The last thing I had to do with Eisenstein (already very little) was to leave the "family retreat" he hosted in upstate NY for "Lion's Gate" three summers ago. Hard psychedelics were EVERYWHERE. I took my teenage daughter, trusting that the explicit wording throughout the signup disclaimers that drugs would not be tolerated was true. Not. A farce. We left less than 24 hours after arriving. I vividly recall the guy who bent my ear for too long, and shared his delightful relief with me. "Man I love these things. It's like taking a big psychic dump." And my daughter was offered shrooms by an unknown man. Really sad. I lost any shred of respect I had for Eisenstein, and it's sadder still to see the state of spiritual lost causes like him these days.
Wow! You really went after Charles in so many ways. There are more conspiracy theories in your series of articles than anything said by Eisenstein : for instance here’s a conclusion and opinion presented as fact : RFKj is a liar and sex addict (RFK, Jr.) who now seeks to bring down the Democrats and help elect a rapist, serial abuser, Putin-ally and convicted felon to the White House” Then you liken Charles to a cult leader , accuse him of conspirituality another grand “conspiracy theory” in itself.
Thanks for addressing this. I conducted ethnographic research on this type of turn during the pandemic, digging into its contexts and felt experience. I think I uncovered some hidden dynamics, which I’m more motivated to publish on after the election. I was so sorry to see how far it went, and Eisenstein’s trajectory.
“What about all those who go unvaccinated due to his comparisons of vaccines and mandates to “the Holocaust,” and then become sick? What about his support for a liar and sex addict (RFK, Jr.) who now seeks to bring down the Democrats and help elect a rapist, serial abuser, Putin-ally and convicted felon to the White House?”
This is gold. It perfectly expresses the core belief system of the folks (Dillinger, Pinchbeck, Conspirituality bros) who have taken to the quill to denounce their former alignment with Charles. This quote beautifully encapsulates a faith system that maintains:
1. Covid Vaccines were safe and effective.
2. Empire, when run by Dems (good guys), mostly tells the truth.
3. The characterizations of Trump, RFK and others in the media is a usefully accurate reflection of reality.
No one I just cited that is writing these take down pieces has ever met, let alone spoken with, any of the figures in question. Most have met Charles. (He was, to my knowledge, the only profiled person to ever show up and answer his critics on the Conspirituality podcast).
From inside this faith system it is very hard to make sense of what Charles has been trying to do since 2020 and his publication of the Coronation. Making space for the “bad guys” is tantamount to treason in polarized times, like these, that cannot be tolerated.
Charles talks a lot about this impulse to collapse complexity into something simple and causal that we can fix by force. Address Carbon, fix climate. Defeat bad guy, make things good. (YOU would never become the next bad guy, right? Some violence or coercion is justified, after all, in service to good)
These pieces are exhausting at a certain point because they don’t acknowledge that people who do NOT cotton to those three faith tenets have had a pretty rough go of it the last 5 years. I was told I wasn’t going to be allowed to shop for groceries by the president of the US.
For life long liberals, like myself, steeped in the social justice and anti bias incision rhetoric of the times it was hard to reconcile that the people I was closest to, wanted to include everybody else in the discussion, couldn’t make space for people who didn’t abide this faith or who — Heaven forbid — had a complex faith of their own. Talk about betrayal. I finally understood, in my body, what my compliant, mostly affluent, Black Lives Matter sign bearering friends mostly didn’t know… what existential exclusion and othering actually feels like at scale.
Tom Attlee once wrote: “in sensemaking the most sensible reply to any statement or assertion is something like ‘yes, and, there’s more to it than that” That rings true to me, too.
Most of these complaints boil down to stylistic critique. Hubristic, narcissistic, etc. we don’t know these people… so we don’t know their character.
Jem Bendell and Charles are important voices, to my ear, still. The middle path is hard to walk. Peace advocates are pretty universally despised during times of war. But ever more valuable, then, for their service.
Thank you for this piece. It helped bring clarity to something I’ve been feeling and noticing for a while.
Wishing you the best in your work and sensemaking. 🙏
It’s one thing to wake up to Oneness. But we still live in a world of form. We won’t get to embodies Oneness by bypassing humanity’s propensity for duality. We have to go into the heart of it. which you have done beautifully here. Thank you.
Thank you for this. I have been following Eisenstein for a couple of decades, and I cannot wrap my head around the direction he has gone in recent years. I have continued to read him to try to understand, but I am so disappointed in him. I have finally cut ties. This article helped me.
Your article speaks to a fear I've harboured for a while. Eisenstein has been hoisted on his own petard, so to speak. There is a similar argument for protecting AI as a "person" with "rights" that goes something like this: We created Frankenstein, so they must be part of us. In demonizing him/it, we demonize ourselves.
In Jungian psychology, shadow work must start and end with the Self. Collective shadow work cannot be achieved by any one person; rather, it must be addressed by every individual doing *their own work*. Only by that metric will the collective shadow be addressed. Be wary of those who prescribe otherwise.
I was the editor for a book a dozen years ago that included an article by Eisenstein. Other individuals on the project thought that his article was the "strong" article, the one that should be 'obviously included', presumably because the grammar was the least problematic or they liked what he had to say. But I thought the article was oozing with self-righteousness and narcissistic undertones even though the words were supposed to be a rallying cry for caring for our ecology. To me it just seems like he was screaming at people through his 'earth and unity' message, and it made me feel very uncomfortable to be associated with the project. I was not surprised when these psychological qualities became more obvious during COVID and thereafter.
More division only expanded by this article. We need to find ways to come together and this isn't helpful. Much of what is written about Trump (and Kennedy for that matter) is grossly distorted, taken out of context.... for me I took some time to recheck some of the Trump comments and found them to be distorted. I would suggest the same for all of you. I am considered a liberal and find the continual disparaging remarks whether they are about Kamala or the Donald to be a continuation of this energy. Please do all of us a favor & write, teach or act in a manner that honors all points of view!
which comments were taken out of context? Please provide. Even within context, it is apparent this man is unwell and unfit and bound to hurt people. Protecting people from being hurt (family separation, Muslim ban, ridiculous Covid response) is not division, it is a spiritual act. Defending someone who would hurt others while they still have the (now overwhelming) capacity to do so using spiritual language is not spiritual. Especially just ahead of an election that one could swing one way or another.
Eisenstein needs to read up on his recent Ameican history before he starts cutting Trump and the GOP any slack. The GOP has made racism the heart of its political strategy since Richard Nixon, watching George Wallace's success with outright racism, adopted the "Southern Strategy" of using racism to move southern white Democratic voters into the GOP. The strategy worked. Ronald Reagan followed. The first place Reagan gave a public speech after winning the 1980 nomination was Neshoba, Mississippi, the site of the most infamous acts of violence during the civil rights era, the murder of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner. Reagan's speech was about "states rights," the code word that everyone in the south knew was a defense of racism an segregation. Then there was the Willie Horton ad attacking Michael Dukakis during George H.W. Bush's 1988 campaign. Trump stands in a long line of GOP presidential candidates who have put racism at the heart of their campaigns.
Eisenstein might also think about why the GOP's wealthiest donors decided in the early 1970s to set up a whole series of pseudo-think tanks (the Heritage Foundation, the American Enterprise Institute, etc.) to crank out reports justifying the wealthier getting ever wealthy. He might remember that one of Trump's very few legislative accomplishment was a massive tax break for the rich.
And Eisenstein might think about why Leonard Leo spawned the Federalist Society and spent untold millions over the next couple of decades building an organization whose stated purpose was to pack the U.S. Supreme Court with right-wing judges, which he succeeded in doing. Or that this same Leo recently told the Financial Times that he hoped to spend $1 billion this fall in order to "crush liberal dominance."
Thank you for getting people to pay attention to Eisenstein's profound confusion. Electoral politics is a very tough arena. We all appreciate having people like Eisenstein to remind us of the importance of spirituality in living our lives. But as his recent statements show, spiritual insight and commitment may blind you to the harsh realities behind how the GOP has gone about seeking to dominate American politics under Trump's leadership.
Thank you. “Spiritual people” (but aren’t we all spiritual?) may wish to stay out of politics, but if they do join in, they should have their ducks in a row and be educated. I also believe that what we are living through is a time when spirituality and politics actually need to come together. Negotiating that terrain is challenging. I am doing this myself. I trust women and women of color and other marginalized groups more than I do men who live with a lot of unrecognized privilege.
When Charles did his Trump rant there were many comments, all supportive of him as the great leader. I was appalled. I had donated money to him early on, but this is the contrarian comment I made:
"Charles -- I hope this gets you off that rarified list you’re on, of top people to listen to. I don’t know where the old Charles went, who I found to be inspirational calling us to the state of consciousness we needed to be in, but I see this writing as the height of pomposity. I find what you say to be dangerous, and I'm saying this in the hope that your fans and followers aren't just blindly influenced by what you say."
What a relief it was when this started getting Likes. It's up to 43 now and they keep coming!
When Charles followed up, posting "Trump and the Tempests of Hate," this was my comment:
"Well, it was getting boring ragging on Trump. How many times to do we want to hear about the same transgressions? All right. We have fresh meat now that Charles has offered himself up. This may be the worst thing I ever have read."
And you also can imagine how much I appreciate the masterful evaluation you are making!
Where Charles is right: No one is inherently evil in their essence. I do believe this. And corollary: There's no benefit to demonizing anyone.
Where he seems to have gone astray: People carry patterns from hurt and trauma--of which Trump had plenty as a young one--that can make them dangerous, especially when they have access to power. Should we try to use caring and empathy to help such people heal and return to their inherent goodness? Sure, but that's a slow process even if you are close to a person.
Meanwhile, don't be a dufus. We have to separate these people, primed to act out hate and tyranny, from access to power!
My college friend is married to him. It’s been a bad trip watching the thought distortions take hold over the years.
The last thing I had to do with Eisenstein (already very little) was to leave the "family retreat" he hosted in upstate NY for "Lion's Gate" three summers ago. Hard psychedelics were EVERYWHERE. I took my teenage daughter, trusting that the explicit wording throughout the signup disclaimers that drugs would not be tolerated was true. Not. A farce. We left less than 24 hours after arriving. I vividly recall the guy who bent my ear for too long, and shared his delightful relief with me. "Man I love these things. It's like taking a big psychic dump." And my daughter was offered shrooms by an unknown man. Really sad. I lost any shred of respect I had for Eisenstein, and it's sadder still to see the state of spiritual lost causes like him these days.
Wow! You really went after Charles in so many ways. There are more conspiracy theories in your series of articles than anything said by Eisenstein : for instance here’s a conclusion and opinion presented as fact : RFKj is a liar and sex addict (RFK, Jr.) who now seeks to bring down the Democrats and help elect a rapist, serial abuser, Putin-ally and convicted felon to the White House” Then you liken Charles to a cult leader , accuse him of conspirituality another grand “conspiracy theory” in itself.
Thanks for addressing this. I conducted ethnographic research on this type of turn during the pandemic, digging into its contexts and felt experience. I think I uncovered some hidden dynamics, which I’m more motivated to publish on after the election. I was so sorry to see how far it went, and Eisenstein’s trajectory.
“What about all those who go unvaccinated due to his comparisons of vaccines and mandates to “the Holocaust,” and then become sick? What about his support for a liar and sex addict (RFK, Jr.) who now seeks to bring down the Democrats and help elect a rapist, serial abuser, Putin-ally and convicted felon to the White House?”
This is gold. It perfectly expresses the core belief system of the folks (Dillinger, Pinchbeck, Conspirituality bros) who have taken to the quill to denounce their former alignment with Charles. This quote beautifully encapsulates a faith system that maintains:
1. Covid Vaccines were safe and effective.
2. Empire, when run by Dems (good guys), mostly tells the truth.
3. The characterizations of Trump, RFK and others in the media is a usefully accurate reflection of reality.
No one I just cited that is writing these take down pieces has ever met, let alone spoken with, any of the figures in question. Most have met Charles. (He was, to my knowledge, the only profiled person to ever show up and answer his critics on the Conspirituality podcast).
From inside this faith system it is very hard to make sense of what Charles has been trying to do since 2020 and his publication of the Coronation. Making space for the “bad guys” is tantamount to treason in polarized times, like these, that cannot be tolerated.
Charles talks a lot about this impulse to collapse complexity into something simple and causal that we can fix by force. Address Carbon, fix climate. Defeat bad guy, make things good. (YOU would never become the next bad guy, right? Some violence or coercion is justified, after all, in service to good)
These pieces are exhausting at a certain point because they don’t acknowledge that people who do NOT cotton to those three faith tenets have had a pretty rough go of it the last 5 years. I was told I wasn’t going to be allowed to shop for groceries by the president of the US.
For life long liberals, like myself, steeped in the social justice and anti bias incision rhetoric of the times it was hard to reconcile that the people I was closest to, wanted to include everybody else in the discussion, couldn’t make space for people who didn’t abide this faith or who — Heaven forbid — had a complex faith of their own. Talk about betrayal. I finally understood, in my body, what my compliant, mostly affluent, Black Lives Matter sign bearering friends mostly didn’t know… what existential exclusion and othering actually feels like at scale.
Tom Attlee once wrote: “in sensemaking the most sensible reply to any statement or assertion is something like ‘yes, and, there’s more to it than that” That rings true to me, too.
Most of these complaints boil down to stylistic critique. Hubristic, narcissistic, etc. we don’t know these people… so we don’t know their character.
Jem Bendell and Charles are important voices, to my ear, still. The middle path is hard to walk. Peace advocates are pretty universally despised during times of war. But ever more valuable, then, for their service.
Thank you for this piece. It helped bring clarity to something I’ve been feeling and noticing for a while.
Wishing you the best in your work and sensemaking. 🙏
It’s one thing to wake up to Oneness. But we still live in a world of form. We won’t get to embodies Oneness by bypassing humanity’s propensity for duality. We have to go into the heart of it. which you have done beautifully here. Thank you.
Thank you for this. I have been following Eisenstein for a couple of decades, and I cannot wrap my head around the direction he has gone in recent years. I have continued to read him to try to understand, but I am so disappointed in him. I have finally cut ties. This article helped me.
Your article speaks to a fear I've harboured for a while. Eisenstein has been hoisted on his own petard, so to speak. There is a similar argument for protecting AI as a "person" with "rights" that goes something like this: We created Frankenstein, so they must be part of us. In demonizing him/it, we demonize ourselves.
In Jungian psychology, shadow work must start and end with the Self. Collective shadow work cannot be achieved by any one person; rather, it must be addressed by every individual doing *their own work*. Only by that metric will the collective shadow be addressed. Be wary of those who prescribe otherwise.
I was the editor for a book a dozen years ago that included an article by Eisenstein. Other individuals on the project thought that his article was the "strong" article, the one that should be 'obviously included', presumably because the grammar was the least problematic or they liked what he had to say. But I thought the article was oozing with self-righteousness and narcissistic undertones even though the words were supposed to be a rallying cry for caring for our ecology. To me it just seems like he was screaming at people through his 'earth and unity' message, and it made me feel very uncomfortable to be associated with the project. I was not surprised when these psychological qualities became more obvious during COVID and thereafter.
Excellent exposition
Once Chuckie started his RFK JR support I abandoned him.
He does not have a backbone anymore.
He’s in “Bro”-land and he is in everything for himself.
He sold what little of his soul he had left.
Maybe if he apologised for being a creep that might help.
Pay him no mind anymore he’s lost the plot
More division only expanded by this article. We need to find ways to come together and this isn't helpful. Much of what is written about Trump (and Kennedy for that matter) is grossly distorted, taken out of context.... for me I took some time to recheck some of the Trump comments and found them to be distorted. I would suggest the same for all of you. I am considered a liberal and find the continual disparaging remarks whether they are about Kamala or the Donald to be a continuation of this energy. Please do all of us a favor & write, teach or act in a manner that honors all points of view!
which comments were taken out of context? Please provide. Even within context, it is apparent this man is unwell and unfit and bound to hurt people. Protecting people from being hurt (family separation, Muslim ban, ridiculous Covid response) is not division, it is a spiritual act. Defending someone who would hurt others while they still have the (now overwhelming) capacity to do so using spiritual language is not spiritual. Especially just ahead of an election that one could swing one way or another.
Honour Donald Trump? Come on now
Eisenstein needs to read up on his recent Ameican history before he starts cutting Trump and the GOP any slack. The GOP has made racism the heart of its political strategy since Richard Nixon, watching George Wallace's success with outright racism, adopted the "Southern Strategy" of using racism to move southern white Democratic voters into the GOP. The strategy worked. Ronald Reagan followed. The first place Reagan gave a public speech after winning the 1980 nomination was Neshoba, Mississippi, the site of the most infamous acts of violence during the civil rights era, the murder of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner. Reagan's speech was about "states rights," the code word that everyone in the south knew was a defense of racism an segregation. Then there was the Willie Horton ad attacking Michael Dukakis during George H.W. Bush's 1988 campaign. Trump stands in a long line of GOP presidential candidates who have put racism at the heart of their campaigns.
Eisenstein might also think about why the GOP's wealthiest donors decided in the early 1970s to set up a whole series of pseudo-think tanks (the Heritage Foundation, the American Enterprise Institute, etc.) to crank out reports justifying the wealthier getting ever wealthy. He might remember that one of Trump's very few legislative accomplishment was a massive tax break for the rich.
And Eisenstein might think about why Leonard Leo spawned the Federalist Society and spent untold millions over the next couple of decades building an organization whose stated purpose was to pack the U.S. Supreme Court with right-wing judges, which he succeeded in doing. Or that this same Leo recently told the Financial Times that he hoped to spend $1 billion this fall in order to "crush liberal dominance."
Thank you for getting people to pay attention to Eisenstein's profound confusion. Electoral politics is a very tough arena. We all appreciate having people like Eisenstein to remind us of the importance of spirituality in living our lives. But as his recent statements show, spiritual insight and commitment may blind you to the harsh realities behind how the GOP has gone about seeking to dominate American politics under Trump's leadership.
Thank you. “Spiritual people” (but aren’t we all spiritual?) may wish to stay out of politics, but if they do join in, they should have their ducks in a row and be educated. I also believe that what we are living through is a time when spirituality and politics actually need to come together. Negotiating that terrain is challenging. I am doing this myself. I trust women and women of color and other marginalized groups more than I do men who live with a lot of unrecognized privilege.
When Charles did his Trump rant there were many comments, all supportive of him as the great leader. I was appalled. I had donated money to him early on, but this is the contrarian comment I made:
"Charles -- I hope this gets you off that rarified list you’re on, of top people to listen to. I don’t know where the old Charles went, who I found to be inspirational calling us to the state of consciousness we needed to be in, but I see this writing as the height of pomposity. I find what you say to be dangerous, and I'm saying this in the hope that your fans and followers aren't just blindly influenced by what you say."
What a relief it was when this started getting Likes. It's up to 43 now and they keep coming!
When Charles followed up, posting "Trump and the Tempests of Hate," this was my comment:
"Well, it was getting boring ragging on Trump. How many times to do we want to hear about the same transgressions? All right. We have fresh meat now that Charles has offered himself up. This may be the worst thing I ever have read."
And you also can imagine how much I appreciate the masterful evaluation you are making!
Thank you.
Thanks for this!
You are welcome.
Where Charles is right: No one is inherently evil in their essence. I do believe this. And corollary: There's no benefit to demonizing anyone.
Where he seems to have gone astray: People carry patterns from hurt and trauma--of which Trump had plenty as a young one--that can make them dangerous, especially when they have access to power. Should we try to use caring and empathy to help such people heal and return to their inherent goodness? Sure, but that's a slow process even if you are close to a person.
Meanwhile, don't be a dufus. We have to separate these people, primed to act out hate and tyranny, from access to power!
"Don't be a dufus!" Truer spiritual words were never spoken ;) ... Except: "Stop it!"