Totalitarian Trajectory Vs. Courage: A Conversation with Charles Eisenstein
What if we were born to shine in this moment?
Last week, I had the great joy of interviewing brilliant Charles Eisenstein for my podcast, Make Language Great Again. I really loved how our conversation went, and I am very happy to share it with you.
Charles and I talked about the totalitarian trajectory we are on—and about the useful role that bullies play in waking up our courage.
It seems like Charles and I have arrived at similar conclusions as far as the existential meaning of the terrible moment we are in—which is to say that the conversation was a ton of fun—and that’s despite the total insanity of the surroundings, etc.
For context, here is the recent Thanksgiving story by Charles that we talked about in the interview: The Human Family. And here is his beautiful essay called, Mob Morality and the Unvaxxed.
Without further ado, here is the interview, hope you enjoy watching it as much as I enjoyed doing it.
(Thank you for supporting my efforts!)
Thank you, Tessa! This was such a great session between the two of you. I must say your laughter was so infectious it gave the interview a lightness of heart that enabled its absorption. There were so many gold nuggets I made many notes. It's discussions like this that give me hope and rally my own courage. I look forward to more.
Sorry up front, I did not intend for this to be so long, it just sort of worked out that way.
Thanks for this Tessa and Charles. I found this interview thought provoking and it forced me to further clarify my own thinking in many regards.
I am sympathetic to Charle’s tendency (in my mind) to remove individual responsibility for “evil” behavior from individuals and rest it in the current Uber-corrupt “system” of global civilization. However, I still find the only sensible system in my own life is to assume responsibility for my own actions.
Charles said: “I’m really cautious about converting everything into an us vs them narrative.”
Later he asks: “Are the power elite actually evil?” To paraphrase his further observations on this topic he then notes that the elite are perhaps simply trying to engineer the perfect society and need us all to obey and that they might quite believe in what they are doing.
Tessa commented: “I really don’t care”- (what their motivation for doing evil might be). I would say this difference in perspective is perhaps the essence of the discussion from my perspective.
I have spent a lifetime opposed to violence, whether it be interpersonal, capital punishment, or mass state violence. However, my experiences in Latin America during the 1990’s forced me to face some difficult truths about the nature, efficacy and limits of “non-violent” resistance. In traveling to Nicaragua during the Contra war, as well as to El Salvador and twice to Colombia during their “dirty wars,” I came face to face with death squad members and their brutal activities. I was witness to both the immediate aftermath of a death squad assassination, and to the torture scars of those lucky enough to survivor encounters with these groups. I spoke to “rebels” who’d lost their entire family’s to State sponsored torture and murder and who only took up arms when it was clear that there was simply no evidence that such State sanctioned murder and terror would ever stop.
When nuns are raped and murdered with impunity, and priests, theologians and even an archbishop can be killed openly and with no consequences, the very concept of “non-violent resistance” in such a setting I think is really a cruel joke. When simply marching in a protest can get your entire family murdered you are not “free” to openly “non-violently resist.”
I dare say neither the Nazi war machine, nor the American war machine in Vietnam would have ground to a halt if only there were enough large scale non-violent civil disobedience and resistance.
I realize that for many it is difficult to imagine fellow human beings reduced to being capable of the levels of brutality I witnessed in the Latin American dirty wars. These were counter-insurgency wars sponsored by my American government whose purpose was to maintain oligarchic orders like the one at the helm of today’s so called Great Reset. It strikes me that many of the propaganda techniques perfected in those “wars” are now coming home to roost in the West, along with, MSM censorship, demonization of “the unvaccinated other” and police violence against peaceful protestors.
As I face the very real prospect here in California that I may be helpless to watch as my 5 and 7 year old grandsons are threatened with risking myocarditis or worse by being forced to accept vaccination simply to attend school - I cannot help but wonder at what point I, and others who love the children in their lives, may be faced with decisions that even a year ago were unimaginable to us.
How will we resist? To what lengths will we go to protect the innocent and helpless children we love? Will I willingly, cooperatively be ushered off to a “camp” for those who will not submit to “vaccination?” How might I “resist?” What will I do if my Social Security income is held hostage to a vaccine passport requirement? What will I do if I can no longer enter a supermarket or leave my home without “proof” of my vaccine compliance? Will I simply knuckle under and get the jab if by not doing so I am a complete pariah in the eyes of my family and friends?
Though I do in fact sympathize with Charle’s sentiments, that “us vs them” questions can be completely irrelevant at some theoretical level. The “intent” - wicked or benevolent - of the ever increasing totalitarian oppression does nothing to change the “reality” of its destructive impacts.
We in the West have for the most part sat by passively for decades while endless suffering in the Third World took place conducted in largest part by Western oligarchy in service to their apparently insatiable levels of greed and thirst for power. You do not unleash torture and death squads across Latin America decade after decade - “because you believe you’re helping people.” Now that suffering is being felt here at home, as that same insatiable greed and thirst for power dismantles the rather thin veneer of our vaunted “Western democracy.”
I’ll end with my response to several other of Charles comments.
Charles stated: “Its a very entertaining drama that’s unfolding right now and we all take it so seriously.”
He further observed that he knows people close to the elites and: “they seem like regular people, they’re not sinister.”
I’m sorry Charles if I’m reading anything into these comments you did not intend, but in spite of your and my rather privileged positions on planet earth at this point in time - this “drama” is in fact quite “deadly serious” for much of humanity. The impacts of the lockdowns alone in poorer nations has been catastrophic in terms of life and death and suffering.
I think it is fair to ask how many innocent people of all ages must die at the hands of this brutal global machine either through lockdowns or vaccine injury - before it stops being simply a “drama” in our Western psyche and becomes instead a “reality” to be dealt with.
Tessa commented regarding said elites: “Their actions are monstrous” - noting that their “intent” becomes unimportant at some level - a position I must completely agree with.
Madeline Albright famously defended the earlier elite “policy decisions” that brought about the deaths of a half-a-million Iraqi children with the words “we think it was worth it.” Perhaps I’m just lucky, but I don’t happen to personally know a single human being on planet earth who could EVER make such a statement.
In the end I could care less if Klaus Schwab and his cohorts truly believe they are doing “God’s work” as they decimate the lives of millions around the globe. The glaringly simple “reality” is that there is no evidence they will stop by themselves, so we are going to have to stand up together if we are going to stop them.
Your conversation with Charles forced me to consider what that resistance might “mean” in my own life and how my own resistance might impact the lives of those I love. Thank you for that Tessa and Charles.