten in the
00:53:27.380ascent of humanity in this historical period of developing the technologies of control, which I
00:53:33.720think do have a purpose. We don't necessarily know what that purpose is yet, but when we consciously
00:53:38.580turn them toward regenerating and restoring what has been damaged and start asking different
00:53:45.880questions, then we will find the correct use for these technologies. The different questions being
00:53:51.840not how will we survive, but what kind of world do we want to live in? How can we take care of
00:53:58.340our relations? How can we be a healing force on this planet? Those kinds of questions give birth
00:54:04.280to new applications of technology that exist today on the fringes. There are people
00:54:09.060doing amazing things in permaculture, for example. But we have not, as a culture, turned our
00:54:15.380collective attention and creativity toward that. There's still way more energy and money being
00:54:21.840spent on war than there is on ecological restoration. Yeah. So I think basically you
00:54:29.800could see the initiation is into love. I hope that's not too cliche, but that's how I see it.
00:54:38.800Oh, I don't see it as cliche at all. It's actually something that I feel very firmly in my own
00:54:43.880belief system that in order for us to be sustained and driven in our missions for service it has to
00:54:52.320come from a place of love because otherwise what's going to wake us up every day to stand and engage
00:55:00.680in this intense crisis so I want to thank you both and if there's anything that has been left
00:55:07.560out that you want to mention I want to open up to either of you for any last thoughts while we're
00:55:12.740still together. I just feel like, you know, once I step into it, we could expand and expand and
00:55:20.100expand. I appreciate this conversation and your questions and, and this opportunity.
00:55:28.140I'd love to leave the listeners with this image that's come to me and, and continually has me
00:55:36.320just reflecting on its possible mystical applications but if you're familiar with
00:55:44.000cymatics which is my understanding is essentially like a it's a vibrational wave
00:55:49.120often through like a sound frequency and how you can find videos on youtube now right where
00:55:54.340the researcher or let's say dj will play a certain frequency and that there'll be certain
00:56:02.260particles on a speaker that will assemble, or whether it's water as well, will assemble into
00:56:08.980a certain orientation based on a relationship to the frequency. And in that sense, I feel like
00:56:16.320there's something in that with this idea of, you know, what is love as a frequency? What is the
00:56:22.660form it takes in a natural fashion? Like, it's not something that the form needs to be, you know,
00:56:28.700made happen by responding to the frequency but in fact they're deeply interrelated they're one in
00:56:33.640the same and how our kind of global unfolding emergent unfolding could be seen as a response
00:56:41.340or as a as a relationship to this core frequency that you know has been named here as love
00:56:45.560but that it has a certain form actually that it will take automatically like if we are able to
00:56:52.240tune in and to surrender to this core simatic of love. And so in this sense, it's not sort of a
00:56:59.020kind of, you know, open-ended, you know, whatever somebody might feel like doing, let's say,
00:57:04.480like, because there's very real possibility, of course, that it is aligned with the frequency
00:57:07.560of fear or scarcity or egoism or all these ways, which seen from a different perspective,
00:57:12.300are also those places in which we have been conditioned or wounded into not aligning with
00:57:18.800love that i think at the core every human being does want that actually but you know again for
00:57:23.680different ways of being interrupted in that that created um structures interstructures in ourselves
00:57:28.780and systems that further wound but if the capacity to um deeply align with and surrender to that
00:57:34.860frequency of love then we'll the action becomes obvious that and that to me is the core understanding
00:57:40.520of the intuition in this case that we're actually tuning into that core frequency and so that is
00:57:45.580what i just wish to leave the viewers with um you know to to be able to develop the capacity to tune
00:57:52.320into that frequency of love and then just respond in the natural fashion to what they feel most called