<html><body><div style="color:#000; background-color:#fff; font-family:garamond, new york, times, serif;font-size:14pt"><div><span><pre style="white-space: pre-wrap;">Kerry,</pre><pre style="white-space: pre-wrap;">Thanks for sharing those other links to Eisenstein. I'm also enjoying listening to his earlier book, Ascent of Humanity (which of course is freely available as an e-book and as audio). </pre><pre style="white-space: pre-wrap;">As for what we can do-</pre><pre style="white-space: pre-wrap;">I think that is a great question.</pre><pre style="white-space: pre-wrap;">Part of it for me is simply learning to live in a more interconnected way.</pre><pre style="white-space: pre-wrap;">To paraphrase Thic Nhat Hanh-</pre><pre style="white-space: pre-wrap;">i am the unjustly foreclosed upon worker</pre><pre style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-style: italic;">and </span>the "bankster."</pre><pre style="white-space: pre-wrap;">Also, I think it
is about starting to apply some of the ideas in the book (none of which, as Eisenstein acknowledges, are new anyway) like Gift Circles.</pre><pre style="white-space: pre-wrap;">Incidentally, Eisenstein references Alpha Lo as someone who is active with Gift Circles, and I had the good fortune of meeting him at the San Francisco 2008 WOSonOS...</pre><pre style="white-space: pre-wrap;">One thing I've resolved to do is hold a monthly gift circle where I live. I held my birthday last month as a gift circle- and it was wonderful! It took some courage to do a birthday a little differently...but it was really beautiful. </pre><pre style="white-space: pre-wrap;">Will that change the world? i don't know. Will it make the world more just? good question.</pre><pre style="white-space: pre-wrap;">For me, holding the gift circle was about opening a little space.</pre><pre style="white-space: pre-wrap;">That said- for a gift circle to truly be powerful, we must really
need each other. And our lives are often set up so that we are pretty darn separate. As eisentein posits, since we don't really <span style="font-style: italic;">need</span> each other, community doesn't really happen.</pre><pre style="white-space: pre-wrap;">that said, i see value in gathering in a circle like this....</pre><pre style="white-space: pre-wrap;">Part of the positive story I hear in Sacred Economics is that this "Age of Separation" is ending whether we like it or not- the process of the shift, though, can be rather bumpy...So, this old system- including this financial system with "banksters," he seems to suggest will just collapse. </pre><pre style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><br></pre><pre style="white-space: pre-wrap;">my two kopecks/rials/drams,</pre><pre style="white-space: pre-wrap;">greetings from this southwest corner of continental obamastan,</pre><pre style="white-space: pre-wrap;">raffi</pre><pre style="white-space:
pre-wrap;"><br></pre><pre style="white-space: pre-wrap;">p.s. i've also enjoyed this three hour chris hedges interview given on cspan early last year <a href="http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/303072-1" style="font-family: garamond, 'new york', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;">http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/303072-1</a> I'v shared it with a lot of people (especially those who were seriously contemplating voting for Obama in the '12 election) While I share a lot of the criticism and can look past the critical/negative tone, I think the worldview he is operating from is a limiting one.</pre><pre style="white-space: pre-wrap;">Dear Listers
Thanks Raffi for introducing SACRED ECONOMICS.
If we can find a way to get rid of money by reinventing the way we exist,
the banksters will disappear along with all the greedy and selfish people
who have accumulated the world's riches on the backs of others through the
shibboleth of globalisation. There is something disastrously wrong when
the three richest people have more wealth than the poorest 48 countries in
the world. How did 0.5% of the population amass 38% of the world's wealth
when 68% of the population have only 4.2%?
How can capitalism, which depends on consumption economics to create more
and more growth, continue when the earth's resources are finite and the
environment is ravaged to produce yet more wealth for the few. In our
hearts we know the old system is bankrupt and corrupt, so something must
change. Eisenstein's book is one attempt to look at what the transition
might involve.
For some years I have believed there is another way we can move away from
production and consumption of quantity by focusing on quality, making and
doing things that last and allow people to feel good without using more and
more precious resources.
Do you have any thoughts?
More specifically, does Open Space have a role to play here? How do we get
from Bruce opening space from his park bench in deep winter to transforming
the world?
Peace
Kerry
Edinburgh</pre></span></div><div></div><div> </div><div>******<br>"The truism that we reap only what we sow only goes back as far as agriculture. Before then, we could reap without sowing: nature was fundamentally provident. For the hunter-gatherer, the providence of nature requires little labor or planning, but only an understanding of nature’s patterns. Primitive survival is a matter of intimacy and not control.."<br>-- Charles Eisenstein, Ascent of Humanity</div></div></body></html>