Charles Eisenstein

Charles Eisenstein is a speaker and writer focusing on themes of human culture and identity. He is the author of several books, including Sacred Economics, The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible, and Climate: A New Story. His background includes a degree in mathematics and philosophy from Yale, a decade in Taiwan as a translator, and stints as a college instructor, a yoga teacher, and a construction worker. He currently writes, speaks, and teaches courses online, in addition to being a husband and father to four sons.

Charles Eisenstein in Kosmos

Have We Outsourced Our Thinking?

Artificial intelligence is the culmination of the revolution in information technology that began in the 15th century with the printing press, followed in succeeding centuries by lithography, photography, phonography, and film, each of which extended the mass production of information to a new realm. A review of the cognitive and social effects of those previous technologies will help to illuminate what is crashing upon us in the age of artificial intelligence.

Published in Volume 25 Issue 1

Social Breakdown and Initiation

Orland: ...A 'right' is not just for me. It's an acknowledgement that the framework that gives me access to my own potential is the same framework that gives access to someone else's potential. So this is the idea of civility. Civility is the framework that allows people to communicate in ways that allows the collective potential to be realized and achieved.

Published in Volume 18 Issue 1

Tending the Wild

What looked to European settlers like untamed wilderness was actually the product of millennia of intentional human influence. Calling it wilderness, or “virgin territory,” gave them license to occupy it, cultivate it, “develop” it, and “improve” it.

Published in Volume 18 Issue 2

Every Act a Ceremony

The ceremony, which only makes sense if holy beings are watching, draws us into an experiential reality in which holy beings are indeed present.

Published in Volume 19 Issue 3

Oppression, Interconnection, and Healing

Charles Eisenstein: The Amazon is where Gaia's memory of health still exists. And if that can be preserved, there will always be hope. If there is one healthy region that still has integrity, then it can teach the rest of the world to be healthy again.

Published in Volume 20 Issue 3

Development in the Ecological Age

Published in Spring | Summer 2014, Volume 14 Issue 2

Coming Soon

The Village Way

Practices for Belonging in a Fragmented World

For thousands of years, we lived according to the principles of village life. Then, around the 14th Century, our lives were reorganized by rulers around growth and accumulation – often at the cost of community, equity, and the living Earth. What would it mean to return to simplicity, and mutual care?

Join us for a 9-month inquiry into this question, exploring how we participate together in a time that calls us back to community, resilience, and shared life,