The Ascent of Humanity Quotes

“Hunter-gatherers...were animists who believed in the unique sacred spirit of each animal, plant, object and process...a tree was not a tree, but a distinct individual. If it is just a tree, one among a whole forest of trees, it is no great matter to chop it down. Nothing unique is being removed from the world. But if we see it as a unique individual, sacred and irreplaceable, then we would chop it down only with great circumspection. We might, as many indigenous peoples do, meditate and pray before committing an act of such enormity.”
― Charles Eisenstein, The Ascent of Humanity: Civilization and the Human Sense of Self by Eisenstein, Charles

“In terms of conventional economics, it may actually be in an individual's rational self-interest to engage in activities that render the earth uninhabitable....it may be more in our "rational self-interest" to liquidate all natural capital right now - cash in the earth - than to preserve it for future generations”
― Charles Eisenstein, The Ascent of Humanity: Civilization and the Human Sense of Self by Eisenstein, Charles

“The totalising trend of money and its conceptual equivalence to utility or goodness is responsible for the lunacy of current economic accounting, in which phenomena like cancer, toxic water leaks, divorce, imprisonment, and so forth contribute to GDP - the total value of all "goods" and "services". As long as the damage caused to people, cultures, and ecosystems is not denominated in money, it is in the realm of other, off the balance sheet...To the extent that we identify with our communities, we cannot export costs to them. Both social pressures and our own conscience will stop us. To the extent that we identify with nature, neither can we see as profit anything that diminishes the overall wholeness and beauty of the earth.”
― Charles Eisenstein, The Ascent of Humanity: Civilization and the Human Sense of Self by Eisenstein, Charles

“When we pay professionals to grow our food, prepare our food, create our entertainment, make our clothes, build our houses, clean our houses, treat our illnesses, and educate our children, what's left? What's left on which to base community? Real communities are interdependent...It is strangers whom we pay to perform [these] functions. It doesn't really matter who grows your food - if they have a problem, you can always pay someone else to do it. This phrase encapsulates much about our modern society...we can always pay someone else to do it. As an individual, it is hard not to feel dispensable, a cog in the machine. We feel dispensable because, in terms of survival, in terms of all the economic functions of life, we are dispensable.”
― Charles Eisenstein, The Ascent of Humanity: Civilization and the Human Sense of Self by Eisenstein, Charles

“When we pay professionals to grow our food, prepare our food, create our entertainment, make our clothes, build our houses, clean our houses, treat our illnesses, and educate our children, what's left? What's left on which to base community? Real communities are interdependent.”
― Charles Eisenstein, The Ascent of Humanity: Civilization and the Human Sense of Self by Eisenstein, Charles

“In a world where nothing matters, the most atrocious events are no longer horrifying; the most piteous victims no longer stir our compassion; the most frightening possibilities, like nuclear war and ecological destruction, no longer frighten us. Sometimes we explain it away as "compassion fatigue", but really it is a disconnection from reality. None of it seems real. We sit back, benumbed, watching the world slide slowly toward a precipice as if it were an on-screen enactment. Similarly, we watch the years of our own lives march on, indifferent to the preciousness of each passing moment. Only once in a while an alarm goes off, we panic for a moment with a thought like, "This is real! This is my life! What am I here for?" And then our environment tempts us back into stupor.”
― Charles Eisenstein, The Ascent of Humanity: Civilization and the Human Sense of Self by Eisenstein, Charles