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The Ascent of Humanity

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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.

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 civilization has reached: over-technologized, greedy, in pain, and all. But this is nothing new -- Lao Tzu has roughly the same verdict, which shows how little has changed. Lao Tzu's realizations did not touch off a spiritual golden age, nor did the travails of any culture that has collapsed in the past (as ours is collapsing now) usher in any but difficult times. Why should we believe that our difficult situation signals any kind of destiny, apotheosis, or spiritual next level about to materialize? And in particular, why the very personal spiritual prescription the author gives?

Lao Tzu's prescription for the future was very different, and certainly did not include a New Age or an apotheosis, in fact it limited its wishful thinking to more-or-less zero. The truth was what he was after, and he believed 'True words aren't nice, nice words aren't true." I think he was a great deal wiser for that, although I'm no Taoist. The same materialistic madness attends the end of most cultures as is attending this, but spiritual golden ages don't historically follow.

How exactly does Eisenstein know that 'bad karma', 'original sin', 'duality' and the many other things he would ban from our vocabulary are merely 'cultural', whilst his panentheistic new age is 'natural'? Can't it just as easily be the other way round? I submit that the current idea of a New Age is very much cultural, and indeed rather related to the long-term Christian idea of a spiritual culmination. These racial religious climaxes, it seems to me, these raptures and apocalypses and sudden vauntings into new dimensions, never actually *happen*. They certainly don't solve economic crises. You can't say something wonderful is about to happen on cue with no evidence, and imply you have the direction of humanity solved.

We are all going to learn the lessons of having gone beyond what is reasonable, and of having lost touch with the earth... for the umpteenth time. But although there may be some spiritual progress made, it is not the vague, teleological New Age kind of gigantic illumination the author is talking about. I think the author dumbs down spirituality and ruins most of his good points in so doing. His heart is in the right place, and he understands many of the difficulties of our alienation, but I don't believe in his vision for the future at all. Something more cogent, multiple, organic, diligent, realistic and disciplined is required -- and will appear, if it does, in many different guises and places, and by virtue mostly of hard work.

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.

I'll be honest - I probably mentally reference this book on a daily basis. I am yet to find a work this complete (and this voluminous) that seems to agree with so many of my own thoughts. That's not to say that it didn't get me to think critically about them, or that Eisenstein didn't diverge from them at certain points, but it is good to know that there are others out there who share my ideas.

So what is it about? Well, everything really. He brings together science, art, religion, work, play, school, and everything in between. We start off in the familiar and end up somewhere unexpected every time. And that's probably the best description I can give.

The book isn't flawless, of course. His discussion of autism, for example, leave a bit to be desired. But we're not left with the impression that he writing from the perspective of "truth" - the book is a chronicle of opinion and insight, not objective science. It's more a narrative about how things can be than about how they are - or maybe it's about how things are what we make them to be.

So ultimately, I felt the only shortcoming of the work was that the ideas I read here weren't particularly new - that is to say, I didn't read many things that I hadn't already read or heard about elsewhere. But that's not really what this book is about. Eisenstein weaves together many different sources and with them creates a coherent, unified idea. And that, in my opinion, seems to be what is needed more than anything else right now.

(Also, to anyone who enjoyed this work, I'd highly recommend reading "Immediatism" by Hakim Bey - very similar ideas, with a little more poetic flare... And lots of room for imagination.)

"The Ascent of Humanity" explores the divine world that we are each a part of. Reading it, you start to look at every aspect of your life differently. The beautiful world described in this book is not only "possible"; it already exists!

When I purchased this book, it intimidated me, as I am not an academic reader, nor do I typically enjoy intellectual books. The Ascent of Humanity (AOH) at first look appears to be a tome of scientific and philisophical ramblings and speculations---way too esoteric for me, I thought. However, I am taking a class with the author, and when I brought my concerns to him, he encouraged me to take on the book, saying that it was written "with passion".

I was convinced, and proceeded to read the book over a period of several days. I couldn't put it down. It is based upon science and philosophy, it's true, but you don't need a background in any academic discipline to read it. All you need is a desire to understand our world, what it has become, and where it is going. AOH is approachable and very readable.

However, I would describe the process of reading AOH not as a walk in the park, but as an enjoyable hike to the top of a mountain. On the way, you learn about why our society, why the world even, is in the state it is in, and what can be done about it. The author uses the analogy of the Tower of Babel to illustrate how the separation we have created has not worked; sometimes he also compares what has happened with technology and control to addiction. AOH is written with an optimistic and positive tone about potentially dark times, so that unlike other books that try to tackle the same ideas, you will not end it filled with anger and blame and despair, but filled with hope and understanding and peace---no matter what you think might happen in the future. No matter how difficult the times might be. You'll be okay inside. And you won't be fearful now.

Reading AOH for me was an experience that could best be described as a worldview exchange and personal healing that cost me only $25 and forty or so hours of my time and that, now, knowing what it is, I'd do anything for. Because it healed a precious part of me, and gave me a gift. A vital gift that I desperately needed today but that I will need even more in these times that are coming.

Highest possible recommendation.

*****

As i read on and on in The Ascent of Humanity, i felt a rising sense of delight, of surprised recognition, and deep discovery - here was someone who was 4 years old when i joined the international city-of-the-future project called Auroville in India [[...]] where we have been attempting for the last 40 years just what he's now discovering and talking about, a guy who's never heard of the great sage and visionary Sri Aurobindo but who has through his own prolific researches, cogitations and deep personal experiences come to the same prognosis for humanity: it's time for a new consciousness, one based on a sense of the Oneness, with each other, with nature, with the cosmos.

As an Aurovilian, i live in an atmosphere created by the founders which takes the premises on which his book is based for granted. Sri Aurobindo and the Mother experienced this new consciousness at the turn of the 20th century, and in realising it deeply in their own minds and bodies, developing it within themselves, sharing it with their associates, writing and speaking about it, establishing Auroville to await it, brought it into the earth consciousness so it could be more easily discovered and realised thereafter.

The Auroville experiment has not been an easy one, we are asked to build a city of the future, a city where there would be no need of laws, no need of money, no need of religion - where we would live as willing servitors of the Truth Consciousness... As Eisenstein says, where we would reconceptualise the self, no longer as separate and competing with others in a meaningless mechanical world, but as a conscious contributing part of a universe inherently creative and purposeful, and, Sri Aurobindo would add, conscious. But as we are not yet in this new consciousness, it has been an on-going struggle, one which could be of great interest for the anthropologists of the future to investigate and document, and learn from.

Eisenstein's book takes the reader on a profound intellectual journey - back to the beginnings of culture, through the history of widening the gap between man and nature to the extreme alienation of modern society which cannot seem to kick its energy habit even to save the world. And he doesn't drop us there in despair, on a heating up planet wracked with war. In a torrent of vivid descriptions in Chapter 7 he assures the reader that despite his being fully aware of the impending environmental crises, the financial breakdown, the international political paralysis, the unstoppable momentum of economic "development," the failure of schools to educate, the threat to health of potential pandemics, toxic waste pollution and medical treatment itself, and especially the turning of science on itself, undermining certainty, objectivity, even reason....he still sees a momentous change following the convergence of crises, the dawning of an Age of Reunion, a shift of consciousness "not predicated upon any sort of technological invention, nor... on a regression in our technological level." It's about a shift in consciousness, it's about coming out of the collective delusion of a discrete and separate self on which our culture is based, and which in its multifarious manifestations in all aspects of life is taken to its extreme today, and will result in its collapse. And then, the new consciousness will kick in, the many seeds of the new forms that will emerge out of the compost of the old are already to be seen: renewable energy, wastewater recycling, eco-technologies, local currency, reforestation and wetland preservation, political reform, child-centered education, holistic healing, ubiquitous communication....

So, what Charles Eisenstein offers the Aurovilian/Aurobindonian is a brilliantly worked out detail about the times of change we are in. What Sri Aurobindo, writing in the 20s-40s, could only describe in its broad outlines, Charles can see in its manifestation, and this intellectual insight and description can help us through the catastrophic times ahead. And what Sri Aurobindo and the Mother in their written legacy and Auroville in its living manifestation offer to Eisenstein is a profound context of spiritual vision and 40 years of facing the enormous practical difficulties of trying to be open to that change of consciousness which he seems to assume will be quite automatic.

I am facing here a problem which i find both Eisenstein and Aurobindo avoid by writing long erudite works - when the ideas are put too simply, they sound "new-agey", a bit too Pollyanna-ish for our sceptical, down-to-earth minds, the very minds which are being invited to consider changing.... alas, what to do? I want to recommend to Aurovilians and students of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, that they will find reading Charles Eisenstein really heartening, I want to invite Mr. Eisenstein and his followers to take a look at the writings of Sri Aurobindo and to visit Auroville...perhaps there are some really interesting ways we could work together.

...has just become mundane in the shadow of this soul stomping, life changing work. Ascent is a totally captivating and vital journey into the biological and emotional roots of personal and political economic dysfunction. We discover early on in the book that what environmental and political progressives thought to be the roots are merely the topmost branches. Solutions run deeper and way deeper does Mr. Eisenstein dig, reaching into the collective wisdom of not just human life, but indeed all life on the planet in its evolutionary search for union and completion. True, many have alluded to what Mr. Eisenstein so eloquently and painstakingly writes about, but such allusions have become more like cliches passed between New Age pundits, or overused quotes seen on car bumpers and refrigerator magnets. If the New Age phenomenon has given us license to pass on words of wisdom without being wise, Mr. Eisenstein injects meaning into formerly empty words (you will never read a refrigerator magnet the same way again!)

Ascent is the most honest and thorough inquiry into what it means to "trust onself" that I have encountered. Trusting oneself appears simple enough until you realize that you have to contend with the tide of intellectual giants like Bacon, Descartes, Adam Smith, Marx--indeed, ten thousand years of civilized history to discover the contortions humanity has gone through to keep us from doing so. Today, as every aspect of living is being colonized by corporations, schools and government, we are faced with an onslaught from "experts" of every imaginable field telling us what to do and how to do it. Mr. Eisenstein insightfully points out what has been staring us in the face all along: what has been left out of the equation of living is living itself. In other words, surviving by the dictates of external authorities is not living at all.

It is a magical experience when a book crystallizes one's nebulous thoughts and feelings previously unable to find clear expression. Eisenstein builds a bridge between hard science, conventional wisdom, and the truth of the soul so often marginalized in contemporary society.

I was expecting a soft-headed new-age manifesto, but was delighted to find a well-reasoned, articulate, cohesive and compelling work.

I can't say much more than the other reviewers, so all that is left is to let the book speak for itself:

The entire book is available online (google it) Most chapters will stand on their own merits, so I suggest you pick one that looks interesting and check it out. I did, and decided after about 5 minutes that it was well worth the cost to read it curled in a big chair with a mug of tea or outside in the dappled shade.

One of the happiest purchases I've ever made.

As of this writing there are only 9 reviews. Why? I have read the whole book. I have read around 1,000 books in my life and this is one of those rare pleasures that makes you euphoric as a reader. He explains a lot of unspoken but felt intuitively feelings we have about what is wrong with our society. I came away from the book feeling at peace about where the human race is. Some may find much of it depressing but I personally find the pure truth exhilarating. It's the best book about the current state of the human race I have ever read, Just a hair better than Ishmail by Daniel Quinn.