The Melanie Avalon Biohacking Podcast Episode #160 - Charles Eisenstein

TRANSCRIPT

Melanie: Hi, friends, welcome back to the show. I am so incredibly excited and honored about the conversation that I'm about to have. So, a little backstory on this conversation. I was trying to remember when it was that I first read The Yoga of Eating. I think it was probably around 2014 or so. And that was my first exposure to the work of Charles Eisenstein. And that book-- as a lot of you guys know, I exist in a world of trying to figure out the correct diet for everybody and all of these different viewpoints and reading that book was just so enlightening, and just a beautiful, nuanced perspective. And I started recommending it to anybody and everybody and talking about it on the Intermittent Fasting podcast all the time. And then in 2018, I reached out to the author, Charles, and asked if he would be down with me recording the audiobook for it, and he was so kind and open to it, which was amazing. And I totally forgot about this until now, he actually made some updates to the book to make it more relevant with his current thoughts at the time. So, we released that in 2018. That was before the launch of this show. And then, having launched the show a few years ago, I knew I wanted to have Charles back on and I had reached out to one of his assistants. We just talked before this, and I don't think she was still with him at the time, so it hadn't manifested.

And then, Jean Fallacara, who you guys might have heard on the show, randomly reached out to me and said that I just had to have Charles Eisenstein on the show, because he said it was basically one of the most profound conversations he had ever had. So, that was meant to be. I was so excited and so thrilled. And then, I went even deeper into Charles's work because The Yoga of Eating is not his one book. He has so many books, he has The Ascent of Humanity, Sacred Economics. I ended up reading since then Climate and The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible. And he has The Coronation coming out-- Well, it's not out yet comes out in three days. So, congrats in advance on that, and that's a collection of essays surrounding his thoughts on the zeitgeist with the pandemic.

That was a lengthy intro, but I'm a little bit overwhelmed, because there's so many things I want to discuss. And I have no idea where this conversation is going to go. But Charles, I cannot thank you enough for your work. And thank you so much for being here.

Charles: Well, thank you, Melanie, for such a kind introduction. Yeah, I'm ready to talk.

Melanie: I'm just so excited. Okay, to start things off, I've read quite a few of your books, and you will mention little pieces of your life, but the majority of it is normally your thoughts on culture and society and viewpoints and mindset. So, I'm really curious. Have you always had a philosopher mind? Were you always deeply contemplating things? How much have your views changed over the years, and just what is that like in your head?

Charles: Yeah, I've always been a thoughtful person, I guess. I was a pensive child. I guess I do think about things a lot, which I'm not always sure if more intellectualism is really what the world needs right now. But I don't know. That's what I am. And yeah, even the Yoga of Eating book, I briefly tried to become a yoga teacher. And I don't think I was in an especially good yoga teacher. But I loved thinking about, like yogic philosophy and how does that apply to food, really, if it's not just a bunch of rules. So, I just whatever I did, I ended up being philosophical about it. Sometimes, that can be a little bit of the ivory tower phenomenon, where you're so interested in ideas, that you don't engage as much with the world, with the body, with society, with other human beings. But I've always also gotten involved or embroiled in public issues-- well, that's another whole other story. But I became controversial, let's say that, much to my astonishment. I migrated from being completely off the radar and beneath the notice of the mainstream to this controversial person during the pandemic, not because I necessarily changed my beliefs and anything, but the times changed, I guess. So anyway, here I am.

Melanie: You said you were trying out being a yoga teacher and thinking about how it applied to food. What is the central practice of the Yoga of eating? So, what was the central tenet you found from yoga that applied to food and how people approach it?

Charles: Yeah, it's about really intimacy and trust with the body. The dilemma was, as I began researching diet, I kind of went from one to another to another, each dietary philosophy seemingly sound, compelling even on its own terms, but contradicting the other ones. I thought, "Well, there must be some overarching principles of diet that unify all these different approaches." But I never could find any even going into some of the intricacies of metabolic typing, it got so intricate, that at some point-- and even there, the authorities, these really nerdy functional medicine doctors, and so forth, even they disagreed with each other. And I'm like, "It can't be that hard. Maybe my own body could guide me toward what is healthy and what isn't. What does that guidance look like?" Well, it's about the yes and the no, pleasure and discomfort. And my hypothesis was that the more attuned one becomes to the effect of a food on the body, which starts with the taste, and continues on through the whole experience of it, the more accurate the body's guidance will be. And eventually, pleasure and health will come into alignment. And the things that are good for you will taste good, the things that are bad for you will taste bad. 

Actually, that actually happened to me, of all my books, that's the one that probably live with the most integrity. I genuinely require no willpower whatsoever to stay away from the birthday cake or the packaged cookies or ice cream. Sometimes I even try to force myself to eat it for social reasons, but I'm like, "Yuck. This doesn't feel good. It doesn't taste good." Because really, the main cause of dietary ill health isn't that people don't know. It's that they know better, but they eat it anyway. So anyway, that's a little bit of that book.

Melanie: On this show, I've had a laundry list of really amazing guests in the diet sphere, and it will be people on complete opposite sides of the spectrum. And so, I get a lot of overwhelmed listeners a lot, a little bit exacerbated because things are positive as truth that are just completely opposite. So, a thought of mine has always been that if there was one right diet, I think we probably would have found it by now because I think everybody would be doing it, and it would be working.

Charles: And then, another thing is the right diet for what? For whom? For you. And so, there's this assumption of a whole bunch of standardized 'you's' out there. And that is basically an industrial mentality that we see rife within our entire healthcare system today. Like this generic prescribing based on statistics, and standardized assumptions about what everybody should do. That's what is required to have medicine at industrial scale, that's not based on an individual unique relationship between the person and their healer. And that whole mindset is really-- none of the pandemic stuff would have happened, if it weren't for that mindset. Our whole system is built around that. And if we think in terms of what is the revolution really about, starting with the revolution in health, beyond any prescription that applies to everyone, it's really about reasserting sovereignty over our own health, which again, is not a matter of an individual, "I can heal myself, I can do it all myself," but it is about unique relationships.

Melanie: We put things into categories, and there's us and the other, and we like to ascribe a totality of truth to these black and white statements. So, I think there's something-- another reason I don't like having these really intense dietary philosophies that we're trying to push on people is that I find it to be very ego based. Saying that, "Because this works for me, it necessarily works for everybody," I just find that to be really arrogant. So, what is the difference? Or how do you to find the line between knowing something that works for you, and not imposing it on others versus knowing it works for you and almost being selfish in a way because it works for you? Basically, I really struggle with how we escape the ego. How does the ego come into play with all of this like others and ourselves, and knowing what's right and truth? That's a big question.

Charles: I don't usually use that particular lens of what's coming from ego and what isn't. It can be useful sometimes. But really, if it's a matter of another person-- now, I'm not I'm really a practitioner, but sometimes, someone will have a health problem and I find that when I tune into them, and pretend, and the pretense becomes true that I can know something of what it is like to be them. Then sometimes I just get this intuitive hit that, "Oh, you need to eat red meat, or drink [unintelligible 00:10:26] tea," or something like that. That is not necessarily based on any of my received knowledge, but it is a truth of the moment in that relationship. So, I guess this tuning into another person, to do that, for real, you have to let go of your ideas about the other person. Your judgments about them, and therefore about yourself. And so, there's like a letting go in that process.

Same thing, we can be talking about food or diet or something like that. But it could also be, "What is true for this person right now?" If we are maybe in an advising relationship, or just a friend who's encountering some kind of challenge, we have all of these teachings and principles and cliches and standardized advice, standardized understandings of human nature and what to do, say, if you are in an abusive relationship. But every single relationship is unique, every moment is unique. And what may be sound advice in one situation may not be exactly right in another situation. Say you your friend is in an abusive relationship, maybe 95% of the time, the right advice is, "You've got to get out of there. You've got to stand up to him. You've got to take them to court. You have to get a restraining order. You have to do X, Y, and Z." But if you ignore the particulars of the situation, what it's like to be her, what the family situation is, what the grandparents, the children, etc., if you ignore all of that, then you're speaking from dogma, and not in the immediate truth of that moment in that relationship.

So, the same goes for any kind of health practice too. One of the things I've taken up is cold water immersion, I'm sure you and many people on your show are well aware of this, and I've got lots of reasons why I think that it is good for you to do that. But I could also build a case why it's bad to do that. I know practitioners who think it's terrible. And in Chinese medicine, it might be questionable to tell that that amount of cold deep into the body. I know an alternative practitioner, a chiropractor who I highly respect, who says it'll prematurely age you, don't do it. So, who am I going to believe here? Maybe both are right for some people, maybe there's some deeper understanding that says, it's good for X, Y, and Z people and not good for A, B, and C people. Even in my day to day, I don't do it every day. I just got over a little bit of COVID, and when I'm kind of in a fever state, I'm like, "No way," because then I'm fighting my body. I can dress it up in because, because, because and that's why I don't do it but that isn't the reason. The reason is that I tuned into my body and preemptively put myself in that cold water tub and feel it in advance. It's like anticipating eating that cookie and how am I going to feel? As I develop sensitivity over time, then I have an unerring guide in my choices, whether it's regarding health or something else, not that I always listen to that guy.

Melanie: So, I've had Wim Hof on the show. I'm a huge fan of cold exposure. Actually, haven't done the water version, I do cryotherapy. But it's really interesting because I will have conversations with people about it a lot. I can think of two recent conversations I had. And this is something you talk about a lot like the role of science versus religion and spirituality, but there's not as many "scientific studies" for cold yet as there is for something like heat exposure, sauna. I'll have conversations with people, and they'll say like, "Well, there's not really any scientific literature," and really all I can say is "Yes, but I know how it makes me feel," which does feel very intuitive. 

I'm really fascinated you were talking about how the yoga of eating really manifests in your life and you don't crave these foods that probably would not make you feel well. So, I've been following a wholefoods Diet for about a decade, probably longer. I don't have any problems really with avoiding the foods that I don't think will work for me, like the processed foods, the cake, the birthday cake you said. However, I know that if I were to have it, it would taste fantastic and on the few experiences when I've tried this, it did. It's confusing to me, because I feel like my body should at this point be super intuitive. But I know that there are things I could enjoy that would feel really good, and I don't think they would bring goodness to my life. So, what's happening there?

Charles: Well, how about a hit of crack? Would that make you feel good?

Melanie: Yeah, probably.

Charles: Yeah, probably. Especially if you only pay attention to the immediate feeling. Same thing with that slice of birthday cake. Although I don't know, maybe it actually is something your body needs for some reason. But for what I'm describing to work, you have to incorporate the full experience of it, not just the pleasure in your mouth that you might feel when you first eat it, but the entire thing which could be experienced if that goes on for hours. If you really tune in, you can feel the presence, the energetic signature of all the food you ate that's still in your system. I can tune in right now and if I really pay attention, I can feel-- I made French toast with this awesome sourdough-- we have this gluten-free sourdough culture that we've been passing around. Anyway, I made French toast out of that for Carrie and me, and I can feel that, feeling in my body still.

It's the example I give, I don't think it's in The Yoga of Eating, but it's in-- I wrote another booklet about diet, or I have an online course on it or something. But imagine you had some kind of neuropathy in your hand so that every time you touch a hot stove, you don't feel anything. So, you touch it, and "Oh, that's cool. Look at that steam coming off my hand." You don't feel the pain right away, but hours and hours later, maybe then you feel some kind of ache going up your arm, but you don't associate that with touching the stove. Then, you're never going to know that touching a hot stove is bad for you. You can only know by using your senses.

So, if you distract your attention, and this is what a lot of people do, they'll eat a terrible meal and when the discomfort lands, could be a few minutes later, they start getting thirsty, they have indigestion, they feel crappy an hour later, two hours later, they're already on to something else. They're watching Netflix, or it could even be a few minutes after they eat the whole box of cookies, they're distracting themselves from the discomfort by promising themselves, they're never going to do it again, and running the story about how they're going to turn over a new leaf. 

So really, for this practice to work, you have to feel the entirety of an experience. Maybe if you ate that cake and maybe it is delicious, initially, because you have never incorporated into that taste, the aftermath of it. It's like the first time I took a plant medicine I work with, iboga. It's bitter and stuff, but I could easily get it down, I could have several mouthfuls of it, of this root bark. But when that resulted in hours and hours of intense nausea and vomiting, the next time I tried it, I could not get that stuff down. It was repulsive because I had now an association. That's how the power of attention can create a body wisdom that can guide pretty much any choice in life.

Melanie: I hadn't thought about this until now, but I think one of the reasons-- because I practice fasting every day and one of the nice things about it is you do feel the lingering effects of the meal because you're not moving on to the next meal. So, you're really feeling what came from that and so it's very telling. Do you think there's a difference though between-- so, the cake example, one could argue that it's not actually food. It's a processed concoction that is maybe a lie. Is it possible that maybe we can't be in intuitive with it because it's a trick?

Charles: I think that our ability is practically unlimited to tune into whether something's good or bad for us. People who do muscle testing and stuff take advantage of this unconscious knowledge. So yeah, a lot of processed food attempts to trick the body by making it seems like a food or seem like something nutritious. But actually, it's MSG instead of the rich amino acid acids that you really need. And if you don't pay close attention, then you can be tricked. But the more you develop awareness, the harder you are to trick.

Melanie: Well, actually, in support of that, the book I was reading last night Mark, how do you say his last name, Schatzker I think? He wrote a book called The Dorito Effect. But his new book is called The End of Craving. And he was talking about experiments they've done on mice that can taste sweet or can't taste sweet. Or on the flip side, mice that taste drinks that are artificially sweetened, but then may or may not have a caloric value to them. And he had a whole section about how the body ultimately reacts to-- it goes beyond our perception of taste into what is actually in the drink. So, mice that can't taste sweet, will actually end up preferring sugar water, even though they can't taste it, but their bodies know there's something in it. Or on the flip side, mice that can taste sweet and if they have multiple, artificially sweetened beverages, they will prefer the one that actually has stuff in it. So, there's definitely an intuition there. Although that's beyond the conscious sensing aspect, that's like a deeper understanding.

Charles: Yeah, but it's really just paying attention to the body's revulsion or welcome or something. So, it's not so different than what the mice are doing.

Melanie: So, question for you. Do you eat in silence?

Charles: No, not usually,

Melanie: You talk about the interesting concept of how we make meals social, but then we're splitting our attention. We're not fully enjoying the food, and we're not fully enjoying the person's company.

Charles: Yeah, I wrote that book in 2002.

Melanie: Have your thoughts changed on that a little bit?

Charles: I'm a little less hardcore than I was.

Melanie: Yeah. Did you ever go through a point where you tried that?

Charles: No, I thought it was like-- I had it as this ideal. It was inhuman actually. And also, is health even the most important thing? No, it isn't. It is a means to everything, but it should not become an end in itself. I've seen this happen and people even a bit in myself, at a time, say, if you are at a loss for a purpose and meaning in your life, then health can become a new purpose and it can confer a sense of identity and meaning. It becomes a goal, which is totally appropriate if you're sick. But once you are reasonably healthy, and you have enough lifeforce to devote to other things, then it's kind of pathological to be obsessing about your health all the time. And we know people like this who are just health nuts, we call them, and why? Is your goal to go to your grave healthy? I mean, our life is for something, and health is a foundation of that. And ironically, when people really get obsessed with health, usually they end up not even being that healthy. There's always one thing after another after another that they meet with yet more and more elaborate and extreme practices. But they are not necessarily any healthier than the plumber down the street who's eating doughnuts and coffee for breakfast. And yeah, I mean, he's got some complaints too. But as far as his ability to basically enjoy life, not necessarily any worse than some of the health obsessed, who often go from one thing to another to another, each one is the magic key and then realizing how deluded they were, and moving on to the next one and the next one and the next one.

This isn't to say that-- I actually respect very much biohacking and the rejection of our culture's normalization of ill health. Like we are supposed to be vital and vibrant and if you are not vital and vibrant, then at least part of your attention maybe should be on how to recover that birthright. But never let it become an end in and of itself that becomes your new purpose for living. Because once you set it up as your purpose for living, then you'll actually be invested psychologically in imperfect health, in order to justify your existence. Because you need to be healing from something in order to know what to do with your life. And then, when you do find a genuine purpose of service to something beyond yourself, service to life, service to beauty, creativity, art, music, like some passion, something that you want to do in the world, very often, health problems go away when you are focused on creativity and service. And you realize that there's an awful lot more to health than merely the mechanics of the body and what goes in and what goes out.

Melanie: I cannot agree more. That resonates with me so much. My own journey started with-- well, my own journey the way it manifests now with like the shows, and my book and things like that, is I had a slew of health issues, and it became this desperate search to just fix myself and find answers. And that was what started all of this work. But now it's more about, I'm so curious, and so I love learning all of these different perspectives and things that might help people and just help giving people exposure to a vast array of opinions and information so they can find what works for them. So, now it's more about like curiosity and spreading information rather than finding the solution. That was actually a really dark place to exist in. And I remember thinking, "I can't wait till the day that I never think about health again." [laughs] Yeah.

Actually, that ties into a larger topic which we've danced around a bit and touched on, but the concept of open mindedness. I'm so happy to hear you write about this in a lot of your books. Well, open mindedness and defensiveness. And one of my biggest epiphanies of recent times, at least for me, the concept of feeling defensive, whenever that happens to me, I think, "What am I scared of here? Or what am I--?" Well, I know you're saying you don't really look at things through the terms of ego, but I'll think like, "What is my ego hurt by?" or "What in me is having this response?" And I found it to be such a helpful practice, especially being really immersed in social media and having a Facebook community and all of that.

So, what are your thoughts on open mindedness, defensiveness, how that is manifesting in today's culture? And if you're open minded though, do you have to be open minded to people who are not open minded? What are your thoughts on this whole topic?

Charles: Pretty much everybody thinks that they're open minded.

Melanie: Really?

Charles: Yeah, it's like Garrison Keillor, like the town where everybody's children are above average.

Melanie: Yeah,

Charles: So, if you weren't open minded, would you even know it?

Melanie: I'm thinking. Wow, yeah.

Melanie: So, here's one thing that is helpful to me sometimes. Engaging people who vehemently disagree with my opinions. A belief is not some isolated, intellectual construct that is independent of one's body, one's relationships, one's life, one's spiritual state of being, but it is part of a holistic state of being, which means that people do not change their beliefs unless a deeper change is also happening to them.

Same is true of diet, actually. Diet is also part of the state of being. And that's why you see if somebody, say, leaves a toxic relationship, all of a sudden, their diet might completely change. Because now, they're no longer attracted to the foods that were helping them cope with and maintain that relationship. So, beliefs are the same. A certain set of beliefs will help you cope with-- say you have a job that doesn't resonate with you, that you are having to force yourself to get up and go to work, that you have ethical contradictions about and it's just like, you just don't resonate with it. You might develop some beliefs that validate and justify that job. And when the job changes, then those beliefs are no longer necessary or relevant.

Today, it's not random. Say if we talk about various COVID controversies, it's not random who is compliant and who is rebellious, let's say, avoiding trigger words here. The compliance generally goes along with a certain position in society with a certain kind of education. It's kind of part of a whole personality. And that's why it's very hard to change anyone's mind by confronting them with evidence and logic to the contrary. They will resist it because it's not time for their beliefs to change. Because it is in resonance with everything else about them. It's a state of being, and you're not going to get very far by assaulting it, assaulting that belief. In fact, they will take it as an assault on them.

And in a sense, it is. If a belief is part of a whole identity, and part of their sense of belonging, and that's another thing. Opinions are one of the ways that we establish in group membership in society. We signal the correct virtues. We conform to the appropriate rituals and taboos. We voice acceptable opinions. And then, we are accepted as a worthy, valid, legitimate member of society. It has nothing to do with logic. People can believe the most ridiculous, insane things, if that's what's required to fit in. And they then become unconscious of the true motivation, which is fitting in, and have every indication of sincerity and they themselves believe that they believe what they believe.

But when social conditions change, and the belief that had ensured you would be the popular kid now is going to make you into the weird kid, oh boy, then any little argument or persuasion, or piece of evidence will change your mind and you will think that you are open minded, because, "Look, I encountered new evidence, and I changed my mind," unaware that the real reason you changed your mind was to fit in. And this sounds like a pretty cynical view of human nature, but I think if we all understand it, then we become conscious of these hidden motivators of our beliefs. Then, we become less vulnerable to manipulation. And that's really important today, because in the last couple of years, we've seen what ridiculous things society, the public, is willing to do when they are manipulated.

Melanie: I think one of the things that really stuck with me that I learned, and again, it was a scientific example, but it really, really made me realize how much I really don't know anything. It's looking at the split-brain patient studies where people's hemispheres of their brains don't connect. And so, the language part of their brain doesn't connect with what they're seeing. I'm bastardizing what these experiments were, but basically, they'll show people things, and only show it to one side of the brain, and then the language side of the brain will just make up stories about what they saw. And once I read that, I was like, "Okay, I literally know nothing." Literally, my brain could just be making up a story and I just have no idea, which has been really freeing, because I'm not really wedded to-- what are your thoughts on-- because you're talking about how hard it is to change people's minds? I really don't mind, I don't really care what people think. I don't really want to change people's minds. I don't know if that's because maybe I'm too exhausted at the thought of it or if I really just don't care,

Charles: There's a useful function in changing people's minds. When they are ready to change, then they often need some kind of external nudge to do so. So, yeah, in personal relationships, you might encounter this too, if somebody is finally ready to see something they had not been ready to see. That happens, it's not useless. But the salvation of our planet in our society, will not be that somebody finally is so eloquent and persuasive, and all of the rational people out there will admit the error of their ways and accept a new belief. That's not how it's going to happen.

Melanie: Actually, that ties into a really big question. I mean, to say the concept of the salvation of the planet assumes that something's wrong. What was the initial-- or what is the purpose of humanity? And what would salvation look like? I know you have a story of separation and interbeing, is that it?

Charles: My own small opinion is that the purpose of humanity is to participate in the unfolding of life and beauty in the cosmos, and to devote our gifts toward that unfolding. To serve life and beauty on Earth, basically, that's what our purpose is. Yeah, it's something that we are awakening to as a civilization, where for a long time, we understood our purpose to dominate and conquer nature. But that is no longer appealing to most of us. We want to do something else with our lives.

But we still live in systems that encode the old purpose, which is one reason why many of us are so uncomfortable in the systems and don't even really want to get ahead in the system. Maybe it would be convenient to have lots of money and status, but something in us just is halfhearted about doing what's required to be a success. So, we try to subsist in the margins, and build a new society that embodies the values of life and beauty.

Melanie: Now, I really wish I'd read The Ascent of Humanity, because maybe you talk about this more at length in that book. Have certain cultures opted out of this system that is in conflict to the purpose of humanity that you just spoke about? Like indigenous cultures, Native Americans?

Charles: That's a tricky question. All of the ills of modern society are visible in some rudimentary form at least, in traditional-hunter gatherer societies, primitive societies. And they were at least in embryonic form in those societies, and then blossomed into human nature when conditions were right, when technology and agriculture, domestication, and so forth were developed. So, I can't say that the delusions of modernity all of a sudden appeared ex nihilo in the West. But we can definitely say that many other societies were not nearly so intoxicated with the mythology, with the story of separation, and lived in much more awareness of their interconnection, of their interbeing with the rest of life and the universe and understood themselves as part of a much bigger intelligence, and a much bigger purpose, and so forth.

So, I think that we therefore can learn a lot from indigenous cultures from also the wisdom lineages of our own cultures where this knowledge was preserved. Like the seeds of the future of a more beautiful world exist in the past and have been carried into the present through various means, including the indigenous that did not fully succumb to modernity, and possess some of the knowledge of how to be human that has been lost.

Melanie: What's really ironic about it is just like if I see it in my head as this visual, I see those cultures that either-- Well, I guess they didn't consciously opt out, they just didn't join modernity.

Charles: It's really hard to generalize. The foundation of modernity is agriculture, and agriculture started pretty much everywhere on Earth where it could start. Where there were easily domesticable plants and animals. Started independently in more than one place. It wasn't like it started in one place and then spread everywhere else. Started independently in India, China, the Middle East, North America, South America. I think Sub-Saharan Africa as well. And everywhere, once it got started, then it expanded and drew more and more hunter-gatherers into their empires. But the fact that it started independently in many places, to me, bespeaks a kind of inevitability. Like it was a stage that humanity was destined to go through and we have narrated that as an ascent. That's why I titled the book The Ascent of Humanity. It's kind of ironic though but we narrate that as progress as improvement, and believed that our continued improvement, our destiny would be to bring all of reality under control, to domesticate everything to impose order on to chaos, to conquer the wild, even in the body. So, this informs a lot of what modern medicine tries to do, where it sees an advance as a greater imposition of control onto the microlevel, onto the molecular level, the genetic level. If we can control body processes with precision, then we will have perfect health. So, it's the same basic mindset that started with agriculture.

And as I said before, it's kind of reached its limit. Therefore, we face a, a revolution, a turning of the age, or at least the possibility of one, where we look to another destiny and another arc of progress that's no longer about more and more control, but instead is about recognizing and trusting the intelligence in the body, in all things, and seeking to ally ourselves with that intelligence, with a natural tendency toward order, organization, complexity, and hold us that these things are not-- we don't have to impose those on to chaos through human intelligence but they're already there waiting for our alliance to fully manifest. That's the shift of perception. And boy, that's getting very abstract. I hope it's not too abstract for a biohacking.

Melanie: No, I am loving this. And it's so interesting. I was just thinking about how because you're talking about how that agricultural system appeared essentially all these different places and so there must have been like it was going to happen. But the same book I mentioned earlier, The End of Craving that I was reading last night, he also talked about how the human adaptation to have lactase gene for dairy appeared in four completely different civilizations across the world and it wasn't like just one place. So, basically, it ties into this idea of what you just said, I'm not articulating it well.

But so, question, So, this new story that we would be going into, which sounds like it's-- I don't know if it's a reversion to the past, but it's the way things were with a new understanding of it. So, can we have that in an agricultural-based society?

Charles: Yeah, it doesn't require that we abandon all of technology, which would mean abandoning-- I mean, how far back do you want to go? Should we stop using fire? Should we stop using stone tools? I think that the development of technology, the cumulative development of technology was, as I said, inevitable and has a proper application. Like, what would technology look like if we really were devoted to life and beauty?

I was recently talking to Zack Bush.

Melanie: Oh, I've had him on the show.

Charles: Yeah, he's amazing. And we were talking about 5G. He's fully cognizant of the dangers and harms of cell tower radiation. But he said, "Someday, we're going to use that infrastructure to beam healing frequencies onto the public." Because there are people who are using, I don't know, what's that? Pulsed electromagnetic--

Melanie: EMF?

Charles: Yeah, there are people who are investigating how to use these frequencies for healing. If we turned our attention to that, who knows? Just think what would happen if we redirected all of the scientific brilliance that today is going toward weapons development and drug development, on to what we call now alternative technologies, like toward the technologies of soil regeneration, ecosystem restoration, human health. Right now, only a tiny, tiny fraction of our scientific talent goes towards anything good. What would happen if that became our new, collective mission? To make the world as beautiful as possible, and human beings as healthy as possible with technology. What if we use the technologies that are today used for cellphone towers, and we turn those toward bodily and ecological healing? Who knows what we would come up with? It's not so much a matter of technology being good or bad. It's the intention behind it, the motivation from which it is developed. And when that changes, then everything changes very quickly.

Melanie: So, what is driving the collective intention and motivation? Because now, I keep talking about how I'm seeing things in my head, but it feels like there's an energy flowing a certain way and it's directing how these things manifest in the world. So, how technology is being used, how we treat food, how we exist and relationship to each other in society. And it can go one way, which is like control and not beauty, reductionism, fragmentation, or it can go this other pathway like you just spoke of. So, that perception or that change that energy, what's driving that? Is one version of it more real? Or is it really just a matter of collectively what people are wanting to do? I'm just confused about what's driving it? What would cause this change and why? I know you do have The Coronation, which might tie into that.

Charles: Ultimately, yeah, this is actually one of the things I write about in The Coronation. Ultimately, it comes down to a choice. When we ask what's driving it, with the idea that if we know what's driving it, we'll be able to change it, even that way of thinking of what's driving it, it's kind of Newtonian. It taps into this force-based causality where if something happens, it's because something is driving it. And if we could only dissect the machine down to its smallest reductionistic parts, then we'd be able to re-engineer it. There's a lot of smart kind of systems guys out there, who come up with the hack to change the system and to change society, making it a technical matter, but I think that's actually secondary. It's not that we don't need to change our systems, but they will only change when our consciousness is ready to change, when we come to the point of making a different choice.

This is also true on the personal level. If I say, "You're addicted to cake. You're eating cake every day," and you say, "Charles, I really want to stop eating cake. What's driving my cake eating?", we might come up with some interesting things, we might talk about your childhood trauma, your dissociative behavior, your loneliness that you're meeting with sweets. There might be all kinds of things. But at some point, if you're going to change, you make a choice to change. The conditions of the choice are important, but they never fully dictate the choice that you make. The universe is not deterministic, I guess, is what I really want to say here.

And this is something that changed a bit in my thinking over the years. Where I used to think that the collapse of our current system would save us from ourselves and we'd have to change, that the society built on separation would fall apart. And we would then embark on reunion. But now, I think it could get worse and worse and worse and worse until forever, until we live on a completely dead planet, subsisting off precision fermentation factories and animal cell cultures and hydroponics. Vegetables grown in labs, in bubble cities to protect us from a toxic atmosphere, etc., etc., plugged into the metaverse. What's to stop that future from happening? We've moved towards it step by step for thousands of years. We can't rely on its failure to save us. And is that even metaphysically valid? Are we victims of the world? We have choice here. I guess the choice then starts in our own lives. What way am I ready to be more in service to life, in my life?

Melanie: So, this concept of choice is really perplexing and fascinating. And it's ironic, because I'm going to use a scientific example for it, which is kind of the antithesis of the whole concept. I don't remember which book it was in, it might have been a few different ones, but I was gathering up-- you would drop in all of these different examples of, I guess, randomness in the world. So, things like how photons can act randomly or how-- I mean, you said the speed of light even changed at one point?

Charles: Oh, yeah.

Melanie: Now, you blew my mind. Or something like Xylitol randomly forming different crystallization.

Charles: Yes, it's Rupert Sheldrake stuff. In one of his books, it's called Science Set Free in the US and in the UK, it was called The Science Delusion. But he gave all these examples of the supposedly constants of physics actually not being constant. And he's the one who articulated the theory of morphogenesis which is a different causal principle than Newtonian force-based causality. Morphogenesis says that any change that happens anywhere generates a field of change that allows the same change to happen more easily elsewhere. So, the Xylitol example was they were trying to make it crystallized so they could use it as a food additive in dry foods, and they couldn't get it to crystallize anywhere in food labs all over the world. And they tried everything, different temperatures, and pressures, and catalysts, and whatever. But finally, they were successfully able to do it in one lab in New Zealand. And as soon as they were successful, labs started to be able to do it all over the place using almost any method. It could almost not stop it from happening. It was as if it learned how to do it. Or if the fact that it was done successfully, in one place, shifted reality so that now, it just does that.

And so, you can extend this causal principle to our personal choices. Every time that you do something brave, or compassionate, or kind, or generous, you generate a field of courage, compassion, kindness, or generosity. And other people across the world start making a similar choice because what you've done has declared what human nature is, it's another way to look at it. You've declared what human nature is through your own example. It is irrational to hope for a better world, if the human nature that you demonstrate is incompatible with that better world. And that's where despair comes from. It comes from a disconnect between the choices you're making in the world you want to see. So, changing your own choices, it exerts a power beyond the comprehension of the modern mind through the causal principle of morphogenesis.

Melanie: That helps explain the other perspective I was trying to grasp in comparison to earlier talking about this Newtonian force driving everything. Instead, this idea of things can just happen, and they can extend from that energetically. Does this relate also to trust? Like trusting other people and being trustworthy ourselves?

Charles: Yeah, when we trust other people, and it's authentic and not like you actually don't trust them, but you're going to deceive yourself into thinking that you do trust them and pretend like you trust, that's actually quite a problem and has gotten society into a lot of trouble by trusting authorities that we actually don't trust and shouldn't trust. So, on a personal level, when you actually take the risk to trust somebody, you are holding them in a story of, "You are trustworthy," and establishing a relationship of trust with the universe. It is not a guarantee that the other person will rise to the level of your trust, but it is at least an invitation for them to rise to the level of your trust. Whereas if you are untrusting, and hostile, and wary, then you don't create an invitation for anything else. If you're keeping your distance, no one can get close. If you don't give someone the chance, if you don't make yourself vulnerable, then you'll never know that somebody is kind or as trustworthy.

So yeah, trust-- I mean it's really though-- trust actually cannot happen through effort. It's really about becoming honest with ourselves. Who do we actually trust, and who do we not trust? And then, living that even when history and trauma might make it really scary. To act on your actual trust of a person and then to also to acknowledge when you don't trust somebody. Some people, sometimes it's easy. There are people occasionally who I run into that I just instantly trust with every fiber of my being, no question whatsoever. And there are some who even if they give every appearance of being trustworthy, I just don't trust them.

Melanie: Same. Yeah.

Charles: Yeah, and then there are those like, "Uh, I'm not sure," and maybe they earn my trust over time. This is again similar to the yoga of eating, the body knows. And if we're willing to receive that knowledge, just to be honest with ourselves, then we have a powerful guide to navigate life.

Melanie: Well, also related to this, and you gave this example again in one of your essays or books. And it really had me thinking, and it still has me thinking, and I'm not sure how I feel or what I think about it, but you're positing how-- like having a security system, for example, is reinforcing a narrative of not trusting or not being safe. And for me, for example, I didn't have a security system historically. And then, I got broken into. Then, I was like, "I'm all about the security systems." So now I'm like, I don't know, how do I feel about security system? So, that example, how would one most live in a narrative of trust and feeling safe? Can you do that and still have a security system?

Charles: Yeah, it's the same. Are you getting the security system because there's actual danger and how much of it? What are you actually scared of and is the security system actually, what's going to keep you safe or is it just making you feel better? It's like wearing a mask during COVID. I hope it's okay for me to bring up a controversial topic,

Melanie: I'm all about the controversy, go for it.

Charles: It make people feel safer. It was like this magic talisman, this ceremonial headgear that you put on your head, put over your face, and it protects you from an evil spirit. Scientifically, it is quite questionable whether it does any good at all. But that's not the point of the mask. It's a form of medical theater and that reassures everybody that we're doing something about it. Very similar to some of these home security systems where it might stop some random teenagers, but professional thieves, I think, probably can eat those things for lunch. So, I don't have like a generalizable principle of whether you, as a standardized person should have a security system or not. I would just offer the same guidance as I do for all these other things. Be honest with yourself about why you're getting it. 

Melanie: But what's really interesting, thinking about it more, I did get it after being broken into. I did feel safe from it. What's interesting is probably doesn't even have to be turned on. It just has to look like it's there. So, it really is more of a-- because you just mentioned the masks and rituals and all of that. And I think what's so interesting about the whole mask thing is it shouldn't be something controversial, in my opinion, to talk about it either is or is not effective, and we can study that and learn from that. It just became such a, like you said, like a religious thing, almost. And I was fascinated in your essays talking about modern ritual and festivals. Could you talk a little bit about that, like how we're seeing this idea of the festival and the rituals manifest today in society?

Charles: Yeah, we'd like to think that we've transcended superstition and ritual. Rituals are this kind of leftover from a previous age that don't really mean anything. They're not real. Like the ritual of graduation or religious rituals. But now, we do things for objective scientific reasons, not superstitious ones. But if you look at our behavior in the time of COVID, boy, sure looks an awful lot like what we call primitive rituals. In one of my essays, I re-narrated what's going on. I wrote this a year and a half ago, or a year ago. And I said, imagine a society where all of a sudden, a religious hysteria descends, and the priests start telling people that there's an invisible spirit that can possess them, and make them unclean, and make them sick or even kill them. And any unclean person can transmit that spirit to somebody else and the spirit will possess the next person. And the only way to tell if you've been possessed is to do a body ritual, where a magic wand is moistened with your body fluids and sent to a temple where a divination practice is performed, that reveals whether you're possessed or not. And if you are possessed, then you have to stay in isolation, lest the unclean spirit jumped to somebody else. And to guard against possession, you have to perform ritual ablutions like hand washings and don ceremonial headgear. And the priests put these markings on the ground and make sure that everybody stood on those marking and didn't get any closer to each other than that.

This sounds pretty superstitious, doesn't it? But it maps directly onto the magic wand is the PCR test swab. The temple that it gets sent to is the testing center. The divination procedure is the PCR test. It all makes sense to us for scientific reasons, but it's close conformity to other rituals. Really, it kind of makes me suspect that there's a lot more going on here than science, and that we are in the midst of or have recently emerged from at this point, everything's just hysteria that only ends-- I mean, this is another part of it. Then, the priests develop a special potion that will protect you from possession forever, when it's introduced into your body through a blood ceremony, penetrating your skin and injecting the potion into your blood. I mean, that's pretty ritualistic too, and then you're magically protected. Yeah, I wrote about this, especially in the context of the idea that anyone who refuses these rituals and taboos becomes illegitimate as a member of society, and therefore is offering themselves as a scapegoat to be blamed. We saw this starting to happen to where the anti-maskers, as they were called the antivaxxers. These are pejorative terms were blamed for the continuation of the crisis.

This was an element of-- and people were afraid to speak up. This is why I call this mob morality, and very similar to Mattias Desmet ideas of mass formation, where even if you disagree with the prevailing rituals and taboos, you dare not say anything. You do not break ranks, because if you do, then you immediately get identified as a potential scapegoat. You get ostracized. You get, in our time, censored, canceled, fired, locked down. You can't go to public events. A lot of us have experienced this, ostracism from all kinds of things, informal and formal. Like, we couldn't go to the Nutcracker Suite. We couldn't go to the concerts. We couldn't go to the library. We couldn't do all kinds of things.

Anyway, so if you speak out, then it's like this basic human instinct to identify who's on the end, who's on the outs, who is the weird kid, who's the popular kid, who has cooties, who is clean, who you should distance yourself from. This is the same dynamic as in witch hunts and pogroms where if you were associated with a witch or even failed to enthusiastically participate in the witch burning, then you were suspect too. So, people were, and still are, afraid to speak their mind, which creates an illusion of unanimity. Especially in the medical profession, where privately, there's a lot of doctors and nurses who have severe reservations, and are seeing a lot of harm. But they're afraid to speak out because they're going to lose their license or just be ostracized from their profession, so they don't speak out. And because nobody is speaking out, it creates an illusion of unanimity. "Gosh, no one else is speaking out. Maybe I'm the only one seeing this. Because if adverse events and vaccine harm were rampant, that everybody would be talking about it, but they're not. So, maybe I'm just seeing some anomalies here." And so, they keep silent, and contribute to the illusion. And that's why I spoke out, to do my part anyway in breaking the silence and breaking the illusion of normalcy. So, yeah, there is a link between that and religion and ritual.

Melanie: It's interesting that you could have a situation with an audience listening to a speaker saying something and so the speaker is the only person talking. And in that situation, I don't think you would assume everybody agrees with the speaker. And yet, when it appears in real life, like you just spoke about, where there's only a few actual voices saying things and then everybody else is just-- if they're silent, we do magically assume, everybody is agreeing. And I guess that's just because we're not objecting compared to an audience situation?

Charles: Yeah, a speaker speaking to an audience is very different than a mob forming. Although it could turn into a mob but usually, for a mob to form, there have to be some ringleaders egging everybody on and saying, "Burn the witch," or "Kill the Jews," or whatever. "Lynch that guy." And then, there'll be a portion of people who enthusiastically go along with that, loudly and enthusiastically concur. And then, there'll be a third class of people who pretty much just assume that if everybody's doing it, it must be right. And so, they'll go along with it too. "Maybe she really was with the devil and so we need to burn her." They just basically trust the crowd. Then, there's a fourth category who have doubts. They're like "Gosh, I don't think she's a witch. I don't really believe in witches. But I don't know, everybody can't be wrong. And maybe, I don't know, I'm not really so sure. And we don't want witchcraft to run rampant. And besides, even if I have reservations, it's not safe to speak out. So, I better pretend to go along so they don't accuse me of being a witch next." So, there's like that kind of fourth class.

And then, there's the fifth class who actually speak out, and often ended up getting lynched literally or figuratively. In the case of the last couple of years, it's mostly been figuratively. It happened to me, I got deplatformed and canceled from from all kinds of things. And people wrote to events that I was on the faculty of and said, " If Charles Eisenstein is going to be on there, I'm withdrawing because I can't be associated with him." That's like a social media version of cancellation, is the modern version of the more brutal physical removal from society.

Anyway, for this to happen, the first class, the ringleaders, and the enthusiastic participants, could be a tiny minority. But because the third and the fourth group, go along with them, it looks like an overwhelming majority. And in the case of COVID stuff, it was actually, I think, a majority, at least initially. Most of those people basically trusted the ringleaders, i.e., the health authorities at the beginning. Now, that's no longer the case. Even if people profess to trust the science and trust Fauci, and so forth, how many people are actually vaccinating their 2-year-olds? Very few. How many people are getting their fourth boosters? They say they believe but people don't believe anymore. This thing's over.

Melanie: I had an experience the other day, and I watched myself have this experience. And I was so fascinated by how I interacted with the world, which was that I come back to my apartment, and the situation is-- it's like streets around the apartment. So, it's not like roads. That's not making sense. It's very casual. There's parking on both sides, and you could really technically park either direction and it wouldn't really-- it goes against the loss of traffic, but it wouldn't be "a big deal." I came back to my apartment and all of the cars on parallel parking were parked the wrong direction and there's one spot left. I knew they're all parked the wrong direction. And I was like, "Do I park the right direction, or do I park the wrong direction?" And I parked the wrong direction because they all were going that way. And I was like, this is so fascinating just how much we will go with the flow of other people. And it was such a silly thing.

Charles: It probably looked like a conspiracy, like everybody had gotten together. But sometimes things just happen, and people, they sense into what you're supposed to do. The media does this all the time. I do think that that the intelligence agencies have operatives implanted in the media. But even if they didn't, the media, just like the fourth-grade class that figures out who's the weird kid, and what to say and what's going to be popular and what isn't and what clothes to wear, the media does that with their news reporting. They know what opinions are going to get them promoted, and what are going to get them in trouble, and they just kind of self-organize around ideologies and generate propaganda. Just like everybody parking on the wrong side of the street, no one even has to tell allow them to do it. They just have this instinct that I spoke of before, the instinct of getting on the right side of the mob.

And that really complicates things when we ask, "Okay, how can we stop this from happening again?" The initial impulse would be to find the ringleaders and round them up and send them to prison. Like, prosecute the corrupt officials and pharma executives who distorted the science and made fake studies and manipulated the data and gave bad advice. Let's get rid of those people, right? Problem solved. But that doesn't address the deeper problem of how we so easily acquiesce to it and are so vulnerable to these mob dynamics. If we don't heal on that level, then whether it's the next pandemic or some other threat to society, threat to the world, we're going to fall right back into lockstep. And it's always the same. Present the public with a threat that requires a sacrifice of civil liberties and freedoms and also has an internal enemy that mirrors the external, the internal enemy being the traitors, the heretics, so we have to cleanse society of them, crack down on them. It's always the same pattern, and that's what I'm most interested in changing beyond just pandemic policy.

Melanie: The requirement for that change, is that what we were talking earlier, where it's just everybody chooses a different way?

Charles: It does actually get back to what we were talking about earlier, like the trust in the wisdom of the body, the habits of, "Who do I trust, and who don't I trust? And why? Do I actually trust the person that I'm giving my trust too?" And it's a reclamation of that kind of sovereignty, actually, which is not only an individual function, also it's sovereignty in relationship to people we trust, like a community. But we've kind of abdicated that and handed it over to authorities who we don't know and should not trust and don't actually trust. And that's why I titled the book, The Coronation, which is an initiation into sovereignty. I think that is the opportunity before us right now.

Melanie: This is just a very practical question. It's something I've been struggling with a lot, and I'm really curious of your thoughts on it. I have some Facebook groups, around 15,000 members. The only rules we really have in the group are to "be open minded," although now I'm thinking about how everybody thinks they're open minded, and be kind. My audience for this show, and just in general, is just so kind and empathetic and open minded and really wonderful. But there have been some instances in the group where people are not open minded, not open to whatever guests I brought on and then not open to phrasing things as their opinion. And I've struggled so, so, hard with-- because it's been very rare the few times that it's happened, but I've struggled with, am I censoring if I remove their posts, because they're not following this rule of phrasing things as their opinion, they're being open minded, or if they're saying something that doesn't come off as kind? Is that the one rule I can have or should everything just go?

Charles: Well, you can do whatever you want, Melanie.

Melanie: This is true. What do you think I should do though?

Charles: We run an online community with several thousand members. And after some evolution, what we came to is the whole community, the founding principle is reverence, to interact with the knowledge that the person you're speaking to is a divine being. And at some point, we just made some rules, and said, "Hey, if you call people names, if you make personal accusations, if--" we made a list of rules, and said, "You're just going to be removed." And yeah, you're right. It isn't democratic, that this the space we're creating. Some people left but a lot of people were so grateful to have an environment that insists on decent behavior.

Melanie: Okay. That seems very helpful. I don't know why I struggle with this so much. Well, this has been absolutely amazing. I literally have been excited about this potential conversation ever since I read, like I said, The Yoga of Eating forever ago. And then, thank you for letting me narrate that book, and thank you for coming on and all the work that you're doing. We'll put links in the show notes to all of the books. Very excited for you. You're launching The Coronation on July 28th. Is that correct?

Charles: Yeah, it's already available now but yeah.

Melanie: So, you've had the essays published, but it is available now?

Charles: Yeah. Yeah, they somehow got out early. But I'm having a launch event with Zach Bush. Oh, gosh, I've got to announce that, damn. Yeah, I'm having a launch event with him on the 28th, which is really soon.

Melanie: Oh, exciting, like a social media thing? Yeah, we're going to be on his Instagram Live.

Melanie: I will have to check that out, and I'll share it with my audience as well. Do you have any other--? I know you're just-- The Coronation is the collection of essays-- Oh, which by the way, I just want to say something I really like about it is how you say what you were thinking for each essay and then it's kind of like following the evolution of your thoughts surrounding the pandemic. It's very enlightening and cool really.

Charles: Yeah, I had an [unintelligible 01:16:05] each essay and prologue and epilogue.

Melanie: Yeah. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Do you have any other books in the work? Do you have like a million books in the works all the time?

Charles: I don't know. I'm not sure if I want to write more books. Yeah, I don't know. As soon as I feel the limitations of the kind of writing I've been doing, yeah, I might take a little time off and evaluate what I want to do with the rest of my life.

Melanie: Awesome. Well, I will be eagerly anticipating and watching where that journey goes. And thank you again, because you've helped so many people, which is perfect. The last question I ask every single guest on this show, and it's because I realize more and more each day how important mindset is. So, what is something that you're grateful for?

Charles: I have four children, four sons, and the youngest now is nine. So, it's kind of my last go at it. And I feel really grateful that I know now how precious each of these moments is.

Melanie: With the youngest?

Charles: Yeah, each moment of childhood, because they grow up and they're not children anymore. They are never eight again, they're never nine again. It's just such a miracle to witness the development of a human being like that. So, I'm really grateful I got to do that.

Melanie: I love that. That's amazing. Well, thank you so much, Charles. This has been so incredible. Hopefully, we can talk again in the future and just thank you for all that you're doing.

Charles: Yeah. Thank you, Melanie. Bye.

Melanie: Bye.

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