1 00:00:16,439 --> 00:00:18,678 Anytime you want to understand something... 2 00:00:19,278 --> 00:00:21,024 Why is such and such happening? 3 00:00:21,255 --> 00:00:23,358 Why is there a bio-diversity crisis? 4 00:00:23,512 --> 00:00:27,278 Why are we drilling for more oil, 5 00:00:27,278 --> 00:00:29,894 when it's polluting the atmosphere 6 00:00:29,894 --> 00:00:31,509 and causing oil spills? Why? 7 00:00:31,509 --> 00:00:33,509 And you ask why!? 8 00:00:33,509 --> 00:00:36,663 And down a couple levels of why, you always get to money. 9 00:00:40,040 --> 00:00:42,530 I talk a lot about the story of self, that every culture has, 10 00:00:44,066 --> 00:00:46,080 that answers the question - What are you? 11 00:00:46,557 --> 00:00:47,953 What is it to be human? 12 00:00:49,953 --> 00:00:52,006 It says that you're this separate being, 13 00:00:52,006 --> 00:00:53,583 among other separate beings, 14 00:00:53,583 --> 00:00:56,683 in a universe that is separate from yourself as well. 15 00:00:57,439 --> 00:01:00,044 You are not me, that plant is not me, 16 00:01:00,044 --> 00:01:01,895 that's something separate. 17 00:01:02,141 --> 00:01:06,238 And this story of self really creates our world. 18 00:01:07,454 --> 00:01:08,865 If you're a separate self 19 00:01:08,865 --> 00:01:10,480 and there's other separate selves out there, 20 00:01:10,480 --> 00:01:12,042 other species out there, 21 00:01:12,042 --> 00:01:16,315 the universe is fundamentally indifferent to you 22 00:01:16,315 --> 00:01:21,957 or even hostile, then you definitely want to control. 23 00:01:22,972 --> 00:01:26,638 You want to be able to have power over other beings and over 24 00:01:26,638 --> 00:01:30,154 these whimsical, arbitrary forces of nature 25 00:01:30,154 --> 00:01:33,433 that could extinguish you any time. 26 00:01:35,849 --> 00:01:38,577 This story is becoming obsolete, 27 00:01:38,577 --> 00:01:41,085 it's becoming no longer true. 28 00:01:41,624 --> 00:01:44,009 We don't resonate with it any more. 29 00:01:44,809 --> 00:01:47,953 It's actually generating crises that are insoluble 30 00:01:47,953 --> 00:01:50,590 from the methods of control. 31 00:01:51,621 --> 00:01:55,017 That's what's clearing the space for us 32 00:01:55,017 --> 00:01:59,207 to step into a new story of self and a new story of the people. 33 00:02:12,299 --> 00:02:23,248 (wind chimes) 34 00:02:23,755 --> 00:02:25,520 Money is an agreement. 35 00:02:25,812 --> 00:02:27,993 It doesn't have value all by itself. 36 00:02:28,578 --> 00:02:32,374 It has value because people agree that it has value. 37 00:02:32,667 --> 00:02:35,140 Economists will tell you what money does. 38 00:02:36,525 --> 00:02:38,952 That it facilitates exchange. 39 00:02:39,444 --> 00:02:42,652 You use it to count things and keep track of things. 40 00:02:42,652 --> 00:02:44,245 You write some numbers 41 00:02:44,245 --> 00:02:47,468 on a magical piece of paper called a check, 42 00:02:47,468 --> 00:02:51,538 and you can cause all kinds of abundant goods 43 00:02:51,538 --> 00:02:53,131 to come to your house. 44 00:02:53,716 --> 00:02:56,801 You can even cause misery for thousands of people 45 00:02:56,801 --> 00:03:02,067 if you are one of the highest initiates of the magic of money. 46 00:03:04,159 --> 00:03:06,323 Scarcity is built into the money system, 47 00:03:06,323 --> 00:03:08,657 on a most obvious level. 48 00:03:08,657 --> 00:03:10,638 It's because of the way money is created, 49 00:03:10,638 --> 00:03:12,398 as interest-bearing debt. 50 00:03:12,567 --> 00:03:15,112 Any time a bank lends money into existence, 51 00:03:15,112 --> 00:03:17,496 or the Federal Reserve creates money, 52 00:03:17,496 --> 00:03:21,480 the money comes along with a corresponding amount of debt, 53 00:03:21,480 --> 00:03:23,972 and the debt, because of interest on it, 54 00:03:23,972 --> 00:03:25,922 is always greater than the amount of money. 55 00:03:26,168 --> 00:03:28,671 It essentially throws people into competition with each other 56 00:03:28,671 --> 00:03:30,030 for never enough money. 57 00:03:30,860 --> 00:03:33,511 Growth is another thing that's built into our money system. 58 00:03:33,757 --> 00:03:35,765 If you're a bank, you're going to lend it to the person 59 00:03:35,765 --> 00:03:38,020 who's going to create new goods and services, 60 00:03:38,020 --> 00:03:40,696 so they can profit and they can pay you back. 61 00:03:41,035 --> 00:03:42,316 You're not going to lend to somebody 62 00:03:42,316 --> 00:03:44,142 who doesn't create goods and services. 63 00:03:44,142 --> 00:03:47,121 So money goes toward those who will create even more of it. 64 00:03:47,721 --> 00:03:49,649 But basically economic growth means 65 00:03:49,649 --> 00:03:52,147 that you have to find something that 66 00:03:52,147 --> 00:03:55,849 was once nature and make it into a good, 67 00:03:55,849 --> 00:03:57,523 or was once a gift relationship 68 00:03:57,523 --> 00:03:59,098 and make it into a service. 69 00:03:59,098 --> 00:04:01,674 You have to find something that people once got for free 70 00:04:01,674 --> 00:04:04,218 or did for themselves or for each other 71 00:04:04,218 --> 00:04:08,134 and then take it away and sell it back to them, somehow. 72 00:04:09,488 --> 00:04:12,231 By turning things into commodities, 73 00:04:12,231 --> 00:04:14,573 we get cut off from nature 74 00:04:14,573 --> 00:04:17,406 in the same ways we're cut off from community. 75 00:04:17,421 --> 00:04:21,161 We look at nature with eyes, well, it's just a bunch of stuff. 76 00:04:21,191 --> 00:04:23,471 And that leaves us very lonely 77 00:04:23,471 --> 00:04:28,505 and leaves us with many basic human needs that go unmet. 78 00:04:28,520 --> 00:04:30,623 And if you have money, 79 00:04:30,623 --> 00:04:34,792 you might try to fulfill this hunger through purchasing, 80 00:04:34,792 --> 00:04:38,923 through buying things, or through accumulating money itself. 81 00:04:38,923 --> 00:04:42,649 Of course, now we're nearing the end of growth. 82 00:04:42,649 --> 00:04:46,791 Our planet can't sustain much more growth. 83 00:04:46,791 --> 00:04:50,758 That's why the crisis that we have today won't go away. 84 00:04:59,264 --> 00:05:01,117 One of the things I talk about is the sense 85 00:05:01,117 --> 00:05:03,202 of wrongness that I had as a child. 86 00:05:03,202 --> 00:05:05,323 I think most kids have some sense of it, 87 00:05:05,323 --> 00:05:07,452 that it's not supposed to be this way. 88 00:05:07,452 --> 00:05:10,461 For example, that you're not supposed to actually hate Monday, 89 00:05:10,461 --> 00:05:14,700 and be happy when you don't have to go to school. 90 00:05:14,700 --> 00:05:16,701 School should be something that you love. 91 00:05:16,701 --> 00:05:19,089 Life should be something that you love. 92 00:05:19,089 --> 00:05:22,841 We didn't earn any of the things that really 93 00:05:22,841 --> 00:05:26,555 keep us alive or that make life good. 94 00:05:26,555 --> 00:05:30,807 We didn't earn air. We didn't earn being born. 95 00:05:30,807 --> 00:05:32,867 We didn't earn our conception. 96 00:05:32,867 --> 00:05:34,702 We didn't earn being able to breathe. 97 00:05:34,702 --> 00:05:38,202 We didn't earn having a planet that can provide food. 98 00:05:38,202 --> 00:05:40,652 We didn't earn the Sun. 99 00:05:40,652 --> 00:05:46,518 So, I think that on some level, people have this inborn gratitude. 100 00:05:46,518 --> 00:05:49,787 Because on some level we know that we didn't earn any of this. 101 00:05:49,787 --> 00:05:52,852 We know that life is a gift. 102 00:05:52,852 --> 00:05:54,830 Well, if you know that you've received a gift, 103 00:05:54,830 --> 00:05:57,001 then the natural response is gratitude, 104 00:05:57,001 --> 00:05:59,683 the desire to give in turn. 105 00:05:59,683 --> 00:06:05,717 In a gift economy, it's not true, the way it is in our money economy, 106 00:06:05,717 --> 00:06:09,434 that everybody's in competition with everybody else. 107 00:06:09,434 --> 00:06:11,976 In a gift society, if you have more than you need, 108 00:06:11,976 --> 00:06:15,268 you give it to somebody who needs it. 109 00:06:15,268 --> 00:06:18,935 That's how you get status. 110 00:06:18,935 --> 00:06:21,350 And that's even where security comes from. 111 00:06:21,350 --> 00:06:23,518 Because if you build up all that gratitude, 112 00:06:23,518 --> 00:06:25,934 then people are going to take care of you, too. 113 00:06:25,934 --> 00:06:29,002 And if there are no gifts, then there's no community. 114 00:06:29,002 --> 00:06:32,452 And we can see as society has become more monetized, 115 00:06:32,452 --> 00:06:34,836 that community has disappeared. 116 00:06:34,836 --> 00:06:37,626 People long for it, but you can't just have community 117 00:06:37,626 --> 00:06:40,628 as an add-on to a monetized life. 118 00:06:40,628 --> 00:06:43,379 You have to actually need each other. 119 00:06:43,379 --> 00:06:47,885 People desire to enact their gifts, 120 00:06:47,885 --> 00:06:51,017 and if they were free from money, they would do it. 121 00:06:51,017 --> 00:06:53,142 But money is so often a barrier. 122 00:06:53,142 --> 00:07:00,101 People think - Oh, I would love to do this, but can I afford to do it? Is it practical? 123 00:07:00,101 --> 00:07:05,602 Money stops them. What beautiful thing would I do? What am I called to do? 124 00:07:05,602 --> 00:07:08,768 Would it be to set up big gardens for homeless people 125 00:07:08,768 --> 00:07:11,574 to take care of, and reconnect them to nature? 126 00:07:11,574 --> 00:07:15,267 Would it be to clean up a toxic waste site? 127 00:07:15,267 --> 00:07:16,329 What would you do? 128 00:07:16,329 --> 00:07:17,958 What beautiful thing would you do? 129 00:07:17,958 --> 00:07:20,208 And why isn't it practical to do these things? 130 00:07:20,208 --> 00:07:23,384 Why isn't there money in those things? 131 00:07:30,929 --> 00:07:34,393 An economy that embodies the principles of the gift 132 00:07:34,393 --> 00:07:38,268 is an economy that is simply grounded in the truth. 133 00:07:38,268 --> 00:07:41,318 The task before us is to align money 134 00:07:41,318 --> 00:07:45,020 with the true expression of our gifts. 135 00:07:45,020 --> 00:07:48,104 It requires a very different mechanism 136 00:07:48,104 --> 00:07:51,104 for the creation of money and the circulation of money. 137 00:07:51,104 --> 00:07:54,354 They include things like negative interest, 138 00:07:54,354 --> 00:07:56,955 which reverses the effects of usury. 139 00:07:56,955 --> 00:07:59,420 They include things like the internalization of costs, 140 00:07:59,420 --> 00:08:01,169 so you can no longer pollute 141 00:08:01,169 --> 00:08:04,296 and have somebody else or future generations pay the costs. 142 00:08:04,296 --> 00:08:06,008 They include a social dividend: 143 00:08:06,008 --> 00:08:10,354 sharing in the wealth that comes from what should be the commons 144 00:08:10,354 --> 00:08:13,555 -- the land, the aquifers, our cultural heritage. 145 00:08:13,555 --> 00:08:17,852 They include a relocalization of a lot of economic functions. 146 00:08:17,852 --> 00:08:22,484 They include all kinds of peer-to-peer financing 147 00:08:22,484 --> 00:08:25,318 and the peer-to-peer revolution. 148 00:08:25,318 --> 00:08:29,489 What will it take to shift away from the current money system? 149 00:08:29,489 --> 00:08:33,769 The current money system just works less and less well. 150 00:08:33,769 --> 00:08:37,249 Growth can only be maintained at a higher and higher cost. 151 00:08:37,249 --> 00:08:39,958 Even our best efforts can't keep the economy growing 152 00:08:39,958 --> 00:08:43,711 as fast as it needs to for the system to work 153 00:08:43,711 --> 00:08:45,928 -- and that creates further misery. 154 00:08:45,928 --> 00:08:48,382 People just can't take it anymore. 155 00:08:49,455 --> 00:08:51,964 Even the people on top, even the winners 156 00:08:51,964 --> 00:08:54,409 of this artificially induced competition, 157 00:08:54,409 --> 00:08:55,717 they're not happy either. 158 00:08:55,717 --> 00:08:58,722 It's not working for them either. 159 00:08:58,722 --> 00:09:02,807 So I think that we're going to see a series of crisis moments, 160 00:09:02,807 --> 00:09:05,309 each one more severe than the last. 161 00:09:05,309 --> 00:09:07,325 And at each crisis moment 162 00:09:07,325 --> 00:09:09,409 we'll have a collective choice: 163 00:09:09,409 --> 00:09:14,194 do we give up the game and join the people? 164 00:09:14,194 --> 00:09:16,862 Or do we hold on even tighter? 165 00:09:16,862 --> 00:09:21,999 It's really up to us to determine 166 00:09:21,999 --> 00:09:25,382 at what point this wake up point will happen. 167 00:09:31,668 --> 00:09:33,418 Was this all a big mistake? 168 00:09:33,418 --> 00:09:37,644 That's a good question, and it sure seems like it was sometimes. 169 00:09:37,644 --> 00:09:40,585 When you look around at just the horrors 170 00:09:40,585 --> 00:09:42,067 that have taken place on this Earth 171 00:09:42,067 --> 00:09:44,110 and that are ongoing right now. 172 00:09:44,110 --> 00:09:47,196 And some people think: I just don't want any part of this, 173 00:09:47,196 --> 00:09:50,197 civilization was a huge mistake. 174 00:09:50,197 --> 00:09:54,745 I came to see this whole journey of separation 175 00:09:54,745 --> 00:09:58,248 not as a mistake, but as part of a larger process. 176 00:09:58,248 --> 00:10:01,877 It started, I think, with the environmental movement in the 1960s, 177 00:10:01,877 --> 00:10:05,841 that was its first awakening into mass consciousness. 178 00:10:05,841 --> 00:10:07,978 And the astronauts went up 179 00:10:07,978 --> 00:10:11,929 and experienced the pinnacle of separation. 180 00:10:11,929 --> 00:10:14,181 And the photos that got beamed down, 181 00:10:14,181 --> 00:10:18,227 even today it still evokes love in us. 182 00:10:18,227 --> 00:10:20,188 So, we're falling in love with Earth. 183 00:10:20,188 --> 00:10:23,144 That's one part of our transition into adulthood. 184 00:10:23,144 --> 00:10:28,112 The other part is the coming of age ordeal, 185 00:10:28,112 --> 00:10:31,144 when the old world falls apart, 186 00:10:31,144 --> 00:10:35,240 and a new world is born. 187 00:10:36,316 --> 00:10:38,217 You know, a child plays 188 00:10:38,217 --> 00:10:41,664 a child plays and develops his or her gifts, 189 00:10:41,664 --> 00:10:45,370 but doesn't apply them toward their true purpose yet. 190 00:10:45,370 --> 00:10:46,671 And that's what humanity's been doing. 191 00:10:46,671 --> 00:10:48,870 We've been messing around, 192 00:10:48,870 --> 00:10:53,177 playing with our gifts of technology and culture, 193 00:10:53,177 --> 00:10:55,871 and developing these gifts. 194 00:10:55,871 --> 00:10:58,891 Now we're coming into adulthood and it's time 195 00:10:58,891 --> 00:11:02,121 to apply them to our true purpose. 196 00:11:02,121 --> 00:11:04,480 At the beginning, I think that'll be simply to heal 197 00:11:04,480 --> 00:11:06,064 the damage that's been done. 198 00:11:06,064 --> 00:11:08,037 And there's a lot of healing that needs to be done, 199 00:11:08,037 --> 00:11:12,371 and it's almost impossible actually. 200 00:11:12,857 --> 00:11:15,236 You could say that really we're in the business 201 00:11:15,236 --> 00:11:19,055 of creating a miracle here on Earth. 202 00:11:21,240 --> 00:11:24,537 I'm saying it's something that is impossible 203 00:11:24,537 --> 00:11:27,708 from an old understanding of reality, 204 00:11:27,708 --> 00:11:30,075 but possible from a new one. 205 00:11:30,075 --> 00:11:31,755 And, in fact, it's necessary. 206 00:11:31,755 --> 00:11:34,800 And, in fact, anything less than that isn't even worth trying.