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Okay, so today on the show, we're combining a couple of conversations that I've had this

year with the author and philosopher Charles Eisenstein.

Charles is a teacher, public speaker, and author of a number of books, including the

more beautiful world our hearts know

is possible, sacred economics, and the ascent of humanity. He also wrote a widely circulated

article on COVID-19 last spring called the Coronation. Foundational to Charles' outlook on the world

is what he dubs, the story of separation.

Now, we do address this in our conversation, but I feel compelled to outline the basic

tenets of it here, as it is so fundamental to much of Charles' work.

So Charles contends that humans have developed a story, that we are discrete individuals living among other separate

individuals in an external universe that is separate from us. And this duality influences our primary

spiritual and scientific stories, the separation of the spiritual from the material and the

separation of the mind from the body. And the story contributes to the separation of the spiritual from the material and the separation of the mind from the body.

And the story contributes to the narrative of evolutionary biology that frames life as a competition,

where only the fittest will survive.

It informs capitalism, our primary economic system, which yields haves and have-nots.

It reinforces our separateness and presumed

...