129: Charles Eisenstein | Are We Meant to Live Like This? The Price of “Normal” Modern Life

Autogenerated Transcript

[00:00:00] Jesper Conrad: Today we are together with Charles Eisenstein. And first of all, Charles, a warm welcome. It's nice that you could find the time.

[00:00:07] Charles Eisenstein: Yeah, I'm happy to, , meet you and, See what we're gonna do,

[00:00:11] Cecilie Conrad: where this goes.

[00:00:12] Cecilie Conrad: Yeah.

[00:00:12] Jesper Conrad: Yes.

[00:00:13] Charles Eisenstein: Yeah.

[00:00:14] Jesper Conrad: So where this goes is that I, for some time have been looking at family structure, has been thinking about how family has developed, what has happened because we are a family who is. World schooling and homeschooling before that and unschooling and it standing outside society in some ways.

[00:00:38] Jesper Conrad: We do. When we take our kids out of the normal school settings and have been living this life for the last 13, 15 years, I've begun to punter more about it. And then I actually had a chat dialogue with chat GBT where I said. Who do you think could be an interesting guest we could talk about these kind of things with?[00:01:00]

[00:01:00] Jesper Conrad: And it came up with you, Charles. Wow. Bt, huh? Yeah,

[00:01:04] Cecilie Conrad: it's scary, isn't it? Yeah.

[00:01:07] Jesper Conrad: , so I would start out by admitting I haven't read your books, but after looking into it, I was like, yeah, he seems interesting. , I definitely want to get to know Charles more , and know more about it.

[00:01:20] Charles Eisenstein: I will try not to be boring.

[00:01:21] Charles Eisenstein: It definitely, this is a topic I have thought about a lot and, written about some. yeah, happy to explore. I've also done, some kind of unschooling, homeschooling and, mixed in with some school also. Tried lots of different things and, I'm not sure if I could, I don't think I could be an advocate for any one of them.

[00:01:49] Charles Eisenstein: Nope. Yeah.

[00:01:52] Cecilie Conrad: we talk a lot about unschooling. We talk a lot and we are pretty sure we believe in it, but. [00:02:00] we always say that the most important thing is everyone's freedom to make their own choices and do what works for their family. So

[00:02:09] Charles Eisenstein: yeah.

[00:02:10] Cecilie Conrad: Even though we talk about unschooling all the time, it's not like one of our kids haven't been to school.

[00:02:16] Cecilie Conrad: Nope. 'cause one of them was, and yeah.

[00:02:20] Charles Eisenstein: Yeah. I think the whole conversation, Only makes sense in a social context. if you were say, living in a village somewhere, and all the kids are, learning from adults, and participating in adult life and learning how to hunt and learning how to grow sweet potatoes and learning traditional ways.

[00:02:44] Charles Eisenstein: Then unschooling is something very, different. there it's either unschooling and the child is learning all those things. Or maybe you send the child away to some missionary school or some state-run school, which, [00:03:00] separates them from traditional ways of life and ways of thinking.

[00:03:03] Charles Eisenstein: That's very different than in my society and probably your society where. School is where all the kids are. And so you take them outta school and it's not like there's, life happening around them and adults doing things that they understand and that they can apprentice to and they can learn from.

[00:03:28] Charles Eisenstein: there, it is. So isolated. so I think that, we have to talk about the context when we talk about unschooling, homeschooling, schooling.

[00:03:40] Jesper Conrad: Yeah, because that's a, I'm super happy you go in that direction because it's one of the things that. I can see where we have been drawn towards not having our kids in school, but then my wife, the first couple of years did a enormous work of going out to find the other kids.

[00:03:59] Jesper Conrad: Yeah. [00:04:00]

[00:04:00] Charles Eisenstein: Create

[00:04:00] Jesper Conrad: the community. And now we are creating what we are calling world schooling villages, where we are families that move together for a month in the same area. It is traveling families because the. So important. I, want to go a little back to something my wife said some years ago that, I still return to, we had been up visiting her cousin who had a newborn.

[00:04:26] Jesper Conrad: And it's the kind of, it wasn't a big baby shower as the people have in the states, but it was, we come and visit and we see the baby and these things. And on the way down of the stairs from visiting them, Cecilia looked at me and said, nobody should have a baby alone. And I've just been thinking deep and long about this because.

[00:04:47] Jesper Conrad: I was like, oh, yes. That is what we have done to our society. We live in these small units, two people getting a baby, and we wonder why people are stressed out. Yeah. [00:05:00]

[00:05:00] Charles Eisenstein: It's insane. It's insane to try to raise a baby inside a box. Yeah. Yeah. I, was recently at a, excuse me, I was recently at a gathering where someone had been.

[00:05:15] Charles Eisenstein: had lived, I think in a village in Africa somewhere. and she spoke of a woman that she met there who didn't know, who her own mother was. Wasn't sure who her mother was, because from her earliest memories, there were many, women who adored her and who took care of her. She could go to any hut and get fed.

[00:05:38] Charles Eisenstein: and so it almost didn't matter who her mother, the whole idea of family, as we know it in the west, didn't even exist. There wasn't family and then separate from neighbor, separate from relatives, it was all a village and wow. Imagine like growing [00:06:00] up with 50 people adoring you. and playmates all the time.

[00:06:07] Charles Eisenstein: how rich your life would be and how secure you would feel in the world. that's, a, it, it speaks to the poverty of our society, which, ironically we think that we're the wealthiest, but, like that, that's something that money can't buy. You cannot buy having 50 people who adore you. And I think that, here we are, in this situation like, like you and I, people who do things in a different way, who defy the program, who don't just send their kids to school, we sense that there's something wrong here. There's something wrong with the way that we are living. And so we try to find a different way.

[00:06:52] Charles Eisenstein: and, we do our best, but no matter what we do, we can't change. We can't wave a magic wand and [00:07:00] change the ground conditions, we can only make steps toward, towards sanity. like, you're doing with the World School gatherings.

[00:07:11] Cecilie Conrad: Yeah. I think also, one of our mantras in our family is that the context will always be relevant.

[00:07:17] Cecilie Conrad: We talk about that all the time, that when you can try to come up with some principles and rules and strategies, and it's a good idea to do that, but at the same time. Any decision will always have a local anchor in the relevant context. And being a world schooler and an unschooler in Europe in these years post COVID, it's also a contextual choice and it's a choice that happens inside a society.

[00:07:46] Cecilie Conrad: I think you said in the opening something about being outside of, standing. Outside of, and actually I don't think we are outside of society. we are part of. This world, we're just doing things in a different way, but the [00:08:00] way things work limits our options. We're just trying to not necessarily make the most of it because that's like bigger, better, faster, more, but more make the most meaningful version of it that we can make in the actual context.

[00:08:18] Cecilie Conrad: And I, I think, I hope most people do that. It's not about using schools or not, it's about making a conscious choice about how we want our life design to be.

[00:08:31] Charles Eisenstein: Yeah, making good of a situation that isn't ideal. But, here we are.

[00:08:39] Cecilie Conrad: I don't know that it isn't ideal. probably it isn't, but has it ever been, will it ever be or will it always be some sort of chaos and we have to adapt?

[00:08:50] Cecilie Conrad: I don't know.

[00:08:52] Charles Eisenstein: Yeah, that, gets to, metaphysical questions.

[00:08:55] Cecilie Conrad: It becomes quite complicated, but I'm, what I'm aiming at is just, I [00:09:00] think in, in, in the circles we move in. I'm not saying you are saying it, but I often feel that we, have to be so much against what is, it's so bad and it's so wrong, and we are going in the wrong direct direction and everything's falling apart and people are a sheep or robots or whatever, and.

[00:09:20] Cecilie Conrad: It is very negative worldview and sometimes I just wanna say I, I love the motorway man. It takes me fast to where I need to go. it might not be ideal for everything that we have motorways cutting through our landscapes, but there are certainly are advantages and I believe that there, you can probably put this mindset to most things that we.

[00:09:42] Cecilie Conrad: Maybe could disagree with that. We can also see how it can be a benefit or how we can find our ways. I don't love the motorway if there's traffic, so I avoid going in the afternoons, but I. That's the [00:10:00] navigational part that I find a way to navigate the society that is, and I try to avoid being too much against it and talking too negatively about, I don't know.

[00:10:10] Cecilie Conrad: there are many things these years that are much better than a hundred years ago. Just think about women's rights or I'm saying se 17. No.

[00:10:23] Jesper Conrad: Yeah.

[00:10:25] Cecilie Conrad: Sanitation,

[00:10:25] Cecilie Conrad: Maybe not. Maybe

[00:10:27] Jesper Conrad: not sanitation. Maybe not sanitation.

[00:10:29] Cecilie Conrad: No, but at least you it'll be cleanish if you end up in a hospital.

[00:10:36] Cecilie Conrad: I think it's a very hard analysis to make to, say that it's worse now than it was a hundred years.

[00:10:43] Charles Eisenstein: Yeah. I don't think it matters. Yeah. maybe not. the way it is now is the way it is now. and I think that the value in those kinds of conversations is that it can identify something that has been lost because when you identify [00:11:00] what is missing, then you maybe can, recreate it, rebuild it.

[00:11:06] Charles Eisenstein: But if you don't even know what's missing, then you feel, you feel lost. you feel. that maybe the problem is yourself and not your circumstances. like when I was a kid, if you went outside, you would always hear the sounds of children playing in the neighborhood the other day. And I don't hear that anymore.

[00:11:37] Charles Eisenstein: Very often, but the other day it was a holiday and I heard it because I think our neighbors must have had their relatives over and they were actually playing outside a game of, I don't know, some game outside. And I remembered that noise, the sound of children playing. I remembered how it was there every day when I was a child, and I felt sad [00:12:00] that I don't hear that sound anymore.

[00:12:03] Charles Eisenstein: It's that's for me, that sound is a kind of a nourishment. That when I don't have it, I forget even that this vitamin exists. I don't, I, so to recognize that loss, that doesn't mean that I have to wallow in despair, doesn't mean that I have to reject all of society, I think it is helpful to say, oh, here's something valuable. And then when I have a creative choice, like what do I want to create for my children? What do I wanna choose? Do I wanna move here or move there? Do I wanna to put 'em in school or not? I have information, , that I integrate by actually feeling sad about it.

[00:12:52] Charles Eisenstein: oh, there's a little grief there. and I think that grief is a way to integrate loss. And the motorway, [00:13:00] like again, like I have in my mind as a child, there were special places I like to go. There was a, wild place behind our house a few blocks away that was undeveloped land.

[00:13:14] Charles Eisenstein: There was a, quarry there. Actually, and just, some undeveloped land. There were these pine trees and blackberry bushes and this path, it was probably 10 or 15 hectares of undeveloped land, maybe even more. And, I got to know that land, like part of myself, it became part of my, being.

[00:13:45] Charles Eisenstein: It was an intimate friend. And so again, like today, there's a concept called the roaming radius for children. It's how far does the average child roam unsupervised away from the [00:14:00] house. and it used to be several kilometers. And now in my country it's, Only several meters. Oh my God. Yes. And, so again, like here's another loss.

[00:14:19] Charles Eisenstein: and yeah, maybe in the days when children roamed far and were free and played with each other, there were bad things too. Infant mortality was very high. there were, who knows if it was better or worse, but still to, To feel the value of those things, I think that helps us navigate toward the future.

[00:14:46] Jesper Conrad: Yeah, , I like the way you put it because I'm in this flux between trying to understand, see what has happened in my own mind. not a big research guy, not very academic, but I look at, oh, we went from the local [00:15:00] communities into the cities and then we went, I.

[00:15:02] Jesper Conrad: Yeah, into smaller and smaller units. And then in a period we have praised like the, the nuclear family. And part of me is, as you say, missing something. So part of me is trying to look at what to blame for the development. But again, as Cecilia also say, why be in the blaming mode? And I like how you put it to be in d.

[00:15:23] Jesper Conrad: Hey, I can see I miss something using the feelings as a pointer. And there is something about how the families has become smaller and smaller, I find, difficult and, the outsource of the, care I. For example, my parents are getting older and it saddens me that I don't feel I have this very strong connection with them where it would be natural for me to take them in it.

[00:15:48] Jesper Conrad: It's not there. That feeling and seeing that, feeling is not there is. feels so bad. I don't like to say it out loud,

[00:15:57] Cecilie Conrad: so you say it on the podcast, so

[00:15:58] Jesper Conrad: I say it on the podcast. [00:16:00] No, but I also recognize it's, that is what makes me sad is that feeling of wanting to do it isn't there where I'm trying to go is asking you how you started your path of discovery down this, was it your education?

[00:16:17] Jesper Conrad: Or why have you been interested in this field?

[00:16:21] Charles Eisenstein: Since I was very young, I had, an intuition that normal was unacceptable and a rebellion against it. And, That, that it wasn't just one or two institutions that were corrupt in a civilization that was otherwise found, but that the very fabric of our whole civilization was, not in service to [00:17:00] human fulfillment and the flourishing of life, let's put it that way. And so that includes every aspect of it, from the way babies are born, to the way we raise children, to the way that we produce, food and entertainment and knowledge. all the way to the way that we take care of our elderly in the way that we die. The whole thing, top to bottom, every institution.

[00:17:30] Charles Eisenstein: So when I became a parent, it became very personal. how do I raise my children in the most beautiful way I can? Given our embedment in a society that, as I said before, is not ideal for the raising of children, And I didn't have, maybe I had theoretical answers, but the theoretical answers didn't help me that much.

[00:17:59] Charles Eisenstein: [00:18:00] when Yeah. children should be playing outside unsupervised. But the neighborhood I found myself in, I thought there would be lots of kids playing outside there when we moved, with our 2-year-old when my first wife was pregnant, with our second baby. We moved to a suburban neighborhood.

[00:18:20] Charles Eisenstein: Got a lot of young families, and, no, no one outside. Didn't see kids outside. Where are all the kids? I guess we moved there in, the fall and there were a few kids, but, I thought, we'll start community, we'll get everybody together. we'll have a community garden.

[00:18:44] Charles Eisenstein: here's a spot for the community garden. Yeah. And no one was interested, so my ideals, my, my, my concepts about what an ideal childhood would look like, I couldn't, I didn't have the power to implement them. [00:19:00] maybe if I, was a billionaire and could invite everybody onto land and overcome the zoning regulations and the building codes and everything that are in the way of actually living right.

[00:19:14] Charles Eisenstein: Then maybe I could do it, but I wasn't in that kind of situation. I could only choose from the menu that was in front of my face. And, like most people, I had my own share of programming and, neuroses and hangups , and injuries and, it was all I could do to. To keep the peace in my marriage.

[00:19:43] Charles Eisenstein: And even that didn't work. so I guess I rec realized that the return journey, or the journey to a society that actually can accommodate [00:20:00] children is a long journey. And, maybe if, maybe if, my children have. A better childhood than I had, than I've done my part.

[00:20:13] Charles Eisenstein: And maybe they will be able to create what I was unable to create for them. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:20:21] Jesper Conrad: But yeah, thank you for sharing. I sometimes feel we are, and I know Cecilia says that we are part of the society, but. The way we live, both adults working from home, full-time traveling, , as nomads then I feel that we are a satellite that is circling around.

[00:20:48] Jesper Conrad: That's how I see it. And then my question is. As you talk about the fight against normal, [00:21:00] if we could talk a little about natural versus normal, because I, we, at some point in our life, I wanted to move into an Eagle Village and we went and visited one and we saw several. And what we found was that.

[00:21:19] Jesper Conrad: Some of them had more rules than society. It, became very heavily regulated and it was like, oh, that, that's what I wanted to get away from. I wanted natural and relaxed, and so I'm trying to find a way that is natural inside, inside the norm or inside normal or next to normal.

[00:21:46] Charles Eisenstein: if you study anthropology and read about the way that human beings have lived, people have lived in so many different ways.

[00:21:54] Charles Eisenstein: some societies, even free modern societies, were very highly [00:22:00] structured with elaborate rituals and taboos, that, made life not very free. and other societies were much more laid back. and each one of those provides a different container for the development of the human being or the development of the soul.

[00:22:20] Charles Eisenstein: You could even say, it's hard to say whether one is better or worse than the others. there's in, in highly organized societies with elaborate rules, elaborate. They sometimes have very strong community. You know who you are and you can, you're free to develop, it's like a sonnet.

[00:22:47] Charles Eisenstein: There's a type of poem. The sonnet has very strict rules or the haiku, very strict rules, but that doesn't. Mean that you cannot be creative because there's too [00:23:00] many rules like you can develop within that container. And we are fundamentally social beings. So there's always to, to some extent, there's always gonna be, ways to negotiate our relationships that are based either on explicit rules or implicit rules.

[00:23:26] Charles Eisenstein: We are not actually here to be free. We're here to be in relationship. And I understand the impulse towards freedom when the relationships have been industrialized and used, to control and oppress people. and then of course we want to break free from those. again, we're here to relate, so they're gonna be replaced with something.

[00:23:59] Charles Eisenstein: Yeah, I [00:24:00] have visited many eco villages as well. And to me it's it's not so much, oh, there's too many rules. It's more of, okay, here is the way of being that is that this place offers. Is that a fit accommodation for who I am right now? Maybe. Maybe, if I settle in that eco village, I can see the ways that I can develop the things that will confront me that maybe should be confronted.

[00:24:36] Charles Eisenstein: maybe there are ways that I'm selfish and could be more. In mutual obligation to people and really involved in their lives, and I'm hanging back from full incarnation. I'm hanging back from being fully in relationship to other human beings and maybe this is the step I need to take into [00:25:00] this community.

[00:25:01] Charles Eisenstein: Or maybe this isn't actually the right one for me, but I, that I can look at, okay, what is it exactly that's keeping me back, am I afraid? To really plunge into life, into relationship to be fully incarnate? Or is this actually not a place conducive to my development? and, who would I become here?

[00:25:25] Charles Eisenstein: Is that who I wanna become? So there's, a, a, lot of self-examination. I think that goes into a decision like that. That can't just be reduced to, okay, too many rules or, no,

[00:25:37] Cecilie Conrad: I think the too many rules for us is, it actually is a condensed version of what you just said.

[00:25:46] Cecilie Conrad: That we, don't want to participate in a community that needs this number of rules that like all the. All the little posters of on the walls of things to do and not do and when to do them and how to [00:26:00] do them. If a community needs that kind of explicit rulemaking, then it's not a context where we want to live.

[00:26:08] Cecilie Conrad: and of course, I'm sure that there are people who thrive in that context. I really hope so, because lots of people do live in these communities and I hope they thrive as I hope for everyone on the planet. And, I'm also sure that we have different personalities and different. Needs as to personal development and who we wanna become.

[00:26:28] Cecilie Conrad: So for us, clearly if a community needs this kind of rulemaking then it's not for us. That's the short version. But you're right that it's, not, the rules in and of themselves, it's just the vibe of it. It doesn't align with our way of being and it does not align with how, who we want to become.

[00:26:50] Charles Eisenstein: I think though, like there's one more thing I bring into that. An indigenous village does not have rules posted around a traditional, even a traditional European village, a [00:27:00] 16th century village in Belgium or whatever, they're not gonna have rules posted around. They don't have that many laws, written laws.

[00:27:08] Charles Eisenstein: It's all informal. It's all based on social expectations, social pressure. There's no rule that says you have to share with your neighbors, but if you don't, people start to talk about you. They start to gossip, and then when you have trouble, they won't help you because you're stingy. So this becomes second nature.

[00:27:29] Charles Eisenstein: It becomes a way of life. Today we have none of that, or almost none of those habits and those understandings that come in living, that come from living in community. So we have to rebuild it. If you just take a bunch of people and throw them together and say, okay, we're gonna have an eco village and we're not gonna have rules.

[00:27:50] Charles Eisenstein: Everybody is taking with them the habits of a monetized, industrialized society. They don't have the hot habits of gift culture. They don't have the [00:28:00] habits of mutual aid and mutual obligation. They don't have the skills to navigate a situation where, which isn't governed by explicit rules because they have grown up in a society that is governed by explicit rules from the legal system to school.

[00:28:17] Charles Eisenstein: there are rules and punishments, and it's an authority that enforces them. So we don't have. We just don't have the skillset to live in community right now. And I think that the rules that eco, like eco villages might go into it, we're not gonna have rules, but very quickly they discover that doesn't work.

[00:28:36] Charles Eisenstein: Basically, we are we're, in the remedial class. We need help to a stepping stone too. Redevelop the skills of community. yeah, that, that's, why I think that they do have rules and I guess ideally [00:29:00] over time the rules could be let go

[00:29:03] Jesper Conrad: of, why, do you think we have lost that skillset?

[00:29:07] Jesper Conrad: Is it the smaller family units? You're only responsible for your own small unit or? Is it the outside control from school state, et cetera?

[00:29:19] Charles Eisenstein: Yeah, I, think it's both, but it's especially that we live in a society where the rules are imposed from without many of them anyway. Like in school, if you have, a dispute with another kid, you go to the teacher.

[00:29:38] Charles Eisenstein: If you even have an opportunity to have a dispute, you're, expected to be at a certain place at a certain time. Your entire day is governed by rules imposed from the outside. and, even children's play a when children's play is mostly [00:30:00] supervised. And in the form of organized sports, with adults running the show.

[00:30:05] Charles Eisenstein: Then like when I was a kid, we still had some of spontaneous unsupervised childhood after school. people didn't have afterschool activities back then. I. If they didn't get shipped off to karate class or to piano class or you come home from school and you'd go outside or all weekend, you'd be outside and find the other kids.

[00:30:30] Charles Eisenstein: And so we'd play, games and you have to pick teams and then you have to argue about the rules and then you play and then there's the dispute and you spend another, have another argument about the rules. And at the time is spent. Actually, I. Arguing and working out disputes that is precious.

[00:30:51] Charles Eisenstein: Like by doing that, you learn how to get along with people when there's no authority present. If there's an authority present, a referee or a [00:31:00] parent, then you never go through that process. And, that's, just one example of the, stunting. And, atrophying of those skills. We never developed those skills because we're always in organized rural governed situations that, that we just don't have the opportunity to learn.

[00:31:25] Charles Eisenstein: and I would also extend that to living in a money economy where you never need the people around you. If you have money, then you can buy all the things that you need. So you never have to learn to get along with people if your neighbor hates you, no big deal. If you don't have the skills to get along with your neighbors, it does not hurt you very much.

[00:31:49] Charles Eisenstein: No, because you can just buy everything from Amazon, and that was not true, even a hundred years ago in most places.

[00:31:59] Cecilie Conrad: Do you think we [00:32:00] have lost the feeling? Now? I'm saying we as a collective humanity, we, which is maybe stretching it, but okay. Let's just play with the thought experiments. Do you think we've lost the feeling that we are dependent on each other as human beings?

[00:32:19] Cecilie Conrad: theoretically

[00:32:20] Charles Eisenstein: we, accept it, but, and, emotionally, we still. Experience it, but we've lost a lot of the skills and a lot of the economic structures of dependency and dependency on nature too. I like to look at nature, but most of the food I buy is not from this land right here.

[00:32:43] Charles Eisenstein: I have a garden, I get maybe 5% of my food from that. But, I'm not in relationship. Most people are not in relationship very deeply to the people around them and the animals and plants around them [00:33:00] and that, and, but we all have a longing to rebuild those relationships. There's we're bursting with desire to be in relationships of giving and receiving again.

[00:33:13] Charles Eisenstein: And that's why, when a hurricane happens. This, I was just actually in North Carolina and people were telling me about the days after the hurricane. No electricity, no running water. Everyone comes out of their house, they start knocking on their neighbor's door. Do you need anything? Someone has a grill, someone who has some, meat that's about to spoil.

[00:33:36] Charles Eisenstein: They, they, cook it and feed everybody. somebody has bottled water, like somebody has a generator and people. Finally they get to be in relationship and what a great time it was.

[00:33:53] Jesper Conrad: Yeah. So what you're saying is we need more crisis.

[00:33:58] Charles Eisenstein: it gives us a glimpse of what we want. [00:34:00] Yeah.

[00:34:01] Charles Eisenstein: Yeah, And, what we really want is to need each other and to be needed.

[00:34:07] Jesper Conrad: Yeah.

[00:34:08] Charles Eisenstein: Yeah.

[00:34:08] Jesper Conrad: What I. I've been thinking about the process of moving away from normal, from the norm, where in me it was. Natural for me to first define all. I didn't like to have mental crutches to move away from the norm.

[00:34:28] Jesper Conrad: but now I'm at a point where I'm looking at the norm and saying, okay, that is not for me. What is for me over here? And it start building towards it. But I can also see that it has taken many years of, living in a different way. Yeah. How do we. I actually feel, and think that people can sense this longing because I've been considering why were everyone so happy with the Matrix movie.

[00:34:59] Jesper Conrad: [00:35:00] But then looking from the side with my back then more negative Mind, I was like, but you're still living inside the Matrix, but why did it had such a big effect on people? And I think it's because they. Know and feel that there is something they want, but I don't know how to help people go there.

[00:35:23] Charles Eisenstein: yeah, I don't think that there's, any magic wand, any magical solution. It's a matter of slowly rebuilding, motivated by this longing, and by the recognition of what you're actually longing. Four, which is reunion, to return into full relationship and into full being recognizing that then you can walk the path, the long path back home.

[00:35:56] Charles Eisenstein: And so maybe that means [00:36:00] maybe it, if it is to start an eco village or live in an eco village and take the baby steps. Back into relationship to recover the skills of community. Or maybe it's the world schooling camps that you do, where or even a people, have a festival burning Man, where for a few days you're living in a different reality or people doing community building work, just where they live, where it's about connecting the gifts and the needs that are already present in that community that aren't being met. And it could be in a very small way, it could be tutoring, school children, they're, you, could say, ideally they shouldn't even be in school.

[00:36:51] Charles Eisenstein: maybe it's working class parents and, school is free babysitting and that's the only choice. And, and [00:37:00] like to have a big brother, big sister coming in and caring about them, giving them attention. there are so many things that I'm not, I would even say that we are here to serve.

[00:37:19] Charles Eisenstein: The reunion of these human souls to each other. This is our mission here to steer humanity toward the return journey into relationship. and it can be very, small scale, very humble,

[00:37:43] Jesper Conrad: It is a longing, Charles, I've seen grown grow in me, and I, first saw it some years ago when our oldest daughter, who is a published author, she gave a talk, read a little aloud from her book. And besides that, being a, dad who is [00:38:00] wow. I'm super proud of her. She's really doing good and I was also a little envy.

[00:38:05] Jesper Conrad: I'm like, oh man, if I had been so cool when I was her age. But that aside, what I really love about that was that people met up, around something I. It also to me, seems that people need this anger of something to meet about. Yes. To, draw them in. So Cecilia and I gave some talks, to the homeschooling community in Denmark before we left, and it, was too much, six, seven in a week.

[00:38:32] Jesper Conrad: We were drained afterwards and in between, but. Seeing the people come being together, talk, chat with each other. We had made the format where it was a slow start, a break and then a potluck afterwards. It was really nice seeing people connecting and I actually think, and I've been thinking about it since I started working a lot with chat DBT in, in the work I do, I use it a lot, every day.

[00:38:59] Jesper Conrad: I've [00:39:00] had this idea that I think reality will become more and more important. Also due to ai because everything is it is so easy and so much fake. That meeting people in real life. I actually think that AI in some sense is pushing people towards meeting because it is too. Unnatural force.

[00:39:25] Charles Eisenstein: Yeah. I think that, you're onto something important there. First I, I'll just say that, it's just wonderful that you're bringing people together who actually are meeting each other's needs simply. Nothing else simply to validate, Hey, yeah, you're not crazy. I'm seeing the same thing you are.

[00:39:43] Charles Eisenstein: that's an important emotional need. Yeah. That can't just be met by ai. You actually what, like you're saying, AI is helping us to recognize what AI cannot do and what [00:40:00] digital. Services of any kind cannot do. There are things it cannot do. It cannot be in physical presence with you. It cannot touch you.

[00:40:10] Charles Eisenstein: And when you bring people together, you're like that is. Where our future prospects are. People ask, what, what? is employment gonna be like when AI starts performing? All these functions that human beings have performed well, employment and more generally, the ways that we serve each other will happen in the things that AI can't do that require a body.

[00:40:41] Charles Eisenstein: And so I think that. In-person gatherings. it's, ironic, it seemed that digital technology like Zoom, was making in-person gatherings obsolete. Yeah. all the, especially during COVID, [00:41:00] all these conferences, everything moved online. Yeah. And people thought, we'll be able to reach even more people.

[00:41:06] Charles Eisenstein: By having our conference online because in person only a few hundred people can come. But online we could reach millions, we'll have a bigger impact. But having gone through that, they're discovering that something is missing from the online conference. The things that cannot be captured as data, physical presence and touch, and the spontaneity of.

[00:41:29] Charles Eisenstein: Meeting somebody in the parking lot or in the line at the cafeteria, things that can't be scripted. Things that are, that happen in relation to a physical space.

[00:41:43] Charles Eisenstein: We, we are, I, ironically, because of technology, we are now recognizing how important those are. And.

[00:41:55] Charles Eisenstein: yeah, I guess that's all I have to say about that for the [00:42:00] moment. Yeah.

[00:42:02] Jesper Conrad: Charles, your books, as I said, I haven't read them yet, but for people listening, where should they start?

[00:42:17] Charles Eisenstein: maybe, it's hard to say. The more beautiful world our hearts know is possible, I think is probably the best one to start.

[00:42:24] Charles Eisenstein: My books are almost all in German as well, by the way. I guess you just have to look up my name and, the translations of my books in German are very, good. I know that, not because I read German, but people have told me that, but also because the translators did it from love. They weren't just a paid professional.

[00:42:42] Charles Eisenstein: They were highly educated PhDs, who loved the books and did them better than a professional would do them because there's a real resonance there. those of your listeners who read [00:43:00] German, I would, if you read English, then yeah, read the original.

[00:43:05] Charles Eisenstein: But the German ones are really good too.

[00:43:07] Jesper Conrad: Nice.

[00:43:08] Charles Eisenstein: Yeah.

[00:43:09] Jesper Conrad: What, are you working on now? Is there any new books coming or, we talked with a wonderful person who, she have a farm and they live off the farm in a family culture where it's been on generations. And she said this thing about riding for her, it is a way of exploring a subject.

[00:43:28] Jesper Conrad: She writes a book. When there's something she wants to know, and then the product ends up becoming a book. I don't know if it's the same for you, but what are you exploring these days?

[00:43:39] Charles Eisenstein: I've been writing about, I haven't been writing books. I've been writing just essays and articles on, my substack. I've been writing a lot about different things about ai.

[00:43:51] Charles Eisenstein: I've been writing a lot about ai. And some political things about peace.

[00:43:56] Jesper Conrad: Charles, so in the start, [00:44:00] you talked about.

[00:44:01] Jesper Conrad: That you had this drive in you from young about there was something wrong about what is presented as normal. Do you have any recommendations to how we get better at feeling the difference between normal, at one side and natural on the other? Because when we have been inside this society and have.

[00:44:32] Jesper Conrad: Accustomed to, this is how you do, this is how you act. As an example, during the last 50 years in Denmark, we have gone from having 5% of people in nursery homes, which would have been back then on. If you send your child to a nursery home, you would have been the weird one out 5%. Now it's 95% in Denmark of children who are in nursery home.

[00:44:59] Jesper Conrad: [00:45:00] Over 50 years, and people don't know this when I talk with them. For them it's natural now or normal to send your children away. But how can you listen to the voice if normal is standing and shouting at you? How are, how do you, work with your listening, so to say?

[00:45:21] Charles Eisenstein: Yeah. So the natural normal distinction can be useful.

[00:45:26] Charles Eisenstein: I don't usually think in those terms, but it can be useful. Normally when we sense a wrongness, when we sense, when we have a, protest against the way things are. I. The voice of normal says, that's because you are not well adjusted. It's because you have a problem, because you are discontent. It will assign a pathology to you if you do not adjust to the way things [00:46:00] are.

[00:46:00] Charles Eisenstein: The most important treasure is this, knowledge is this protest, this feeling that it's not supposed to be this way. There's a better way to do it. There's a better way to be I to validate your feeling of not being at home in this normal, that doesn't tell you what to do, but at least you're not gonna be gaslighting yourself at least even when everybody else tells you that you're crazy for taking your child outta school.

[00:46:41] Charles Eisenstein: At least you won't join them and say, yeah, I'm crazy. I need a pill, I need a doctor. And that's why it's so important to have community of other people who say, yeah, you're not crazy. I see what you're seeing. Even those who are talking about how wrong everything [00:47:00] is. I think that's even important too.

[00:47:03] Charles Eisenstein: 'cause it validates you. It validates really what you're longing for. Isn't to escape the society that we find ourselves in. That's not the deepest longing. The deepest longing is to transform it because we are born into it With that mission, we did not. We did not just make some dumb mistake in incarnating into this world, into this particular society, into our particular biography.

[00:47:38] Charles Eisenstein: Circumstances, which may have been very bad, very traumatic, maybe people you know who have suffered abuse or, terrible things. You didn't do that by mistake and it wasn't a punishment for bad behavior. It was a choice [00:48:00] because on some sole level you saw that, this situation can be transformed, it can be redeemed.

[00:48:08] Charles Eisenstein: So all of us are missionaries here to build to, to co-create. I call it a more beautiful world.

[00:48:21] Charles Eisenstein: That's the longing. It's not just to live in a more beautiful world. Belonging is to be a creative agent of it.

[00:48:30] Cecilie Conrad: Yeah.

[00:48:31] Jesper Conrad: Thank you.

[00:48:32] Cecilie Conrad: That's a beautiful full stop.

[00:48:34] Jesper Conrad: It's a beautiful full stop for this conversation. I don't

[00:48:37] Cecilie Conrad: need to comment on that.

[00:48:38] Jesper Conrad: Nope. I would just say agree. Charles, it has been very interesting. Thank you for taking the time. It was a big pleasure talking with you today.

[00:48:49] Charles Eisenstein: Thank you. Thank you Jasper and Cecilia.

[00:48:52] Cecilie Conrad: Yeah, it was fun.

[00:48:53] Charles Eisenstein: Very nice to meet you. Nice. Bye guys.