July 17, 2025 • 51 mins
Charles Eisenstein is an author and speaker whose books and essays explore themes of community, human connection, economics, and social change. He is known for works such as The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible.
Charles joins us to explore how modern family structures have evolved and what's been lost in our transition from community-based living to isolated nuclear families.
What gets lost when we accept today’s idea of “normal” life? Together with Charles we discuss the shift from community to isolated nuclear families, the fading of shared caregiving, and why so many people feel something essential is missing.
Charles shares his view that grief and discomfort about modern life are important signals, not problems to fix.
Together, we question how community skills have eroded and what it might take to rebuild real connection.
If you find yourself questioning “normal” and longing for deeper connection, this conversation offers perspective and encouragement to trust that feeling—and to look for ways, big or small, to rebuild genuine community in your own life.
🔗 Read articles and see videos with Charles Eisenstein
- https://charleseisenstein.org/
- https://charleseisenstein.substack.com/
- https://www.youtube.com/@charleseisenstein
🔗 Charles Eisenstein on Social Media
- https://www.instagram.com/charles_eisenstein/
- https://www.facebook.com/charleseisensteinauthor
- https://x.com/ceisenstein
🗓️ Recorded July 11, 2025. 📍 Bremerhaven, Germany
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Jesper Conrad (00:00):
Today we are together with Charles Eisenstein
, and first of all, Charles, awarm welcome.
It's nice that you could findthe time.
Charles Eisenstein (00:07):
Yeah, I'm happy to meet you and see what
we're going to do.
Cecilie Conrad (00:11):
Where this goes, yeah.
Jesper Conrad (00:12):
Yes, yeah.
So where this goes is that I,for some time, have been looking
at family structure, has beenthinking about how family has
developed, what has happened,because we are a family who is
world schooling andhomeschooling before that, and
unschooling and standing outsidesociety in some ways we do when
(00:38):
we take our kids out of thenormal school settings and have
been living this life for thelast 13, 15 years.
I've begun to ponder more aboutit and then I actually had a
chat dialogue with ChatGPT,where I said who do you think
could be an interesting guest wecould talk about these kinds of
(00:59):
things with?
And it came up with you,charles.
Wow, chatgpt.
Cecilie Conrad (01:03):
Huh, it's kind of scary, isn't it?
Yeah?
Jesper Conrad (01:07):
So I would start out by admitting I haven't read
your books, but after lookinginto it I was like, yeah, he
seems interesting.
I definitely want to get toknow Charles more and know more
about it.
Charles Eisenstein (01:19):
Well, I will try not to be boring.
Definitely this is a topic Ihave thought about a lot and you
know, written about some.
So, yeah, happy to explore.
I've also done, you know, somekind of unschooling,
homeschooling and, you know,mixed in with some school also
(01:40):
tried lots of different thingsand I'm not sure if I could.
I I don't think I could be anadvocate for any one of them.
Cecilie Conrad (01:49):
No, yeah, well, we talk a lot about unschooling.
We are pretty sure we believein it.
But I mean, we always say thatthe most important thing is
everyone's freedom to make theirown choices and do what works
for their family.
So, even though we talk aboutunschooling all the time, it's
(02:14):
not like one of our kids haven'tbeen to school.
Jesper Conrad (02:16):
No.
Cecilie Conrad (02:16):
Because one of them was and yeah.
Charles Eisenstein (02:20):
Yeah, I think the whole conversation
only makes sense in a socialcontext.
You know, like if you're, say,living in a village somewhere
and all the kids are learningfrom adults, you know, and
participating in adult life, andlearning how to hunt, and
learning how to grow sweetpotatoes and learning
(02:42):
traditional ways, thenunschooling is something very,
very different.
Like you know, there it'seither unschooling and the child
is learning all those things,or maybe you send a child away
to some missionary school orsome state-run school which
separates them from traditionalways of life and ways of
(03:03):
thinking.
That's very different than inmy society and probably your
society, where school is whereall the kids are and so you take
them out of school and it's notlike there's, you know, life
happening around them and adultsdoing things that they
(03:23):
understand and that they canapprentice to and they can learn
from.
You know they're, they're it'sso isolated.
So I think that that you knowwe have to talk about the
context when we talk aboutunschooling, homeschooling,
schooling.
Jesper Conrad (03:40):
Yeah, because that's a.
I'm super happy you go in thatdirection because it's one of
the things that I can see wherewe have been drawn towards not
having our kids in school.
But then my wife, the firstcouple of years, did an enormous
work of going out to find theother kids, create the community
(04:01):
, and now we are creating whatwe are calling world schooling
villages where we have familiesthat move in together for a
month in the same area.
It is traveling familiesbecause the community is so
important.
I want to go a little back tosomething my wife said some
years ago that I still return to.
(04:21):
We had been up visiting hercousin who had had a newborn and
you know it's the kind of itwasn't a big baby shower as the
people have in the States, butit was.
We come and visit and we seethe baby and these things.
And on the way down the stairsfrom visiting them, cecilia
looked at me and said nobodyshould have a baby alone.
(04:42):
And I've just been thinkingdeep and long about this because
I was like, oh yes, that iswhat we have done to our society
.
We live in these small units,two people getting a baby, and
we wonder why people arestressed out.
Charles Eisenstein (04:58):
Yeah it's insane.
It's insane to try to raise ababy inside a box.
Yeah, yeah, I was recently at aexcuse me.
I was recently at a gatheringwhere someone had been, had
lived, I think, in a village inAfrica somewhere, and she spoke
(05:21):
of a woman that she met therewho didn't know who her own
mother was, wasn't sure who hermother was because from her
earliest memories there weremany, many, many women who
adored her and who took care ofher.
She could go to any hut and getfed, and so it kind of almost
(05:48):
didn't matter who her mother.
The whole idea of family as weknow it in the West didn't even
exist.
There wasn't family, and thenseparate from neighbor, separate
from relatives, you know, itwas all a village.
And wow, imagine like growingup with 50 people adoring you
and playmates all the time, howrich your life would be and how
(06:08):
secure you would feel in theworld.
Like that's, that's a.
It kind of speaks to thepoverty of our society which,
you know, ironically, we thinkthat we're the wealthiest, but
like that, you know, that'ssomething that money can't buy.
You cannot buy having 50 peoplewho adore you.
(06:31):
And I think that here we are inthis situation, like you and I,
people who do things in adifferent way, who defy the
program, who don't just sendtheir kids to school we sense
that there's something wronghere, there's something wrong
with the way that we are living,and so we try to find a
different way.
And you know, we do our best.
(06:53):
But no matter what we do, wecan't change.
We can't wave a magic wand andchange the ground conditions.
We can only make steps towardsanity.
You know, like you're doingwith the world school gatherings
.
Cecilie Conrad (07:11):
Yeah, I think also.
I mean, one of our mantras inour family is that the context
will always be relevant.
We talk about that all the time, that when you can try to come
up with some principles andrules and strategies and it's a
good idea to do that but at thesame time, any decision will
always have a local anchor inthe relevant context.
(07:31):
And being a world schooler andan unschooler in Europe in these
years post-COVID, it's also acontextual choice and it's a
choice that happens inside asociety.
I think you said in the openingsomething about being outside
of, standing outside of, andactually I don't think we are
(07:53):
outside of society.
We're part of this world.
We're just doing things in adifferent way.
But the way things work limitsour options and we're just
trying to not necessarily makethe most of it, because that's
like bigger, better, faster,more, but more like make the
(08:14):
most meaningful version of itthat we can make in the actual
context, and I think I hope mostpeople do that.
It's not about using schools ornot.
Charles Eisenstein (08:24):
It's about making a conscious choice about
how we want our life science tobe yeah, yeah, making making
good of a situation that isn'tideal, but uh, you know, here we
are.
Cecilie Conrad (08:38):
I don't know that it is an idea.
I mean, well, probably it isn't, but has it ever been, will it
ever be, or will it always besome sort of chaos and we have
to adapt?
Charles Eisenstein (08:51):
I don't know yeah, well, that you know, gets
to uh, metaphysical questionsit becomes quite complicated.
Cecilie Conrad (08:57):
But I'm what I'm , what I'm aiming at is just, I
think in in, in the circles wemove, in I'm not saying you're
saying it, but I often feel thatwe have to be so much against
what is it's so bad and it's sowrong and we're going in the
wrong direction and everything'sfalling apart and people are a
sheep or robots or whatever, andit's a very negative worldview
(09:22):
and sometimes I just want to sayI love the motorway man.
It takes me fast to where I needto go.
I mean, it might not be idealfor everything that we have
motorways cutting through ourlandscapes, but there certainly
are advantages and I believethat you can probably put this
mindset to most things that wemaybe could disagree with, that
(09:44):
we can also see how it can be abenefit or how we can find our
ways.
I don't love the motorway ifthere's traffic, so I avoid
going in the afternoons, butthat's the navigational part
that I find a way to navigatethe society that is, and I try
to avoid being too much againstit and talking too negatively
(10:09):
about it.
I don't know.
I mean there are many thingsthese years that are much better
than 100 years ago.
Just think about women's rights, or I'm saying sanity, no.
Jesper Conrad (10:23):
Yeah, sanitation.
Cecilie Conrad (10:24):
Sanitation.
Jesper Conrad (10:25):
Sanity maybe not, maybe not.
Cecilie Conrad (10:26):
Yeah, sanitation , Sanitation, sanity maybe not,
maybe not, maybe not sanitation,no, but I mean at least you
know it'll be clean-ish if youend up in a hospital.
Charles Eisenstein (10:36):
Well.
Cecilie Conrad (10:38):
I think it's a very hard analysis to make to
say that it's worse now than itwas a hundred years ago.
Charles Eisenstein (10:43):
Yeah, I don't think it matters you know,
the way it is now is the way itis now, and I think that the
value in those kinds ofconversations is that it can
identify something that has beenlost.
Because when you identify whatis missing then you maybe can
(11:04):
recreate it, rebuild it.
But if you don't even knowwhat's missing, then you feel
lost.
You feel that maybe the problemis yourself and not your
circumstances.
So, like when I was a kid, ifyou went outside you would
(11:32):
always hear the sounds ofchildren playing in the
neighborhood.
The other day and I don't Idon't hear that anymore very
often, but the other day it wasa holiday I I heard it because I
think our neighbors must havehad their relatives over and
they were actually playingoutside a game of I don't know
some game outside.
And I remembered that noise,the sound of children playing.
(11:53):
I remembered how it was thereevery day when I was a child and
I felt sad that I don't hearthat sound anymore, that I don't
hear that sound anymore.
It's like that's for me.
That sound is a kind of anourishment that when I don't
have it I forget even that thisvitamin exists.
So you know I don't.
(12:17):
So to recognize that loss, thatdoesn't mean that I have to
wallow in despair.
It doesn't mean that I have towallow in despair.
It doesn't mean that I have toreject all of society.
You know, and I think it ishelpful to say, oh, here's
something valuable.
And then when I have a creativechoice like what do I want to
(12:37):
create for my children?
What do I want to choose?
Do I want to move here or movethere?
Do I want to put them in schoolor not?
Move here or move there?
Do I want to put them in schoolor not?
You know, I have informationthat I integrate by actually
feeling sad about it.
You know, like, oh, there's alittle grief there and I think
that grief is a way to integrateloss.
(12:58):
And you know the motorway, like,again, like I have in my mind,
as a child there were specialplaces I'd like to to go.
There was a, a wild placebehind our house, a few blocks
away, that was undeveloped land.
There was a, a quarry thereactually, and just, you know,
(13:20):
some undeveloped land, or thesepine trees and blackberry bushes
and this path.
It was probably 10 or 15hectares of undeveloped land,
maybe even more, and, um, I gotto know that land like part of
(13:40):
myself.
You know it.
It became part of my being.
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 averagechild roam unsupervised away
from the house?
(14:00):
And it used to be severalkilometers, and now in my
country it's, you know, onlyseveral meters.
Oh my God, yes.
And so again, like here'sanother loss.
You know, and yeah, maybe inthe days when children roamed
(14:23):
far and were free and playedwith each other, there were bad
things too.
Infant mortality was very high.
Who knows if it was better orworse, but still to feel the
value of those things, I thinkthat helps us navigate toward
(14:43):
the future things.
Cecilie Conrad (14:44):
I think that helps us navigate toward the
future.
Jesper Conrad (14:46):
I like the way you put it because I'm in this
flux between trying tounderstand, see what has
happened in my own mind not abig research guy, not very
academic but I look at, oh, wewent from the local communities
into the cities and then we wentinto smaller and smaller units
and then in a period we havepraise, like the nuclear family,
(15:09):
and part of me is, as you say,missing something.
So part of me is trying to lookat 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, tobe in the hey, I can see I
missed something, using thefeelings as a pointer.
And there is something about howthe families has become smaller
(15:32):
and smaller.
I find it difficult.
And the outsource of the care,For example, my parents are
getting older and it saddens methat I don't feel I have this
very strong connection with themwhere it would be natural for
me to take them in.
It's not there, that feeling.
And seeing that that feeling isnot there feels so bad I don't
(15:54):
like to say it out loud, youknow, kind of so you say it on
the podcast.
So I say it on the podcast no,but I also recognize that is.
What makes me sad is that thatfeeling of wanting to do it
isn't there.
Where I'm trying to go isasking you how you started your
path of discovery down this.
(16:15):
Was it your education, or whyhave you been interested in this
field?
Charles Eisenstein (16:21):
Since I was very young, I had an intuition
that normal was unacceptable anda rebellion against it, one or
two institutions that werecorrupt in a civilization that
(16:45):
was otherwise found, but thatthe very fabric of our whole
civilization was not in serviceto human fulfillment and the
flourishing of life.
Let's put it that way, and sothat includes every aspect of it
(17:07):
.
You know, from the way babiesare born to the way we raise
children, to the way that weproduce food and entertainment
and knowledge, all the way tothe way that we take care of our
elderly and the way that we die, the whole thing top to bottom,
(17:28):
every institution.
So when I became a parent, youknow it became very personal how
do I raise my children in themost beautiful way I can, given
our embedment in a society that,as I said before, is not ideal
for the raising of children?
(17:49):
And I didn't have you know whatI mean Like, maybe I had
theoretical answers, but thetheoretical answers didn't help
me that much, you know when.
Yeah, you know children shouldbe playing outside unsupervised.
And, yeah, you know, childrenshould be playing outside
unsupervised.
But the neighborhood I foundmyself in, I thought there would
be lots of kids playing outsidethere when we moved, you know,
(18:13):
with our two-year-old, when myfirst wife was pregnant, you
know, with her second baby.
We moved to a suburbanneighborhood a lot of young
families, you know, and no oneoutside.
You didn't see kids outside.
Where are all the kids?
You know, I guess we movedthere in uh the fall.
(18:34):
There were a few kids but, um,I thought, well, we'll start
community.
You know, we'll get everybodytogether, we'll have a community
garden.
You know, here's a spot for acommunity garden and no one was
interested.
(19:02):
So my ideals, my concepts aboutwhat an ideal childhood would
land and overcome the zoningregulations and the building
codes and everything that are inthe way of actually living
right then maybe I could do it,but I wasn't in that kind of
situation.
I could only choose from themenu that was in front of my
face.
That was in front of my faceand you know, like most people,
(19:31):
I had my own share ofprogramming and you know
neuroses and hangups andinjuries, and you know it was
all I could do to keep the peacein my marriage and even that
didn't work.
You know like I mean.
So I guess I realized that thereturn journey, or the journey
(19:54):
to a society that actually canaccommodate children is a long
journey and you know, maybe, ifyou know, maybe if my children
have a better childhood than Ihad, then I've done my part, you
know, and maybe they will beable to create what I was unable
(20:16):
to create for them.
Jesper Conrad (20:19):
Yeah Well, yeah, thank you for sharing.
I sometimes feel we are, and Iknow Cecilia says that we are
part of the society, but the waywe live both adults working
from home, full-time, travelingas nomads then I feel that we
(20:45):
are kind of a satellite that iscircling around.
That's how I see it.
And Then my question is, as youtalk about the fight against
normal, if we could talk alittle about natural versus
normal, because at some point inour life I wanted to move into
(21:11):
an eco-village and we went andvisited one and we saw several
and what we found was that someof them had more rules than
society.
It became very heavilyregulated and it was like oh,
that's what I wanted to get awayfrom.
Charles Eisenstein (21:30):
I wanted natural and relaxed, and so I'm
trying to find a way that isnatural, inside the norm or
inside normal or next to normal.
Yeah, if you study anthropologyand read about the way that
(21:55):
human beings have lived, peoplehave lived in so many different
ways.
You know some societies, evenpre-modern societies, were very
highly structured, withelaborate rituals and taboos
that you know made life not veryfree, and other societies were
much more laid back, and eachone of those provides a
different container for thedevelopment of the human being
(22:18):
or the development of the soul.
You could even say it's hard tosay whether one is better or
worse than the others.
You know there's in highlyorganized societies with
elaborate rules elaborate likethey sometimes have very, very
strong community.
You know who you are and youcan, you're free to develop.
(22:44):
You know it's like like a sonnet, there's a type of poem.
The sonnet has very strictrules, or the haiku very strict
rules, but that doesn't meanthat you cannot be creative,
because there's too many rules.
Like you can develop withinthat container and we are
(23:06):
fundamentally social beings.
So there's always, to someextent, there's always going to
be um ways to negotiate ourrelationships that are based
either on explicit rules orimplicit rules.
We're not actually here to befree.
(23:29):
We're here to be inrelationship and I understand
the impulse towards freedom whenthe relationships have been
industrialized and used, youknow, to control and oppress
people.
And you know, then of course wewant to break free from those.
(23:50):
But you know, again, we're hereto relate, you know, so they're
going to be replaced withsomething.
Again, we're here to relate,you know, so they're going to be
replaced with something.
Yeah, I have visited manyecovillages as well, and to me
it's like it's not so much.
Oh, there's too many rules,it's more of okay.
(24:11):
Here is the way of being thatthis place offers.
Is that a fit accommodation forwho I am right now?
Maybe, you know, if I settle inthat eco-village, I can see the
ways that I can develop, thethings that will confront me
(24:33):
that maybe should be confronted.
Maybe there are ways that I'mselfish and could be more in
mutual obligation to people andreally involved in their lives.
You know, and I'm hanging backfrom full incarnation, I'm
hanging back from being fully inrelationship to other human
(24:56):
beings, and maybe this is thestep I need to take into this
community, or maybe this isn'tactually the right one for me,
but then I can look at okay,what is it exactly that's
keeping me back, you know?
Am I afraid to really plungeinto life, into relationship, to
be fully incarnate, or is thisactually not a place conducive
(25:21):
to my development and and whowould I become here?
Is that who I want to become?
So there's, there's a, you know, a lot of self-examination.
I think that goes into adecision like that.
Uh, that can't just be reducedto okay, too many rules, or, you
know, I know.
Cecilie Conrad (25:37):
Well, I think the too many rules for us is it
actually is a condensed versionof what you just said that we
don't want to participate in acommunity that needs this number
of rules, that like all thelittle posters on the walls of
things to do and not do and whento do them and how to do them.
(26:00):
If a community needs that kindof explicit rulemaking, then
it's not a context where we wantto live in, and, of course, I'm
sure that there are people whothrive in that context.
I really hope so, because lotsof people do live in these
communities and I hope theythrive, as I hope for everyone
on the planet, and I'm also surethat we have different
(26:22):
personalities and differentneeds as to personal development
and who we want to become ofrulemaking, then it's not for us
.
That's the short version, butyou're right.
You're right.
It's not the rules in and ofthemselves, it's just the vibe
(26:43):
of it.
It doesn't align with our wayof being and it does not align
with who we want to become.
Charles Eisenstein (26:49):
See, I think there's one more thing I want
to bring into that.
An indigenous village does nothave rules posted around.
You know, a traditional, even atraditional European village, a
16th century village in Belgium, or whatever.
They're not going to have rulesposted around.
They don't have that many laws,written laws.
(27:10):
It's all informal, it's allbased on social expectations,
social pressure.
There's no rule that says youhave to share with your
neighbors, but if you don't,people start to talk about you,
they start to gossip and thenwhen you have trouble they won't
help you because you're stingy.
So this becomes second nature,it becomes a way of life.
(27:31):
Today we have none of that, oralmost none of those habits and
those understandings that comefrom living in community.
So we have to kind of rebuildit.
If you just take a bunch ofpeople and throw them together
and say, okay, we're going tohave an ecovillage and we're not
going to have rules, everybodyis taking with them the habits
(27:54):
of a monetized, industrializedsociety.
They don't have the habits ofgift culture.
They don't have the habits ofgift culture.
They don't have the habits ofmutual aid and mutual obligation
.
They don't have the skills tonavigate a situation which isn't
governed by explicit rules,because they have grown up in a
society that is governed byexplicit rules.
(28:14):
From the legal system to school,you know there are rules and
punishments and it's anauthority that enforces them.
So we don't have we just don'thave the skill set to live in
community right now, and I thinkthat the rules that eco, like
ecovillages, might go into it.
We're not going to have rules,but very quickly they discover
(28:35):
that that doesn't work.
Basically, we are, we're in theremedial class where we need
help, a stepping stone toredevelop the skills of
community.
Yeah, that's why I think thatthey do have rules and I guess
(28:59):
ideally, over time, the rulescould be let go of.
Jesper Conrad (29:05):
Why do you think we have lost that skill set?
Is it the smaller family unitsyou're only responsible for your
own small unit or is it theoutside control from school,
state et cetera?
Charles Eisenstein (29:19):
Yeah, I think it's both, but it's
especially that we live in asociety where the rules are
imposed from without many ofthem anyway, like in school.
If you have a dispute withanother kid, you know you go to
the teacher.
If you even have an opportunityyou have a dispute with another
kid, you know, you go to theteacher.
If you even have an opportunityto have a dispute, you know
(29:42):
you're expected to be in acertain place at a certain time.
Your entire day is governed byrules imposed from the outside,
and even children's play, whenchildren's play is mostly
supervised and in the form oforganized sports, you know, with
(30:03):
adults running the show.
Then, like when I was a kid, westill had some of spontaneous,
unsupervised childhood Afterschool.
You know people didn't haveafter school activities back
then.
They didn't get shipped off tokarate class or to piano class
(30:23):
or.
You know you come home fromschool and you'd go outside
where all weekend you'd beoutside and find the other kids
and so we'd play.
You know games and you have topick teams and then you have to
argue about the rules and thenyou play and then there's the
dispute and you spend another,pick teams and then you have to
argue about the rules and thenyou play, and then there's the
dispute and you spend another,you know, have another argument
about the rules and at the timeis spent actually arguing and
(30:47):
working out disputes.
That is precious.
By doing that, you learn how toget along with people when
there's no authority present.
If there's an authority presenta referee or a parent then you
never go through that process.
And that's just one example ofthe stunting and atrophying of
(31:11):
those skills.
We never develop those skillsbecause we're always in
organized, rule-governedsituations that we just don't
have the opportunity to learn.
And I would also extend that toliving in a money economy where
you never need the peoplearound you.
(31:32):
If you have money, then you canbuy all the things that you
need, so you never have to learnto get along with people.
If your neighbor hates you, nobig deal.
If you don't have the skills toget along with your neighbors,
it does not hurt you very muchBecause you can just buy
(31:52):
everything from Amazon.
And that was not true even 100years ago in most places.
Cecilie Conrad (31:59):
Do you think we have lost the feeling Now I'm
saying we as a collectivehumanity, we, which is maybe
stretching it, but okay, let'sjust play with the thought
experience Do you think we'velost the feeling that we are
dependent on each other as humanbeings, that we are dependent
on each other as human beings Imean theoretically we accept it
(32:22):
and emotionally we stillexperience it, but we've lost a
lot of the skills and a lot ofthe economic structures of
dependency, and dependency onnature too.
Charles Eisenstein (32:34):
You know, like I mean, I like to look at
nature but you know, most of thefood I buy is not from this
land.
Right here I have a garden.
You know, I get maybe fivepercent of my food from that.
But, um, you know, I'm not inrelationship, most people are
not in relationship very deeplyto the people around them and
(32:57):
the animals and plants aroundthem, and that.
But we all have a longing torebuild those relationships.
There's like we're burstingwith desire to be in
relationships, of giving andreceiving again, and that's why,
you know, when a hurricanehappens, I was just actually in
(33:19):
North Carolina and people weretelling me about the days after
the hurricane no electricity, norunning water.
Everyone comes out of theirhouse, they start knocking on
their neighbor's door do youneed anything?
Somebody has some, some meatthat's about to spoil.
(33:40):
They, they, they cook it andfeed everybody.
You know, somebody has bottledwater, like somebody has a
generator, and people, finallythey get to be, to be in
relationship.
And what a great time it wasyeah, you know.
So what you're saying is we needmore crisis well, it gives us a
glimpse of what we want yeah,yeah, and, and what we really
(34:04):
want is to need each other andto be needed yeah, yeah.
Jesper Conrad (34:08):
Well, I I've been thinking about the process of
moving away from normal, fromfrom the norm, where in me it
was natural for me to firstdefine all I didn't like kind of
to have mental crutches to moveaway from the norm.
But now I'm at a point whereI'm looking at the norm and
(34:32):
saying, okay, that is not for me.
What is for me is over here andit starts building towards it.
But I can also see that it hastaken many years of living in a
different way.
How do we?
I actually feel and think thatpeople can sense this longing?
(34:53):
Because I've been consideringwhy were everyone so happy with
the Matrix movie?
But then, looking from the side, with my back then more
negative mind, I was like butyou're still living inside the
Matrix, but why did it have sucha big effect on people?
And I think it's because theyknow and feel that there is
(35:14):
something they want, but I don'tknow how to help people go
there.
Charles Eisenstein (35:22):
Well, yeah, I don't think that there's, you
know, any magic wand, anymagical solution.
It's a matter of slowlyrebuilding, motivated by this
longing and by the recognitionof what you're actually longing
for, which is reunion, to returninto full relationship and into
(35:47):
full being, recognizing thatthen you can walk the path, the
long, long path back home.
The path, the long, long pathback home.
And so maybe that means, maybeit is to start an eco village or
live in an eco village and takethe baby steps back into
relationship, to recover theskills of community.
(36:11):
Or maybe it's the worldschooling camps that you do.
You know, where even people youknow have a festival, burning
man, where for a few days you'reliving in a different reality,
or people doing communitybuilding work, just where they
live, where it's aboutconnecting the gifts and the
(36:35):
needs that are already presentin that community that aren't
being met.
And it could be in a very smallway, you know it could be
tutoring school children, youknow, there, you, you could say,
well, ideally they shouldn'teven be in school, but you know,
maybe it's working classparents and and school is free,
(36:55):
babysitting, and that's the onlychoice.
And, you know, like to have abig brother, big sister coming
in and caring about them, givingthem attention.
You know, there are so manythings that I would even say
(37:15):
that we are here to serve thereunion of children, these human
souls to each other.
This is our mission here tosteer humanity toward the return
journey into relationship, andit can be very, very small scale
(37:39):
, very humble, you know.
Jesper Conrad (37:43):
It's a longing, charles, I've seen grow in me
and I first saw it some yearsago when our oldest daughter,
who is a published author.
She gave a talk, read a littlealoud from her book, doing good,
(38:08):
and I was also a little envious.
I'm like, oh man, if I had beenso cool when I was her age.
But that aside, what I reallyloved about that was that people
met up around something.
But it also to me seems thatpeople need this anger of
something to meet about to drawthem in.
So Cecilia and I gave sometalks to the homeschooling
community in Denmark before weleft and it was too much Six,
(38:31):
seven in a week.
We were drained afterwards andin between.
But seeing the people come,being together, talk, chat with
each other, we had made theformat where it was a slow start
, a break and then a potluckafterwards.
It was really nice seeingpeople connecting.
And I actually think and I'vebeen thinking about it since I
(38:52):
started working a lot withChatDBT.
In the work I do, I use it alot every day I've had this idea
that I think reality willbecome more and more important,
also due to AI, becauseeverything is so, it is so easy
and so much fake that missingpeople in real life.
(39:14):
I actually think that AI insome sense is pushing people
towards meeting because it istoo unnaturalistic for us.
Yeah.
Charles Eisenstein (39:26):
I think that you're onto something important
there.
First, I'll just say that it'sjust wonderful that you're
bringing people together whoactually are meeting each
other's needs, simply, ifnothing else, simply to validate
hey, yeah, you're not crazy,I'm seeing the same thing you
are.
That's an important emotionalneed that can't just be met by
(39:48):
AI.
You actually, like you'resaying AI is helping us to
recognize what AI cannot do andwhat digital services of any
kind cannot do.
There are things it cannot do.
It cannot be in physicalpresence with you, it cannot
(40:08):
touch you, and when you bringpeople together, that is where
our future prospects are.
People ask what is employmentgoing to be like?
when AI starts performing allthese functions that human
beings have performed Wellemployment and, more generally,
(40:31):
the ways that we serve eachother will happen in the things
that AI can do that require abody.
So I think that in-persongatherings it's ironic, you
gatherings, it's ironic.
It seemed that digitaltechnology like Zoom was making
(40:55):
in-person gatherings obsolete.
Especially during COVID, allthese conferences, everything
moved online and people thought,well, we'll be able to reach
even more people by having ourconference online, because in
person only a few hundred peoplecan come, but online we could
reach millions, we'll have abigger impact.
But having gone through that,they're discovering that
(41:17):
something is missing from theonline conference cannot be
captured as data Physicalpresence and touch and the
spontaneity of meeting somebodyin the parking lot or, you know,
in the line at the cafeteria,things that can't be scripted,
things that happen in relationto a physical space.
(41:41):
We are, ironically, because oftechnology, we are now
recognizing how important thoseare and, yeah, I guess that's
all I have to say about that forthe moment.
(42:14):
Charles, your books, as I said,I haven't read them yet, but for
people listening, where shouldthey start?
Well, maybe it's hard to say.
The more beautiful world ourhearts know is possible, I think
, is probably the best one tostart.
My books are almost all inGerman as well, by the way.
I guess you just have to lookup my name, and the translations
of my books in German are very,very good.
(42:38):
I know that not because I readGerman, but people have told me
that, but also because thetranslators did it from love.
They weren't just a paidprofessional, they were highly
educated PhDs.
You know who loved the booksand did them better than a
professional would do them,because there's a real resonance
there.
So you know those of yourlisteners who read German.
(43:00):
I mean, if you read English,then yeah, you know, read the
original, but the German onesare really good too.
Jesper Conrad (43:08):
Right, yeah, english then, yeah, I read the
original, but the German onesare really good too.
What are you working on now?
Is there any new books coming?
We talked with a wonderfulperson who has a farm and they
live off the farm in a familyculture where it's been on
generations.
She said this thing aboutwriting.
For her, it's a way ofexploring a subject.
(43:28):
She writes a book when there'ssomething she wants to know, and
then the product ends upbecoming a book.
I don't know if it's the samefor you, but what are you
exploring these days?
Charles Eisenstein (43:41):
I haven't been writing books.
I've been writing just essaysand articles on my sub stack.
I've been writing a lot andarticles on my sub stack and
I've been writing a lot aboutdifferent things about AI.
I've been writing a lot aboutAI and some political things
about peace, Charles so in thestart you talked about that.
Jesper Conrad (44:02):
You had this drive in you from young about
there was something wrong aboutwhat is presented as normal.
Do you have any recommendationsto how we get better at feeling
the difference between normalat one side and natural on the
(44:24):
other?
Because when we have beeninside this society and have get
accustomed to this is how youdo, this is how you act.
As an example, during the last50 years in denmark we have gone
from having five percent ofpeople in nursery homes, which
(44:46):
would have been back then.
If you send your child to anursery home you would have been
the weird one out 5%.
Now it's 95% in Denmark ofchildren who are in nursery home
over 50 years, and people don'tknow this when I talk with them
.
For them, it's natural now, ornormal, to send your children
(45:07):
away.
But how can you listen to theboys if normal is standing and
shouting at you?
How do you work with yourlistening, so to say?
Charles Eisenstein (45:22):
Yeah, so the natural-normal distinction can
be useful.
I don't usually think in thoseterms, but it can be useful.
I don't usually think in thoseterms, but it can be useful.
Normally, when we sense awrongness, when we sense, when
we have a protest against theway things are, the voice of
(45:43):
normal says well, that's becauseyou are not well adjusted, it's
because you have a problem,because you are discontent.
It will assign a pathology toyou if you do not adjust to the
way things are.
The most important treasure isthis knowledge, is this protest,
(46:07):
this feeling that it's notsupposed to be this way.
There's a better way to do it.
There's a better way to be, tovalidate your feeling of not
being at home in this normal.
That doesn't tell you what todo, but at least you're not
(46:27):
going to be gaslighting yourself.
At least, even when everybodyelse tells you that you're crazy
for taking your child out ofschool, at least you won't join
them and say, yeah, I'm crazy, Ineed a pill, I need a doctor.
(46:48):
And that's why it's soimportant to have community of
other people who say, yeah,you're not crazy, I see what
you're seeing, even those whoare talking about how wrong
everything is.
I think that's even importanttoo, because it validates you.
It validates really what you'relonging for isn't to escape the
(47:13):
society that we find ourselvesin.
That's not the deepest long.
The deepest longing is totransform it, because we are
born into it with that mission.
We did not, we did not justmake some dumb mistake in
incarnating into this world,into this particular society,
(47:35):
into our particular biography,our circumstances, which may
have been very bad, verytraumatic, maybe people who have
suffered abuse or terriblethings.
You didn't do that by mistakeand it wasn't a punishment for
bad behavior, it was a choicebecause on some soul level you
(48:03):
saw that this situation can betransformed, it can be redeemed.
You saw that this situation canbe transformed, it can be
redeemed.
So all of us are kind ofmissionaries here to build, to
co -create.
I call it a more beautifulworld.
That's the longing.
It's not just to live in a morebeautiful world, the longing is
(48:29):
to be a creative agent of it.
Cecilie Conrad (48:30):
Yeah thank you that's a beautiful full stop
it's a beautiful full stop forthis conversation.
I don't need to comment on thatnope, I would just say agree,
chance.
Jesper Conrad (48:42):
It has been very interesting.
Thank you for taking the time.
It was a big pleasure talkingwith you today.
Charles Eisenstein (48:49):
Yeah, thank you.
Thank you, Jasper and Cecilia.
Cecilie Conrad (48:52):
Yeah, it was fun .
Charles Eisenstein (48:53):
Very nice to meet you.
Bye guys.
Today we are together with Charles Eisenstein
, and first of all, Charles, awarm welcome.
It's nice that you could findthe time.
Charles Eisenstein (00:07):
Yeah, I'm happy to meet you and see what
we're going to do.
Cecilie Conrad (00:11):
Where this goes, yeah.
Jesper Conrad (00:12):
Yes, yeah.
So where this goes is that I,for some time, have been looking
at family structure, has beenthinking about how family has
developed, what has happened,because we are a family who is
world schooling andhomeschooling before that, and
unschooling and standing outsidesociety in some ways we do when
(00:38):
we take our kids out of thenormal school settings and have
been living this life for thelast 13, 15 years.
I've begun to ponder more aboutit and then I actually had a
chat dialogue with ChatGPT,where I said who do you think
could be an interesting guest wecould talk about these kinds of
(00:59):
things with?
And it came up with you,charles.
Wow, chatgpt.
Cecilie Conrad (01:03):
Huh, it's kind of scary, isn't it?
Yeah?
Jesper Conrad (01:07):
So I would start out by admitting I haven't read
your books, but after lookinginto it I was like, yeah, he
seems interesting.
I definitely want to get toknow Charles more and know more
about it.
Charles Eisenstein (01:19):
Well, I will try not to be boring.
Definitely this is a topic Ihave thought about a lot and you
know, written about some.
So, yeah, happy to explore.
I've also done, you know, somekind of unschooling,
homeschooling and, you know,mixed in with some school also
(01:40):
tried lots of different thingsand I'm not sure if I could.
I I don't think I could be anadvocate for any one of them.
Cecilie Conrad (01:49):
No, yeah, well, we talk a lot about unschooling.
We are pretty sure we believein it.
But I mean, we always say thatthe most important thing is
everyone's freedom to make theirown choices and do what works
for their family.
So, even though we talk aboutunschooling all the time, it's
(02:14):
not like one of our kids haven'tbeen to school.
Jesper Conrad (02:16):
No.
Cecilie Conrad (02:16):
Because one of them was and yeah.
Charles Eisenstein (02:20):
Yeah, I think the whole conversation
only makes sense in a socialcontext.
You know, like if you're, say,living in a village somewhere
and all the kids are learningfrom adults, you know, and
participating in adult life, andlearning how to hunt, and
learning how to grow sweetpotatoes and learning
(02:42):
traditional ways, thenunschooling is something very,
very different.
Like you know, there it'seither unschooling and the child
is learning all those things,or maybe you send a child away
to some missionary school orsome state-run school which
separates them from traditionalways of life and ways of
(03:03):
thinking.
That's very different than inmy society and probably your
society, where school is whereall the kids are and so you take
them out of school and it's notlike there's, you know, life
happening around them and adultsdoing things that they
(03:23):
understand and that they canapprentice to and they can learn
from.
You know they're, they're it'sso isolated.
So I think that that you knowwe have to talk about the
context when we talk aboutunschooling, homeschooling,
schooling.
Jesper Conrad (03:40):
Yeah, because that's a.
I'm super happy you go in thatdirection because it's one of
the things that I can see wherewe have been drawn towards not
having our kids in school.
But then my wife, the firstcouple of years, did an enormous
work of going out to find theother kids, create the community
(04:01):
, and now we are creating whatwe are calling world schooling
villages where we have familiesthat move in together for a
month in the same area.
It is traveling familiesbecause the community is so
important.
I want to go a little back tosomething my wife said some
years ago that I still return to.
(04:21):
We had been up visiting hercousin who had had a newborn and
you know it's the kind of itwasn't a big baby shower as the
people have in the States, butit was.
We come and visit and we seethe baby and these things.
And on the way down the stairsfrom visiting them, cecilia
looked at me and said nobodyshould have a baby alone.
(04:42):
And I've just been thinkingdeep and long about this because
I was like, oh yes, that iswhat we have done to our society
.
We live in these small units,two people getting a baby, and
we wonder why people arestressed out.
Charles Eisenstein (04:58):
Yeah it's insane.
It's insane to try to raise ababy inside a box.
Yeah, yeah, I was recently at aexcuse me.
I was recently at a gatheringwhere someone had been, had
lived, I think, in a village inAfrica somewhere, and she spoke
(05:21):
of a woman that she met therewho didn't know who her own
mother was, wasn't sure who hermother was because from her
earliest memories there weremany, many, many women who
adored her and who took care ofher.
She could go to any hut and getfed, and so it kind of almost
(05:48):
didn't matter who her mother.
The whole idea of family as weknow it in the West didn't even
exist.
There wasn't family, and thenseparate from neighbor, separate
from relatives, you know, itwas all a village.
And wow, imagine like growingup with 50 people adoring you
and playmates all the time, howrich your life would be and how
(06:08):
secure you would feel in theworld.
Like that's, that's a.
It kind of speaks to thepoverty of our society which,
you know, ironically, we thinkthat we're the wealthiest, but
like that, you know, that'ssomething that money can't buy.
You cannot buy having 50 peoplewho adore you.
(06:31):
And I think that here we are inthis situation, like you and I,
people who do things in adifferent way, who defy the
program, who don't just sendtheir kids to school we sense
that there's something wronghere, there's something wrong
with the way that we are living,and so we try to find a
different way.
And you know, we do our best.
(06:53):
But no matter what we do, wecan't change.
We can't wave a magic wand andchange the ground conditions.
We can only make steps towardsanity.
You know, like you're doingwith the world school gatherings
.
Cecilie Conrad (07:11):
Yeah, I think also.
I mean, one of our mantras inour family is that the context
will always be relevant.
We talk about that all the time, that when you can try to come
up with some principles andrules and strategies and it's a
good idea to do that but at thesame time, any decision will
always have a local anchor inthe relevant context.
(07:31):
And being a world schooler andan unschooler in Europe in these
years post-COVID, it's also acontextual choice and it's a
choice that happens inside asociety.
I think you said in the openingsomething about being outside
of, standing outside of, andactually I don't think we are
(07:53):
outside of society.
We're part of this world.
We're just doing things in adifferent way.
But the way things work limitsour options and we're just
trying to not necessarily makethe most of it, because that's
like bigger, better, faster,more, but more like make the
(08:14):
most meaningful version of itthat we can make in the actual
context, and I think I hope mostpeople do that.
It's not about using schools ornot.
Charles Eisenstein (08:24):
It's about making a conscious choice about
how we want our life science tobe yeah, yeah, making making
good of a situation that isn'tideal, but uh, you know, here we
are.
Cecilie Conrad (08:38):
I don't know that it is an idea.
I mean, well, probably it isn't, but has it ever been, will it
ever be, or will it always besome sort of chaos and we have
to adapt?
Charles Eisenstein (08:51):
I don't know yeah, well, that you know, gets
to uh, metaphysical questionsit becomes quite complicated.
Cecilie Conrad (08:57):
But I'm what I'm , what I'm aiming at is just, I
think in in, in the circles wemove, in I'm not saying you're
saying it, but I often feel thatwe have to be so much against
what is it's so bad and it's sowrong and we're going in the
wrong direction and everything'sfalling apart and people are a
sheep or robots or whatever, andit's a very negative worldview
(09:22):
and sometimes I just want to sayI love the motorway man.
It takes me fast to where I needto go.
I mean, it might not be idealfor everything that we have
motorways cutting through ourlandscapes, but there certainly
are advantages and I believethat you can probably put this
mindset to most things that wemaybe could disagree with, that
(09:44):
we can also see how it can be abenefit or how we can find our
ways.
I don't love the motorway ifthere's traffic, so I avoid
going in the afternoons, butthat's the navigational part
that I find a way to navigatethe society that is, and I try
to avoid being too much againstit and talking too negatively
(10:09):
about it.
I don't know.
I mean there are many thingsthese years that are much better
than 100 years ago.
Just think about women's rights, or I'm saying sanity, no.
Jesper Conrad (10:23):
Yeah, sanitation.
Cecilie Conrad (10:24):
Sanitation.
Jesper Conrad (10:25):
Sanity maybe not, maybe not.
Cecilie Conrad (10:26):
Yeah, sanitation , Sanitation, sanity maybe not,
maybe not, maybe not sanitation,no, but I mean at least you
know it'll be clean-ish if youend up in a hospital.
Charles Eisenstein (10:36):
Well.
Cecilie Conrad (10:38):
I think it's a very hard analysis to make to
say that it's worse now than itwas a hundred years ago.
Charles Eisenstein (10:43):
Yeah, I don't think it matters you know,
the way it is now is the way itis now, and I think that the
value in those kinds ofconversations is that it can
identify something that has beenlost.
Because when you identify whatis missing then you maybe can
(11:04):
recreate it, rebuild it.
But if you don't even knowwhat's missing, then you feel
lost.
You feel that maybe the problemis yourself and not your
circumstances.
So, like when I was a kid, ifyou went outside you would
(11:32):
always hear the sounds ofchildren playing in the
neighborhood.
The other day and I don't Idon't hear that anymore very
often, but the other day it wasa holiday I I heard it because I
think our neighbors must havehad their relatives over and
they were actually playingoutside a game of I don't know
some game outside.
And I remembered that noise,the sound of children playing.
(11:53):
I remembered how it was thereevery day when I was a child and
I felt sad that I don't hearthat sound anymore, that I don't
hear that sound anymore.
It's like that's for me.
That sound is a kind of anourishment that when I don't
have it I forget even that thisvitamin exists.
So you know I don't.
(12:17):
So to recognize that loss, thatdoesn't mean that I have to
wallow in despair.
It doesn't mean that I have towallow in despair.
It doesn't mean that I have toreject all of society.
You know, and I think it ishelpful to say, oh, here's
something valuable.
And then when I have a creativechoice like what do I want to
(12:37):
create for my children?
What do I want to choose?
Do I want to move here or movethere?
Do I want to put them in schoolor not?
Move here or move there?
Do I want to put them in schoolor not?
You know, I have informationthat I integrate by actually
feeling sad about it.
You know, like, oh, there's alittle grief there and I think
that grief is a way to integrateloss.
(12:58):
And you know the motorway, like,again, like I have in my mind,
as a child there were specialplaces I'd like to to go.
There was a, a wild placebehind our house, a few blocks
away, that was undeveloped land.
There was a, a quarry thereactually, and just, you know,
(13:20):
some undeveloped land, or thesepine trees and blackberry bushes
and this path.
It was probably 10 or 15hectares of undeveloped land,
maybe even more, and, um, I gotto know that land like part of
(13:40):
myself.
You know it.
It became part of my being.
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 averagechild roam unsupervised away
from the house?
(14:00):
And it used to be severalkilometers, and now in my
country it's, you know, onlyseveral meters.
Oh my God, yes.
And so again, like here'sanother loss.
You know, and yeah, maybe inthe days when children roamed
(14:23):
far and were free and playedwith each other, there were bad
things too.
Infant mortality was very high.
Who knows if it was better orworse, but still to feel the
value of those things, I thinkthat helps us navigate toward
(14:43):
the future things.
Cecilie Conrad (14:44):
I think that helps us navigate toward the
future.
Jesper Conrad (14:46):
I like the way you put it because I'm in this
flux between trying tounderstand, see what has
happened in my own mind not abig research guy, not very
academic but I look at, oh, wewent from the local communities
into the cities and then we wentinto smaller and smaller units
and then in a period we havepraise, like the nuclear family,
(15:09):
and part of me is, as you say,missing something.
So part of me is trying to lookat 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, tobe in the hey, I can see I
missed something, using thefeelings as a pointer.
And there is something about howthe families has become smaller
(15:32):
and smaller.
I find it difficult.
And the outsource of the care,For example, my parents are
getting older and it saddens methat I don't feel I have this
very strong connection with themwhere it would be natural for
me to take them in.
It's not there, that feeling.
And seeing that that feeling isnot there feels so bad I don't
(15:54):
like to say it out loud, youknow, kind of so you say it on
the podcast.
So I say it on the podcast no,but I also recognize that is.
What makes me sad is that thatfeeling of wanting to do it
isn't there.
Where I'm trying to go isasking you how you started your
path of discovery down this.
(16:15):
Was it your education, or whyhave you been interested in this
field?
Charles Eisenstein (16:21):
Since I was very young, I had an intuition
that normal was unacceptable anda rebellion against it, one or
two institutions that werecorrupt in a civilization that
(16:45):
was otherwise found, but thatthe very fabric of our whole
civilization was not in serviceto human fulfillment and the
flourishing of life.
Let's put it that way, and sothat includes every aspect of it
(17:07):
.
You know, from the way babiesare born to the way we raise
children, to the way that weproduce food and entertainment
and knowledge, all the way tothe way that we take care of our
elderly and the way that we die, the whole thing top to bottom,
(17:28):
every institution.
So when I became a parent, youknow it became very personal how
do I raise my children in themost beautiful way I can, given
our embedment in a society that,as I said before, is not ideal
for the raising of children?
(17:49):
And I didn't have you know whatI mean Like, maybe I had
theoretical answers, but thetheoretical answers didn't help
me that much, you know when.
Yeah, you know children shouldbe playing outside unsupervised.
And, yeah, you know, childrenshould be playing outside
unsupervised.
But the neighborhood I foundmyself in, I thought there would
be lots of kids playing outsidethere when we moved, you know,
(18:13):
with our two-year-old, when myfirst wife was pregnant, you
know, with her second baby.
We moved to a suburbanneighborhood a lot of young
families, you know, and no oneoutside.
You didn't see kids outside.
Where are all the kids?
You know, I guess we movedthere in uh the fall.
(18:34):
There were a few kids but, um,I thought, well, we'll start
community.
You know, we'll get everybodytogether, we'll have a community
garden.
You know, here's a spot for acommunity garden and no one was
interested.
(19:02):
So my ideals, my concepts aboutwhat an ideal childhood would
land and overcome the zoningregulations and the building
codes and everything that are inthe way of actually living
right then maybe I could do it,but I wasn't in that kind of
situation.
I could only choose from themenu that was in front of my
face.
That was in front of my faceand you know, like most people,
(19:31):
I had my own share ofprogramming and you know
neuroses and hangups andinjuries, and you know it was
all I could do to keep the peacein my marriage and even that
didn't work.
You know like I mean.
So I guess I realized that thereturn journey, or the journey
(19:54):
to a society that actually canaccommodate children is a long
journey and you know, maybe, ifyou know, maybe if my children
have a better childhood than Ihad, then I've done my part, you
know, and maybe they will beable to create what I was unable
(20:16):
to create for them.
Jesper Conrad (20:19):
Yeah Well, yeah, thank you for sharing.
I sometimes feel we are, and Iknow Cecilia says that we are
part of the society, but the waywe live both adults working
from home, full-time, travelingas nomads then I feel that we
(20:45):
are kind of a satellite that iscircling around.
That's how I see it.
And Then my question is, as youtalk about the fight against
normal, if we could talk alittle about natural versus
normal, because at some point inour life I wanted to move into
(21:11):
an eco-village and we went andvisited one and we saw several
and what we found was that someof them had more rules than
society.
It became very heavilyregulated and it was like oh,
that's what I wanted to get awayfrom.
Charles Eisenstein (21:30):
I wanted natural and relaxed, and so I'm
trying to find a way that isnatural, inside the norm or
inside normal or next to normal.
Yeah, if you study anthropologyand read about the way that
(21:55):
human beings have lived, peoplehave lived in so many different
ways.
You know some societies, evenpre-modern societies, were very
highly structured, withelaborate rituals and taboos
that you know made life not veryfree, and other societies were
much more laid back, and eachone of those provides a
different container for thedevelopment of the human being
(22:18):
or the development of the soul.
You could even say it's hard tosay whether one is better or
worse than the others.
You know there's in highlyorganized societies with
elaborate rules elaborate likethey sometimes have very, very
strong community.
You know who you are and youcan, you're free to develop.
(22:44):
You know it's like like a sonnet, there's a type of poem.
The sonnet has very strictrules, or the haiku very strict
rules, but that doesn't meanthat you cannot be creative,
because there's too many rules.
Like you can develop withinthat container and we are
(23:06):
fundamentally social beings.
So there's always, to someextent, there's always going to
be um ways to negotiate ourrelationships that are based
either on explicit rules orimplicit rules.
We're not actually here to befree.
(23:29):
We're here to be inrelationship and I understand
the impulse towards freedom whenthe relationships have been
industrialized and used, youknow, to control and oppress
people.
And you know, then of course wewant to break free from those.
(23:50):
But you know, again, we're hereto relate, you know, so they're
going to be replaced withsomething.
Again, we're here to relate,you know, so they're going to be
replaced with something.
Yeah, I have visited manyecovillages as well, and to me
it's like it's not so much.
Oh, there's too many rules,it's more of okay.
(24:11):
Here is the way of being thatthis place offers.
Is that a fit accommodation forwho I am right now?
Maybe, you know, if I settle inthat eco-village, I can see the
ways that I can develop, thethings that will confront me
(24:33):
that maybe should be confronted.
Maybe there are ways that I'mselfish and could be more in
mutual obligation to people andreally involved in their lives.
You know, and I'm hanging backfrom full incarnation, I'm
hanging back from being fully inrelationship to other human
(24:56):
beings, and maybe this is thestep I need to take into this
community, or maybe this isn'tactually the right one for me,
but then I can look at okay,what is it exactly that's
keeping me back, you know?
Am I afraid to really plungeinto life, into relationship, to
be fully incarnate, or is thisactually not a place conducive
(25:21):
to my development and and whowould I become here?
Is that who I want to become?
So there's, there's a, you know, a lot of self-examination.
I think that goes into adecision like that.
Uh, that can't just be reducedto okay, too many rules, or, you
know, I know.
Cecilie Conrad (25:37):
Well, I think the too many rules for us is it
actually is a condensed versionof what you just said that we
don't want to participate in acommunity that needs this number
of rules, that like all thelittle posters on the walls of
things to do and not do and whento do them and how to do them.
(26:00):
If a community needs that kindof explicit rulemaking, then
it's not a context where we wantto live in, and, of course, I'm
sure that there are people whothrive in that context.
I really hope so, because lotsof people do live in these
communities and I hope theythrive, as I hope for everyone
on the planet, and I'm also surethat we have different
(26:22):
personalities and differentneeds as to personal development
and who we want to become ofrulemaking, then it's not for us
.
That's the short version, butyou're right.
You're right.
It's not the rules in and ofthemselves, it's just the vibe
(26:43):
of it.
It doesn't align with our wayof being and it does not align
with who we want to become.
Charles Eisenstein (26:49):
See, I think there's one more thing I want
to bring into that.
An indigenous village does nothave rules posted around.
You know, a traditional, even atraditional European village, a
16th century village in Belgium, or whatever.
They're not going to have rulesposted around.
They don't have that many laws,written laws.
(27:10):
It's all informal, it's allbased on social expectations,
social pressure.
There's no rule that says youhave to share with your
neighbors, but if you don't,people start to talk about you,
they start to gossip and thenwhen you have trouble they won't
help you because you're stingy.
So this becomes second nature,it becomes a way of life.
(27:31):
Today we have none of that, oralmost none of those habits and
those understandings that comefrom living in community.
So we have to kind of rebuildit.
If you just take a bunch ofpeople and throw them together
and say, okay, we're going tohave an ecovillage and we're not
going to have rules, everybodyis taking with them the habits
(27:54):
of a monetized, industrializedsociety.
They don't have the habits ofgift culture.
They don't have the habits ofgift culture.
They don't have the habits ofmutual aid and mutual obligation
.
They don't have the skills tonavigate a situation which isn't
governed by explicit rules,because they have grown up in a
society that is governed byexplicit rules.
(28:14):
From the legal system to school,you know there are rules and
punishments and it's anauthority that enforces them.
So we don't have we just don'thave the skill set to live in
community right now, and I thinkthat the rules that eco, like
ecovillages, might go into it.
We're not going to have rules,but very quickly they discover
(28:35):
that that doesn't work.
Basically, we are, we're in theremedial class where we need
help, a stepping stone toredevelop the skills of
community.
Yeah, that's why I think thatthey do have rules and I guess
(28:59):
ideally, over time, the rulescould be let go of.
Jesper Conrad (29:05):
Why do you think we have lost that skill set?
Is it the smaller family unitsyou're only responsible for your
own small unit or is it theoutside control from school,
state et cetera?
Charles Eisenstein (29:19):
Yeah, I think it's both, but it's
especially that we live in asociety where the rules are
imposed from without many ofthem anyway, like in school.
If you have a dispute withanother kid, you know you go to
the teacher.
If you even have an opportunityyou have a dispute with another
kid, you know, you go to theteacher.
If you even have an opportunityto have a dispute, you know
(29:42):
you're expected to be in acertain place at a certain time.
Your entire day is governed byrules imposed from the outside,
and even children's play, whenchildren's play is mostly
supervised and in the form oforganized sports, you know, with
(30:03):
adults running the show.
Then, like when I was a kid, westill had some of spontaneous,
unsupervised childhood Afterschool.
You know people didn't haveafter school activities back
then.
They didn't get shipped off tokarate class or to piano class
(30:23):
or.
You know you come home fromschool and you'd go outside
where all weekend you'd beoutside and find the other kids
and so we'd play.
You know games and you have topick teams and then you have to
argue about the rules and thenyou play and then there's the
dispute and you spend another,pick teams and then you have to
argue about the rules and thenyou play, and then there's the
dispute and you spend another,you know, have another argument
about the rules and at the timeis spent actually arguing and
(30:47):
working out disputes.
That is precious.
By doing that, you learn how toget along with people when
there's no authority present.
If there's an authority presenta referee or a parent then you
never go through that process.
And that's just one example ofthe stunting and atrophying of
(31:11):
those skills.
We never develop those skillsbecause we're always in
organized, rule-governedsituations that we just don't
have the opportunity to learn.
And I would also extend that toliving in a money economy where
you never need the peoplearound you.
(31:32):
If you have money, then you canbuy all the things that you
need, so you never have to learnto get along with people.
If your neighbor hates you, nobig deal.
If you don't have the skills toget along with your neighbors,
it does not hurt you very muchBecause you can just buy
(31:52):
everything from Amazon.
And that was not true even 100years ago in most places.
Cecilie Conrad (31:59):
Do you think we have lost the feeling Now I'm
saying we as a collectivehumanity, we, which is maybe
stretching it, but okay, let'sjust play with the thought
experience Do you think we'velost the feeling that we are
dependent on each other as humanbeings, that we are dependent
on each other as human beings Imean theoretically we accept it
(32:22):
and emotionally we stillexperience it, but we've lost a
lot of the skills and a lot ofthe economic structures of
dependency, and dependency onnature too.
Charles Eisenstein (32:34):
You know, like I mean, I like to look at
nature but you know, most of thefood I buy is not from this
land.
Right here I have a garden.
You know, I get maybe fivepercent of my food from that.
But, um, you know, I'm not inrelationship, most people are
not in relationship very deeplyto the people around them and
(32:57):
the animals and plants aroundthem, and that.
But we all have a longing torebuild those relationships.
There's like we're burstingwith desire to be in
relationships, of giving andreceiving again, and that's why,
you know, when a hurricanehappens, I was just actually in
(33:19):
North Carolina and people weretelling me about the days after
the hurricane no electricity, norunning water.
Everyone comes out of theirhouse, they start knocking on
their neighbor's door do youneed anything?
Somebody has some, some meatthat's about to spoil.
(33:40):
They, they, they cook it andfeed everybody.
You know, somebody has bottledwater, like somebody has a
generator, and people, finallythey get to be, to be in
relationship.
And what a great time it wasyeah, you know.
So what you're saying is we needmore crisis well, it gives us a
glimpse of what we want yeah,yeah, and, and what we really
(34:04):
want is to need each other andto be needed yeah, yeah.
Jesper Conrad (34:08):
Well, I I've been thinking about the process of
moving away from normal, fromfrom the norm, where in me it
was natural for me to firstdefine all I didn't like kind of
to have mental crutches to moveaway from the norm.
But now I'm at a point whereI'm looking at the norm and
(34:32):
saying, okay, that is not for me.
What is for me is over here andit starts building towards it.
But I can also see that it hastaken many years of living in a
different way.
How do we?
I actually feel and think thatpeople can sense this longing?
(34:53):
Because I've been consideringwhy were everyone so happy with
the Matrix movie?
But then, looking from the side, with my back then more
negative mind, I was like butyou're still living inside the
Matrix, but why did it have sucha big effect on people?
And I think it's because theyknow and feel that there is
(35:14):
something they want, but I don'tknow how to help people go
there.
Charles Eisenstein (35:22):
Well, yeah, I don't think that there's, you
know, any magic wand, anymagical solution.
It's a matter of slowlyrebuilding, motivated by this
longing and by the recognitionof what you're actually longing
for, which is reunion, to returninto full relationship and into
(35:47):
full being, recognizing thatthen you can walk the path, the
long, long path back home.
The path, the long, long pathback home.
And so maybe that means, maybeit is to start an eco village or
live in an eco village and takethe baby steps back into
relationship, to recover theskills of community.
(36:11):
Or maybe it's the worldschooling camps that you do.
You know, where even people youknow have a festival, burning
man, where for a few days you'reliving in a different reality,
or people doing communitybuilding work, just where they
live, where it's aboutconnecting the gifts and the
(36:35):
needs that are already presentin that community that aren't
being met.
And it could be in a very smallway, you know it could be
tutoring school children, youknow, there, you, you could say,
well, ideally they shouldn'teven be in school, but you know,
maybe it's working classparents and and school is free,
(36:55):
babysitting, and that's the onlychoice.
And, you know, like to have abig brother, big sister coming
in and caring about them, givingthem attention.
You know, there are so manythings that I would even say
(37:15):
that we are here to serve thereunion of children, these human
souls to each other.
This is our mission here tosteer humanity toward the return
journey into relationship, andit can be very, very small scale
(37:39):
, very humble, you know.
Jesper Conrad (37:43):
It's a longing, charles, I've seen grow in me
and I first saw it some yearsago when our oldest daughter,
who is a published author.
She gave a talk, read a littlealoud from her book, doing good,
(38:08):
and I was also a little envious.
I'm like, oh man, if I had beenso cool when I was her age.
But that aside, what I reallyloved about that was that people
met up around something.
But it also to me seems thatpeople need this anger of
something to meet about to drawthem in.
So Cecilia and I gave sometalks to the homeschooling
community in Denmark before weleft and it was too much Six,
(38:31):
seven in a week.
We were drained afterwards andin between.
But seeing the people come,being together, talk, chat with
each other, we had made theformat where it was a slow start
, a break and then a potluckafterwards.
It was really nice seeingpeople connecting.
And I actually think and I'vebeen thinking about it since I
(38:52):
started working a lot withChatDBT.
In the work I do, I use it alot every day I've had this idea
that I think reality willbecome more and more important,
also due to AI, becauseeverything is so, it is so easy
and so much fake that missingpeople in real life.
(39:14):
I actually think that AI insome sense is pushing people
towards meeting because it istoo unnaturalistic for us.
Yeah.
Charles Eisenstein (39:26):
I think that you're onto something important
there.
First, I'll just say that it'sjust wonderful that you're
bringing people together whoactually are meeting each
other's needs, simply, ifnothing else, simply to validate
hey, yeah, you're not crazy,I'm seeing the same thing you
are.
That's an important emotionalneed that can't just be met by
(39:48):
AI.
You actually, like you'resaying AI is helping us to
recognize what AI cannot do andwhat digital services of any
kind cannot do.
There are things it cannot do.
It cannot be in physicalpresence with you, it cannot
(40:08):
touch you, and when you bringpeople together, that is where
our future prospects are.
People ask what is employmentgoing to be like?
when AI starts performing allthese functions that human
beings have performed Wellemployment and, more generally,
(40:31):
the ways that we serve eachother will happen in the things
that AI can do that require abody.
So I think that in-persongatherings it's ironic, you
gatherings, it's ironic.
It seemed that digitaltechnology like Zoom was making
(40:55):
in-person gatherings obsolete.
Especially during COVID, allthese conferences, everything
moved online and people thought,well, we'll be able to reach
even more people by having ourconference online, because in
person only a few hundred peoplecan come, but online we could
reach millions, we'll have abigger impact.
But having gone through that,they're discovering that
(41:17):
something is missing from theonline conference cannot be
captured as data Physicalpresence and touch and the
spontaneity of meeting somebodyin the parking lot or, you know,
in the line at the cafeteria,things that can't be scripted,
things that happen in relationto a physical space.
(41:41):
We are, ironically, because oftechnology, we are now
recognizing how important thoseare and, yeah, I guess that's
all I have to say about that forthe moment.
(42:14):
Charles, your books, as I said,I haven't read them yet, but for
people listening, where shouldthey start?
Well, maybe it's hard to say.
The more beautiful world ourhearts know is possible, I think
, is probably the best one tostart.
My books are almost all inGerman as well, by the way.
I guess you just have to lookup my name, and the translations
of my books in German are very,very good.
(42:38):
I know that not because I readGerman, but people have told me
that, but also because thetranslators did it from love.
They weren't just a paidprofessional, they were highly
educated PhDs.
You know who loved the booksand did them better than a
professional would do them,because there's a real resonance
there.
So you know those of yourlisteners who read German.
(43:00):
I mean, if you read English,then yeah, you know, read the
original, but the German onesare really good too.
Jesper Conrad (43:08):
Right, yeah, english then, yeah, I read the
original, but the German onesare really good too.
What are you working on now?
Is there any new books coming?
We talked with a wonderfulperson who has a farm and they
live off the farm in a familyculture where it's been on
generations.
She said this thing aboutwriting.
For her, it's a way ofexploring a subject.
(43:28):
She writes a book when there'ssomething she wants to know, and
then the product ends upbecoming a book.
I don't know if it's the samefor you, but what are you
exploring these days?
Charles Eisenstein (43:41):
I haven't been writing books.
I've been writing just essaysand articles on my sub stack.
I've been writing a lot andarticles on my sub stack and
I've been writing a lot aboutdifferent things about AI.
I've been writing a lot aboutAI and some political things
about peace, Charles so in thestart you talked about that.
Jesper Conrad (44:02):
You had this drive in you from young about
there was something wrong aboutwhat is presented as normal.
Do you have any recommendationsto how we get better at feeling
the difference between normalat one side and natural on the
(44:24):
other?
Because when we have beeninside this society and have get
accustomed to this is how youdo, this is how you act.
As an example, during the last50 years in denmark we have gone
from having five percent ofpeople in nursery homes, which
(44:46):
would have been back then.
If you send your child to anursery home you would have been
the weird one out 5%.
Now it's 95% in Denmark ofchildren who are in nursery home
over 50 years, and people don'tknow this when I talk with them
.
For them, it's natural now, ornormal, to send your children
(45:07):
away.
But how can you listen to theboys if normal is standing and
shouting at you?
How do you work with yourlistening, so to say?
Charles Eisenstein (45:22):
Yeah, so the natural-normal distinction can
be useful.
I don't usually think in thoseterms, but it can be useful.
I don't usually think in thoseterms, but it can be useful.
Normally, when we sense awrongness, when we sense, when
we have a protest against theway things are, the voice of
(45:43):
normal says well, that's becauseyou are not well adjusted, it's
because you have a problem,because you are discontent.
It will assign a pathology toyou if you do not adjust to the
way things are.
The most important treasure isthis knowledge, is this protest,
(46:07):
this feeling that it's notsupposed to be this way.
There's a better way to do it.
There's a better way to be, tovalidate your feeling of not
being at home in this normal.
That doesn't tell you what todo, but at least you're not
(46:27):
going to be gaslighting yourself.
At least, even when everybodyelse tells you that you're crazy
for taking your child out ofschool, at least you won't join
them and say, yeah, I'm crazy, Ineed a pill, I need a doctor.
(46:48):
And that's why it's soimportant to have community of
other people who say, yeah,you're not crazy, I see what
you're seeing, even those whoare talking about how wrong
everything is.
I think that's even importanttoo, because it validates you.
It validates really what you'relonging for isn't to escape the
(47:13):
society that we find ourselvesin.
That's not the deepest long.
The deepest longing is totransform it, because we are
born into it with that mission.
We did not, we did not justmake some dumb mistake in
incarnating into this world,into this particular society,
(47:35):
into our particular biography,our circumstances, which may
have been very bad, verytraumatic, maybe people who have
suffered abuse or terriblethings.
You didn't do that by mistakeand it wasn't a punishment for
bad behavior, it was a choicebecause on some soul level you
(48:03):
saw that this situation can betransformed, it can be redeemed.
You saw that this situation canbe transformed, it can be
redeemed.
So all of us are kind ofmissionaries here to build, to
co -create.
I call it a more beautifulworld.
That's the longing.
It's not just to live in a morebeautiful world, the longing is
(48:29):
to be a creative agent of it.
Cecilie Conrad (48:30):
Yeah thank you that's a beautiful full stop
it's a beautiful full stop forthis conversation.
I don't need to comment on thatnope, I would just say agree,
chance.
Jesper Conrad (48:42):
It has been very interesting.
Thank you for taking the time.
It was a big pleasure talkingwith you today.
Charles Eisenstein (48:49):
Yeah, thank you.
Thank you, Jasper and Cecilia.
Cecilie Conrad (48:52):
Yeah, it was fun .
Charles Eisenstein (48:53):
Very nice to meet you.
Bye guys.
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