The Ascent of Humanity [Paperback]

Charles Eisenstein (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0977622207 | ISBN-13: 978-0977622207 | Publication Date: March 15, 2007

The Ascent of Humanity is a radical exploration of the history and future of civilization from a unique perspective: the human sense of self. Eisenstein traces all of the converging crises of our age to a common source, which he calls Separation. It is the ideology of the discrete and separate self that has generated these crises; therefore, he argues, nothing less than a "revolution in human beingness" will be sufficient to transform our relationship to each other and the planet. And this revolution is underway already. In all realms of human endeavor, an Age of Reunion is emerging out of the birth-pangs of a planet in crisis. The range and depth of Eisenstein's thesis is breath-taking. Encompassing science, religion, spirituality, technology, economics, medicine, education, and more, he details a vast paradigm shift reflecting a more fundamental shift in the human sense of self. Even in this dark hour, he says, a more beautiful world is possible -- but not through the extension of millennia-old methods of management and control. The convergence of crises is revealing the final bankruptcy of those methods. Soon, he says, we will abandon the Babelian effort to build a tower to Heaven, as we realize that the sky is all around us already. Then, we will turn our efforts to creating a new kind of civilization, a conscious civilization designed for beauty rather than height.

Product Details

• Paperback: 604 pages
• Publisher: Panenthea Productions (March 15, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0977622207
• ISBN-13: 978-0977622207
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (23 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #154,912 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

57 of 59 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Study this book and ASCEND, March 19, 2007

By 

Steven A. Reid "Philosopher Neurosurgeon" (Gainesville, FL USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Ascent of Humanity (Paperback)

Eisenstein convincingly develops the thesis that humanity has succumbed to the dismal end game of the Technological and Scientific Programs. He describes the Scientific Program as the attempt to understand every phenomenon through the application of the Scientific Method -- extending reductionism, measurement, classification, and enumeration inappropriately to aspects of existence or relationships where they do not apply. The Technological Program seeks to control nature, and thereby often disrupts it through unintended consequences. The usual, and usually incorrect, response to these blunders consists of more technology; more control. He argues that cooperation between life forms may prove much more important to evolution than competition. He shows how the prevailing materialistic world view, one seeking to isolate Man from hostile nature, colours seemingly objective scientific theory.

By focusing on self organizing systems of increasing complexity, he spotlights how matter literally tends to "come alive". The Divine exists not as a remote, possibly disinterested deity, but rather in every bit of the extant World.

The time has come for Humanity's next big step. We need to recognize that only imaginary, arbitrary boundaries divide the individual from the rest of the Universe. The "out there" and the "in here" exist only as concepts, not as valid categories delimiting our physiological and mental domains. We live in a world of abundance, where cooperation, not a paranoid "me vs. the hostile other" perspective should inform our philosophy.

This book might just catalyze a paradigm shift affecting science, economics, psychology, and theology. You will find it much easier to read than this review, and a lot more fascinating.

91 of 103 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Not that good, May 24, 2009

By 

Prokopton (London, UK) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Ascent of Humanity (Paperback)

I read this book online, which one can. I don't agree with the glowing reviews I must say; the book is extremely romanticized and speculative, and it is not nearly the intellectual tour-de-force people on this page have claimed.

It's really two books in one. On the one hand it is a useful and sometimes cogent analysis of the ills of modern technological society. On the other hand it is an interesting if vague compendium of the author's spiritual ideas. I have no difficulty with either book (although I disagree with some of both), but I do have a difficulty with the fact that the second book is being presented as the answer to the first. In other words, spirituality, of the author's own particular brand, is seen as the 'way forward', even the 'solution', to our contemporary ills.

"The mounting destruction, suffering, and catastrophes of the last millennia... are the birthing pains of the human race, being born into a new form of relationship to the universe," says the author. How exactly does he know this? He doesn't say.

He sounds almost like a prophet and perhaps we are meant to take him at his word, or believe him because what he says sounds nice. But what about the truth of what is *actually* about to occur? That gets less attention. Finding the seeds of our difficulties in wrong ideas about god, self, and so on, the author proposes that if we change these *spiritual* ideas we will end the *earthly* difficulties. I respectfully disagree.

The author reads in fact very much like a standard New Ager. His message is that the arrow of human progress leads inevitably to this moment, which preceeds rebirth into a higher consciousness. One hears this again and again these days. No evidence is adduced to justify it. Just like so many New Agers, Eisenstein is quite happy to throw aside any traditional spiritual ideas that don't fit his viewpoint -- for example, he will blithely jettison the notion of 'bad karma' without a second thought, because he thinks it is so obvious that much suffering is inflicted upon people who are 'innocent'! His view comes to being as simple as, our rotten society is telling us we're evil, and all we have to do to be good is turn our back on all the culture that got us into this mess. I think there is rather more to it than that.

Of course Eisenstein is entitled to pick and choose what feels correct to him, as we all must -- but do we all believe our views will save humanity? Those of us who say there is a New Age coming, and who claim to know what it will be like and how to get there, had better know what we are talking about.

I should say, I am somebody who meditates hours every day, I work as an artist, care deeply about this planet and work very hard on spiritual attunement with it. I also am working to completely change my lifestyle. I've behaved this way for many years, but it hasn't made me more romantic about what life is, has been, and is about to be. I don't believe everyone on earth is suddenly about to become a good person, nor that all our previous suffering is about to bear fruit in a brand new form of life. I don't see any evidence of this happening at all.

On the contrary, true spiritual progress seems to make me more and more able to see what things are without needing some kind of upcoming rapture to redeem them!


Thematically this book is certainly not all bad. The author has good ideas about the integration of pain into existence (which is a question of becoming humanly adult, indicating that our society keeps us infantilized -- good point). And certainly I am as fedup as he is with the 'conquest of nature' paradigm our technology runs off, that is so obviously sick. But then, it's hardly just the two of us! So many regard this as undesirable, one couldn't call it much of an insight. That's the problem with the good side of this book -- it's quite commonplace.

The author thinks he has the 'solution' to everything he highlights as 'problematic'. He will pick apart our systems of medicine and money, duality and infinity over and over again, and then extrapolate to the point where humanity is about to undergo a great change back to 'the truth about how things ought to be.' This spiritual quantum leap, which will right every wrong we have made, is, according to Eisenstein, inevitable.

But actually, the 'solutions' to all the 'problems' he enumerates are, to me, painfully contrived and oversimplified, when they have any truth at all. After a plausible summary of some of the difficulties we have surrounding property and ownership, for example, he is quite happy to say 'the feminine principle in all of us--intuitive rather than logical, organic rather than analytic' will save the day! How can anyone talk in such terms and be taken seriously? If it even had any psychological validity it would be ridiculously vague.

Or he will speak of how much better everything could be because 'sufficient social and natural resources still exist to create a beautiful world for all of us'; in doing so completely ignoring the fact that many are predicting a huge die-off of two thirds of our race, in the unpleasant backlash towards sustainability. (At other times he will be quite happy to admit points like these, but it seems he forgets them conveniently when he wants to usher in his New Age.)

As another example: he see-saws away from a sober consideration of how money alienates us to speak about how mandelbrot sets inspire him with a panentheist view of deity.... ok, but what does that have to do with the practical problems we face? If you want to reform the monetary system, go ahead and make a proposal! (He does not). What he actually suggests is that a new spiritual way forward will somehow rectify our bad judgements about how to run an economy and a culture. He seems to expect that, because his ideas on deity are correct, in the future, everyone else will hold them also. And this will lead to a great new society of some unspecified kind. How does he know this is true?

There is a hugely romanticized view of spirituality in this book. Try this: 'knowledge was passed down personally through generation after generation of Zen masters, Sufis, shamans, Christian mystics, Kabbalists, Taoists, yogis, wizards, and other individuals, kept disguised within folk religion or completely hidden until times were right for its blossoming. That time is today, and it is no coincidence that many of these formerly secret traditions are making their knowledge public as best they can."

So not only are Eisenstein's spiritual views correct, all these ancient traditions agree with it do they? And they are all passing on this same 'truth' of his? I suppose these are Christian Mystics who don't believe in Original Sin, Buddhist Zen masters who don't believe in karma? It's so unfortunate to me that the author rejects commodification in all its guises, yet reels off these traditions as if they were all spiritual brand names! To me this is ghastly, it's all the usual New Age guff. These traditions are at great variance from each other, and they are being idealized by someone who appears to have no idea what any of them is about at more than the most superficial level.

To him, mystical traditions are all roughly the same thing, with a similar message that is about to become 'the answer to where we went wrong'. If he really believes this, I can assure him that he's mistaken! The most salient feature of spirituality worldwide, and of mystical spirituality in particular, is its variety.

Yet another example: perhaps rightly decrying the facile self-hatred that comes from a superficial Christianity (or Islam or Buddhism) which sees the world and the human as automatically 'evil', Eisenstein is quite happy to dismiss the idea of discipline or the need to work hard to make our humanity good, as something bound up with outdated 'duality'. After all why work hard when this wonderful New Age is coming anyhow? All we have to do is wait for the current 'wrong' society to fall, and with it our own wrongness; then, the New Age spiritual society will supplant us and make us 'good'. (Talk about dualism!)

This is such rubbish! And it's of a piece with the reasonless rejection of 'bad karma'. Anyone who has actually attempted to make genuine spiritual progress will realize that changing one's own nature from bad into good is of huge and central importance, and every spiritual path recognizes the fact... but not Eisenstein. He dismisses the idea almost without a thought. Apparently it is only our evil political and economic mechanisms that tell us we are evil, so the huge amount of work to make the flower of virtue bloom in a human being by self-knowledge is done away with.

The modern pop spiritual view that if you only buy the right product all the good stuff follows, treating the latest spiritual trend just as the latest hot piece of consumer tech, has alot to do with the mistakes Eisenstein is making here. Spiritual development does in fact require the recognition of how far from good one is! Always has, always will. No New Age will change the fact. But such truths get short shrift in our current spiritual marketplace, because they don't sell. Naturally the idea that you must work on your soul can become twisted into keeping people fearful and self-hating 'sinners', but at bottom a recognition of the true raw nature of one's soul is very empowering, if it is followed up with training and work. If everyone did this work, a spiritual 'New Age' *might* result -- but I see no evidence more people are doing it than in previous times. And even if they did, our economic situation would still be parlous.


To summarize: I mostly agree with the author concerning the point that our... Read more ›

17 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Important Work, March 31, 2008

By 

Laurie Plank (Hummelstown, PA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Ascent of Humanity (Paperback)

Charles Eisenstein, a true Renaissance thinker, has written a monumental work that traces the journey of the human race from its beginnings through to present day. He has left no thought unexamined in his quest for an explanation of why and how we have come to this juncture, which is defined by a convergence of environmental, social and political crises.
Eisenstein argues that beginning with our first use of tools, we embarked on a journey of separation from nature and eventually from each other. Rather than viewing our current situation as a terrible mistake, Eisenstein believes it is an inevitable passage that will result in the birthing of a shift in perspective, an awakening of all humanity. As we emerge from the difficult times ahead, a better way of being in the world will result.
This book is incredibly broad and deep in its examination of how science, technology, religion, politics, economics, and sociology have each contributed to (and been a mirror of) our ever-greater alienation.
There were ideas presented here I have read nowhere else such as how our interest-dependent money system creates an unending need for economic consumption We literally can't stop consuming or our whole financial system collapses. No wonder environmental preservation will always be at odds with capitalism. Eisenstein not only examines what is not working, but gives plenty of concrete ideas about how to bring about real change. For example, a money system with negative interest called demurrage. Sound intriguing? Read this important book and decide for yourself.
The Ascent of Humanity will give you a clearer understanding of the current human situation as well as some real direction for how we can begin now to envision and create a better way to live that honors all life.
This is the book I had been waiting for. It deserves a wide audience. I am working on a Master's degree in Ecopsychology and have read widely. The Ascent of Humanity is in my top five. If you have a strong sense of a spiritual element in your life, but also value a well-reasoned, well-researched discourse, without a bit of fluff, you will not be disappointed in this book.