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The Ascent of Humanity

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posted on Dec, 15 2008 @ 01:36 AM
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I have found this book "The Ascent of Humanity" by Charles Eisenstein. It's available for free here :

www.ascentofhumanity.com...

the author denies the idea of "intellectual property"

The book contains almost everything I myself would like to say to the world, and I open this thread just to spread it around
Here are a few quotes :

I have put the entire text on line because I believe it is important for these ideas to circulate as widely as possible in the present time of crisis. In the book, I write of a coming shift from a profit-taking economy to a gift economy, from an economy of "how can I take the most?" to "how can I best give of my gifts?" This future, in which the anxiety of "making a living" no longer drives us, will arise out of the transformation in the human sense of self that is gathering today. But it is NOT ONLY A FUTURE. We can live it now too. It is in this spirit that I offer you The Ascent of Humanity on line.


As that word mine indicates, ownership implies an attachment of things to self. The more we own, the more we are. The constellation of me and mine grows. But no matter how large the discrete and separate self grows, it is still far smaller than the self of the hunter-gatherer. The pre-separation mind is able to affirm, all at once and without contradiction, "I am this body," "I am this tribe," "I am the jungle," "I am the world." No matter how much of the jungle we control, we are smaller than the one who knows, "I am the jungle." No matter how dominant we are socially, we are far less than one who knows, "I am my tribe." And far less secure, too, because all of these appendages to our tiny separate selves may be easily sundered from us. We are therefore perpetually and irremediably insecure. We go to great lengths to protect all these accessories of identity, our possessions and money and reputations, and when our house is burglarized, our wallet stolen, or our reputation besmirched, we feel as if our very selves have been violated.

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? Such hubris, once unknown in the world, has had the unfortunate effect of separating out ourselves as well from the matrix of reality, cutting us off (in experience if not in fact) from each other, from nature, and from spirit. By objectifying the world and everything in it, by making an other of the world, we necessarily objectify ourselves as well in relation to that other. The self becomes a lonely and isolated ego, connected to the world pragmatically but not in essence, afraid of death and thus closed to life. Such a self, cut off from its true nature and separated from the factitious environment created by its own self-definition, will always be insecure and will always try to exert more and more control over this environment.



posted on Dec, 15 2008 @ 09:51 AM
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"Play is the production of fun; entertainment is the consumption of fun. When the neighbors watch the Superbowl together they are consumers; when they organize a game of touch football (alas, the parks are empty these days) they are producers. When they watch music videos together they consume; when they play in a band they produce. Only through the latter activity is there the possibility of getting to know each other's strengths and limitations, character and inner resources. In contrast, the typical cocktail party, dinner party, or Superbowl party affords little opportunity to share much of oneself, because there is nothing to do. (And have you noticed how any attempt to share oneself in such settings seems contrived, uncomfortable, awkward, inappropriate, or embarrassing?) Besides, real intimacy comes not from telling about yourself—your childhood, your relationships, your health problems, etc.—but from joint creativity, which brings out your true qualities, invites you to show that aspect of yourself needed for the task at hand. Later, when intimacy has developed, telling about oneself may come naturally—or it may not even be necessary.

Have you ever wondered why your childhood friendships were closer, more intimate, more bonded than those of adulthood? At least that's how I remember mine. It wasn't because we had heart-to-heart conversations about our feelings. With our childhood friends we felt a closeness that probably wasn't communicated in words. We did things together and created things together. From an adult's perspective our creativity was nothing but games: our play forts and cardboard box houses and pretend tea parties and imaginary sports teams and teddy bear families were not real. As children, though, these activities were very real to us indeed; we were absolutely in earnest and invested no less a degree of emotion in our make-believe than adults do in theirs.

Yes, the adult world is make-believe too. Roles and costumes, games and pretenses contribute to a vast story. When we become aware of it, we sense the artificiality of it all and feel, perhaps, like a child playing grown-up. The entire edifice of culture and technology is built on stories, composed of symbols, about how the world is. Usually we don't notice; we think it is all "for real". Our stories are mostly unconscious. But the new edifice that will rise from the ruins of the old will be built on very different stories of self and world, and these stories will be consciously told. We will go back to play.

As children the things we did together mattered to us. To us they were real; we cared about them intensely and they evoked our full being. In contrast, most of the things we do together as adults for the sake of fun and friendship do not matter. We recognize them as frivolous, unnecessary, and relegate them to our "spare time". A child does not relegate play to spare time, unless forced to.

I remember the long afternoons of childhood when my friends and I would get totally involved in some project or other, which became for that time the most important thing in the universe. We were completely immersed, in our project and in our group. Our union was greater than our mere sum as individuals; the whole was greater than the sum of the parts. The friendships that satisfy our need for connection are those that make each person more than themselves. That extra dimension belongs to both partners and to neither, akin to the "fifth voice" that emerges in a barbershop quartet out of the harmonics of the four. In many of my adult relationships I feel diminished, not enlarged. I don't feel like I've let go of boundaries to become part of something greater than my self; instead I find myself tightly guarding my boundaries and doling out only that little bit of myself that is safe or likeable or proper. Others do the same. We are reserved. We are restrained.

Our reservedness should not be too surprising, because there is little in our adult friendships that compels us to be together. We can get together and talk, we can get together and eat and talk, we can get together and drink and talk. We can watch a movie or a concert together and be entertained. There are many opportunities for joint consumption but few for joint creativity, or for doing things together about which we care intensely. At most we might go sailing or play sports with friends, and at least we are working together toward a common purpose, but even so we recognize it as a game, a pastime. The reason adult friendships seem so superficial is that they are superficial. The reason we can find little to do besides getting together and talking, or getting together to be entertained, is that our society's specialization has left us with little else to do. Thus the teenager's constant refrain: "There's nothing to do." He is right. As we move into adulthood, in place of play we are offered consumption, in place of joint creativity, competition, and in place of playmates, the professional colleague."

"Because the economy depends on our roles, but does not care which individuals fill these roles, we suffer an omnipresent anxiety and insecurity borne of the fact that the world can get along just fine without us. We are easily replaced. Of course, for our friends and loved ones—people who know us personally—we are irreplaceable. But with the increasingly fine division of labor and mass scale of modern society, these are fewer and fewer, as more and more social functions enter the monetized realm. Thus we live in fear, anxiety, and insecurity, and justifiably so, because we are easily replaceable in the roles we perform to earn money.

We can get along fine without you. We'll just pay someone else to do it. "



posted on Dec, 30 2008 @ 05:06 AM
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"He must be cut off from the past. . . because it is necessary for him to believe that he is better off than his ancestors and that the average level of material comfort is constantly rising."
--George Orwell, 1984



The Pressure to Break Free

To most of the roles society offers, I say, "You are made for more than that." We inhabit, in the words of Ivan Illich, "a world into which nobody fits who has not been crushed and molded by sixteen years of formal education." The very idea of having to be at a job "on time" was appalling to early industrial laborers, who also refused the numbing repetitiveness of industrial work until the specter of starvation compelled them. [B]What truly self-respecting person would spend a life marketing soda pop or chewing gum unless they were somehow broken by repeated threats to survival?[/B]

Maybe some will say : "they did not want to learn, lazy kids, they deserve those jobs !". I say that without them, and their boring jobs our "advanced civilization" would crash. We are not "civilized" if we force people to do those boring jobs to survive.
"Somebody needs to do them" some will say. No. They do it only for the money, to survive. And as I said in another topic I opened - that work is not needed !

An oft-cited example is the !Kung of the Kalihari Desert in southern Africa, who were studied by the anthropologist Richard Lee.ii He followed them around for four weeks, kept a log of all their activities, and calculated an average workweek of approximately [B]twenty hours spent in subsistence activities[/B]. This figure was confirmed by subsequent studies by Lee and other researchers in the same region. In one of the harshest climates in the world, the !Kung enjoyed a leisurely life with high nutritional intake. This compares to the modern standard of [B]forty hours of work per week. [/B]If we add in commuting time, shopping, housework, cooking and so forth, the typical American spends about eighty hours per week aside from leisure time, eating, and sleep. The comparable figure for the !Kung is forty hours including such necessary activities as making tools and clothes.

Other studies worldwide, as well as common sense, suggest that the !Kung were not exceptional. In more lush areas life was probably even easier. Moreover, much of the "work" spent on these twenty hours of subsistence activities was by no means strenuous or burdensome. Most of the men's subsistence hours were spent hunting, something we do for recreation today, while gathering work was occasion for banter and frequent breaks.
Primitive small-scale agriculturalists enjoyed a similar unhurried pace of life. Consider Helena Norberg-Hodge's description of pre-modern Ladakh, a region in the Indian portion of the Tibetan Plateau.iii [B]Despite a growing season only four months long, Ladakh enjoyed regular food surpluses, long and frequent festivals and celebrations, and ample leisure time (especially in winter when there was little field work to do). This, despite the harsh climate and the (proportionately) enormous population of non-working Buddhist monks in that country's numerous monasteries![/B] More powerfully than any statistic, Norberg-Hodge's video documentary Ancient Futures conveys a sense of the leisurely pace of life there: villagers chat or sing as they work, taking plenty of long breaks even at the busiest time of the year. As the narrator says, "work and leisure are one."


That way to "Work" which was not the "work" - "slavery" of today, is being destroyed everywhere by money, and "economic need" not real need. That ancient way of work was in fact "living", the thing we hope to do when we "retire". Those people did not work, or have "vacations" they just lived.


Not only does school prepare us to submit to the trivialized, demeaning, dull, and unfulfilling jobs that dominate our economy to the present time, not only does it prepare us to be modern producers, it equally prepares us to be modern consumers. Consider Gatto's description:

Schools train individuals to respond as a mass. Boys and girls are drilled in being bored, frightened, envious, emotionally needy, generally incomplete. A successful mass production economy requires such a clientele. A small business, small farm economy like that of the Amish requires individual competence, thoughtfulness, compassion, and universal participation; our own requires a managed mass of leveled, spiritless, anxious, familyless, friendless, godless, and obedient people who believe the difference between "Cheers" and "Seinfeld" is worth arguing about. "


[edit on 30-12-2008 by pai mei]



posted on Dec, 30 2008 @ 03:36 PM
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Very Intesting, while I agree on some of the points you made, I do not agree on somethings.



"He must be cut off from the past. . . because it is necessary for him to believe that he is better off than his ancestors and that the average level of material comfort is constantly rising."


To be cut off from the past, while I like Orwell and many of his works and statements, but not this statement. Believeing and knowing are two very different things, it is important to know that we are better off than our ancestors, so that we know that we will not make the same mistakes and learn from our ancestors mistakes. Trying to make sure that history will not repeat itself, in bringing forth another Hitler or Ghangas Khan.



world into which nobody fits who has not been crushed and molded by sixteen years of formal education


I personally believe that we do not fit in this world because, we do not belong here, this home of ours..earth is only a temporary place. In the next world we will belong because that is where death brings us.



The very idea of having to be at a job "on time" was appalling to early industrial laborers, who also refused the numbing repetitiveness of industrial work until the specter of starvation compelled them. [B]What truly self-respecting person would spend a life marketing soda pop or chewing gum unless they were somehow broken by repeated threats to survival?[/B]


The reason the job on time was appauling, because no one had ever thought of the idea. Kind of like football cards, parents used to wonder why on earth there kids would buy gum to get the football cards, its the sign of the times. Ushering in a new way of life. Repeated threats of survival and marketing? While I can see the connection I am not adding it up. I mean post it notes for instance, was just found by luck and marketed to see if they would sell, which they did.



"work and leisure are one."


That depends on who you talk to, I personally see times when it is acceptable. Like a policemen, while they always have to be on guard, they can have moments of leisure and when they get the call can spring into action. Most police look at there job as exciting, which I could not agree more on. But most of the time they said its boring. So yes I can see work and leisure as one.



Schools train individuals to respond as a mass. Boys and girls are drilled in being bored, frightened, envious, emotionally needy, generally incomplete. A successful mass production economy requires such a clientele. A small business, small farm economy like that of the Amish requires individual competence, thoughtfulness, compassion, and universal participation; our own requires a managed mass of leveled, spiritless, anxious, familyless, friendless, godless, and obedient people who believe the difference between "Cheers" and "Seinfeld" is worth arguing about. "


This paragraph was a good one, I liked it a lot an dit made sense. We are way to materialistic, I do not think turning Amish or being Amish is a good thing. I believe some material items are good, but I also know that a lot could become poison.



our own requires a managed mass of leveled, spiritless, anxious, familyless, friendless, godless, and obedient people


I totally agree with this and think is says it all.
However, I think that most of us have a sense of spirit. But the others are right on, we have been deprived from God, friends, family, and have become in essence a robot, following the majority and social norms dictated by celebrities and majorities.

Awesome thread, keep it coming!




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