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OneCommune.com. Today's episode features Charles Eisenstein

and the first two installments of his masterclass, Political Hope. Charles posits this question.

Imagine yourself as just existing. In your mind's eye, what does that look like? In this state of pure being,

most of us envision ourselves sitting alone. Now this conception of being an individual,

at once indivisible and yet divided from the world, is a cultural story. Now let's look around. We don't need to strain our eyes

to witness the fraying of our cultural fabric and the erosion of social cohesion. We are living in a

moment of extreme division in which virtually every facet of culture appears to produce binary

opposition. Politically, economically, and

environmentally, we are under stress and pushed to the edges of the branch. Political polarization,

severe income inequality, and environmental collapse feel existential. As Charles pondered all the

world's iniquities, he asked himself this essential question.

What is the origin of the wrongness in the world? Is it greed, laziness, envy, wrath? Is it human

nature itself? Does evolutionary biology mandate that we hoard and kill in the name of self-preservation?

These typical answers felt unsatisfactory. Charles was looking for the ideological substrate that

underwrites her societal dis-ease. He was searching for the root cause behind the symptoms.

Charles found his answer in a story, in a millennia-old mythology that tells us what it is like

to be a self.

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