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Charles Eisenstein: Crafting A New Narrative
Charles Eisenstein: Crafting A New Narrative
Much has been written here at PeakProsperity.com of late about the need for society to adopt a new narrative to live by. One deeply-ingrained with sustainability and stewardship — else our current fixation with consumption and exploitation of nature’s finite resources will meet a very predictable and unpleasant end.
So, for those that agree a new operating story is needed: Where do we start?
This week, author Charles Eisenstein joins Chris and Becca to discuss their upcoming participation in The New Story festival, a gathering specifically focused on sparking momentum behind this important movement. More details on the event, which takes place in Bethany CT on June 12-13th, can be found here.
Chris Martenson: Welcome to this Peak Prosperity Podcast. I am your host, Chris Martenson. And with me here today are Becca. Hello, Becca.
Becca Martenson: Hi, Chris.
Chris Martenson: And Charles Eisenstein. Hello, Charles.
Charles Eisenstein: Hi, Chris.
Chris Martenson: Now all three of us we are all going to be presenting at A New Story Festival that is coming up in Connecticut. It is on June 12th and 13th coming right up and I am really exciting to be doing that because the timing in this, boy is it ever good for me. There is a vibe in the air – an electric energy among people that I talk to to be doing things differently. People really want – they want a new story and they are ready for a new story. And myself, especially included in that.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Sounding The Alarm On The Country’s Vulnerability To An EMP
Sounding The Alarm On The Country’s Vulnerability To An EMP
In the past here at Peak Prosperity, we’ve written extensively on the threat posed by a sustained loss of electrical grid power. More specifically, we’ve warned that the most damaging threat to our grid would come from either a manmade or natural electromagnetic pulse (EMP).
A good friend of mine, Jen Bawden, is currently sitting on a committee of notable political, security and defense experts — which includes past and present members of Congress, ambassadors, CIA directors, and others — who are equally concerned about this same threat and have recently sent a letter to Obama pleading for action to protect the US grid.
Before we get to that letter, here’s a snippet from what we wrote on the matter roughly a year ago:
We talk a lot about Peak Cheap Oil as the Achilles’ heel of the exponential monetary model, but the real threat to the quality of our daily lives, if not our lives themselves, would be a sustained loss of electrical power. Anything over a week without power for any modern nation would be a serious problem. A month would lead to chaos and many deaths.
When the power goes out, everything just stops. For residential users, even a few hours begins to intrude heavily as melting freezers, dying cell phones, and the awkward realization that we don’t remember how to play board games nudge us out of our comfort zone.
However, those are just small inconveniences.
For industrial and other heavy users, the impact of even a relatively short outage can be expensive or even ghastly. Hospitals and people on life-assisting machinery are especially vulnerable. Without power, aluminum smelters face the prospect of the molten ore solidifying in the channels from which it must be laboriously removed before operations can be restarted.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
In Denial: We Pursue Endless Growth At Our Peril
James Steidl/Shutterstock
In Denial: We Pursue Endless Growth At Our Peril
As we’ve been discussing of late here at PeakProsperity.com, humans desperately need a new story to live by. The old one is increasingly dysfunctional and rather obviously headed for either a quite dismal or possibly disastrous future. One of the chief impediments to recognizing the dysfunction of the old story and adopting a new one is the most powerful of all human emotional states: Denial.
I used to think that Desire was the most powerful human emotion because people are prone to risking everything in their lives – careers, marriages, relationships with their family and close friends – pursuing lust or accumulating 10,000 times more money and possessions than they need in their desire for “more.”
Perhaps it was my own blind spot(s) that prevented me from really appreciating just how powerful human denial really is. But here we are, 40 years after the Club of Rome and 7 years after the Great Financial Accident of 2008, collectively pretending that neither was a sign warning of the dangers we face — as a global society — if we continue our unsustainable policies and practices that assume perpetual growth.
Economic Denial
In the realm of economics, the level of collective denial gripping the earth’s power centers is extraordinary. Perhaps that should be of little surprise, as we’re now at the height of the largest set of nested financial bubbles ever blown in world history.
The bigger the bubble(s) the bigger the levels of denial required to sustain their expansion. These bubbles are doozies, and that explains the massive and ongoing efforts to prevent any sort of reality from creeping into the national and global dialog.
To understand this pattern of avoidance of unpleasant realities, consider the behavior of cities — even entire nations — which cannot bring themselves to talk openly about their state of insolvency, let alone do something about it.
