WEBVTT 00:00:16.439 --> 00:00:18.678 Anytime you want to understand something... 00:00:19.278 --> 00:00:21.024 Why is such and such happening? 00:00:21.255 --> 00:00:23.358 Why is there a bio-diversity crisis? 00:00:23.512 --> 00:00:27.278 Why are we drilling for more oil, 00:00:27.278 --> 00:00:29.894 when it's polluting the atmosphere 00:00:29.894 --> 00:00:31.509 and causing oil spills? Why? 00:00:31.509 --> 00:00:33.509 And you ask why!? 00:00:33.509 --> 00:00:36.663 And down a couple levels of why, you always get to money. 00:00:40.040 --> 00:00:42.530 I talk a lot about the story of self, that every culture has, 00:00:44.066 --> 00:00:46.080 that answers the question - What are you? 00:00:46.557 --> 00:00:47.953 What is it to be human? 00:00:49.953 --> 00:00:52.006 It says that you're this separate being, 00:00:52.006 --> 00:00:53.583 among other separate beings, 00:00:53.583 --> 00:00:56.683 in a universe that is separate from yourself as well. 00:00:57.439 --> 00:01:00.044 You are not me, that plant is not me, 00:01:00.044 --> 00:01:01.895 that's something separate. 00:01:02.141 --> 00:01:06.238 And this story of self really creates our world. 00:01:07.454 --> 00:01:08.865 If you're a separate self 00:01:08.865 --> 00:01:10.480 and there's other separate selves out there, 00:01:10.480 --> 00:01:12.042 other species out there, 00:01:12.042 --> 00:01:16.315 the universe is fundamentally indifferent to you 00:01:16.315 --> 00:01:21.957 or even hostile, then you definitely want to control. 00:01:22.972 --> 00:01:26.638 You want to be able to have power over other beings and over NOTE Paragraph 00:01:26.638 --> 00:01:30.154 these whimsical, arbitrary forces of nature 00:01:30.154 --> 00:01:33.433 that could extinguish you any time. 00:01:35.849 --> 00:01:38.577 This story is becoming obsolete, 00:01:38.577 --> 00:01:41.085 it's becoming no longer true. 00:01:41.624 --> 00:01:44.009 We don't resonate with it any more. 00:01:44.809 --> 00:01:47.953 It's actually generating crises that are insoluble 00:01:47.953 --> 00:01:50.590 from the methods of control. 00:01:51.621 --> 00:01:55.017 That's what's clearing the space for us 00:01:55.017 --> 00:01:59.207 to step into a new story of self and a new story of the people. 00:02:12.299 --> 00:02:23.248 (wind chimes) 00:02:23.755 --> 00:02:25.520 Money is an agreement. 00:02:25.812 --> 00:02:27.993 It doesn't have value all by itself. 00:02:28.578 --> 00:02:32.374 It has value because people agree that it has value. 00:02:32.667 --> 00:02:35.140 Economists will tell you what money does. 00:02:36.525 --> 00:02:38.952 That it facilitates exchange. 00:02:39.444 --> 00:02:42.652 You use it to count things and keep track of things. 00:02:42.652 --> 00:02:44.245 You write some numbers 00:02:44.245 --> 00:02:47.468 on a magical piece of paper called a check, 00:02:47.468 --> 00:02:51.538 and you can cause all kinds of abundant goods 00:02:51.538 --> 00:02:53.131 to come to your house. 00:02:53.716 --> 00:02:56.801 You can even cause misery for thousands of people 00:02:56.801 --> 00:03:02.067 if you are one of the highest initiates of the magic of money. 00:03:04.159 --> 00:03:06.323 Scarcity is built into the money system, 00:03:06.323 --> 00:03:08.657 on a most obvious level. 00:03:08.657 --> 00:03:10.638 It's because of the way money is created, 00:03:10.638 --> 00:03:12.398 as interest-bearing debt. 00:03:12.567 --> 00:03:15.112 Any time a bank lends money into existence, 00:03:15.112 --> 00:03:17.496 or the Federal Reserve creates money, 00:03:17.496 --> 00:03:21.480 the money comes along with a corresponding amount of debt, 00:03:21.480 --> 00:03:23.972 and the debt, because of interest on it, 00:03:23.972 --> 00:03:25.922 is always greater than the amount of money. 00:03:26.168 --> 00:03:28.671 It essentially throws people into competition with each other 00:03:28.671 --> 00:03:30.030 for never enough money. 00:03:30.860 --> 00:03:33.511 Growth is another thing that's built into our money system. 00:03:33.757 --> 00:03:35.765 If you're a bank, you're going to lend it to the person 00:03:35.765 --> 00:03:38.020 who's going to create new goods and services, 00:03:38.020 --> 00:03:40.696 so they can profit and they can pay you back. 00:03:41.035 --> 00:03:42.316 You're not going to lend to somebody 00:03:42.316 --> 00:03:44.142 who doesn't create goods and services. 00:03:44.142 --> 00:03:47.121 So money goes toward those who will create even more of it. 00:03:47.721 --> 00:03:49.649 But basically economic growth means 00:03:49.649 --> 00:03:52.147 that you have to find something that 00:03:52.147 --> 00:03:55.849 was once nature and make it into a good, 00:03:55.849 --> 00:03:57.523 or was once a gift relationship 00:03:57.523 --> 00:03:59.098 and make it into a service. 00:03:59.098 --> 00:04:01.674 You have to find something that people once got for free 00:04:01.674 --> 00:04:04.218 or did for themselves or for each other 00:04:04.218 --> 00:04:08.134 and then take it away and sell it back to them, somehow. 00:04:09.488 --> 00:04:12.231 By turning things into commodities, 00:04:12.231 --> 00:04:14.573 we get cut off from nature 00:04:14.573 --> 00:04:17.406 in the same ways we're cut off from community. 00:04:17.421 --> 00:04:21.161 We look at nature with eyes, well, it's just a bunch of stuff. 00:04:21.191 --> 00:04:23.471 And that leaves us very lonely 00:04:23.471 --> 00:04:28.505 and leaves us with many basic human needs that go unmet. 00:04:28.520 --> 00:04:30.623 And if you have money, 00:04:30.623 --> 00:04:34.792 you might try to fulfill this hunger through purchasing, 00:04:34.792 --> 00:04:38.923 through buying things, or through accumulating money itself. 00:04:38.923 --> 00:04:42.649 Of course, now we're nearing the end of growth. 00:04:42.649 --> 00:04:46.791 Our planet can't sustain much more growth. NOTE Paragraph 00:04:46.791 --> 00:04:50.758 That's why the crisis that we have today won't go away. 00:04:59.264 --> 00:05:01.117 One of the things I talk about is the sense 00:05:01.117 --> 00:05:03.202 of wrongness that I had as a child. 00:05:03.202 --> 00:05:05.323 I think most kids have some sense of it, 00:05:05.323 --> 00:05:07.452 that it's not supposed to be this way. 00:05:07.452 --> 00:05:10.461 For example, that you're not supposed to actually hate Monday, 00:05:10.461 --> 00:05:14.700 and be happy when you don't have to go to school. 00:05:14.700 --> 00:05:16.701 School should be something that you love. 00:05:16.701 --> 00:05:19.089 Life should be something that you love. 00:05:19.089 --> 00:05:22.841 We didn't earn any of the things that really 00:05:22.841 --> 00:05:26.555 keep us alive or that make life good. 00:05:26.555 --> 00:05:30.807 We didn't earn air. We didn't earn being born. 00:05:30.807 --> 00:05:32.867 We didn't earn our conception. 00:05:32.867 --> 00:05:34.702 We didn't earn being able to breathe. 00:05:34.702 --> 00:05:38.202 We didn't earn having a planet that can provide food. 00:05:38.202 --> 00:05:40.652 We didn't earn the Sun. 00:05:40.652 --> 00:05:46.518 So, I think that on some level, people have this inborn gratitude. 00:05:46.518 --> 00:05:49.787 Because on some level we know that we didn't earn any of this. 00:05:49.787 --> 00:05:52.852 We know that life is a gift. 00:05:52.852 --> 00:05:54.830 Well, if you know that you've received a gift, 00:05:54.830 --> 00:05:57.001 then the natural response is gratitude, 00:05:57.001 --> 00:05:59.683 the desire to give in turn. 00:05:59.683 --> 00:06:05.717 In a gift economy, it's not true, the way it is in our money economy, 00:06:05.717 --> 00:06:09.434 that everybody's in competition with everybody else. 00:06:09.434 --> 00:06:11.976 In a gift society, if you have more than you need, 00:06:11.976 --> 00:06:15.268 you give it to somebody who needs it. 00:06:15.268 --> 00:06:18.935 That's how you get status. 00:06:18.935 --> 00:06:21.350 And that's even where security comes from. 00:06:21.350 --> 00:06:23.518 Because if you build up all that gratitude, 00:06:23.518 --> 00:06:25.934 then people are going to take care of you, too. 00:06:25.934 --> 00:06:29.002 And if there are no gifts, then there's no community. 00:06:29.002 --> 00:06:32.452 And we can see as society has become more monetized, 00:06:32.452 --> 00:06:34.836 that community has disappeared. 00:06:34.836 --> 00:06:37.626 People long for it, but you can't just have community 00:06:37.626 --> 00:06:40.628 as an add-on to a monetized life. 00:06:40.628 --> 00:06:43.379 You have to actually need each other. 00:06:43.379 --> 00:06:47.885 People desire to enact their gifts, 00:06:47.885 --> 00:06:51.017 and if they were free from money, they would do it. 00:06:51.017 --> 00:06:53.142 But money is so often a barrier. 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? 00:07:00.101 --> 00:07:05.602 Money stops them. What beautiful thing would I do? What am I called to do? 00:07:05.602 --> 00:07:08.768 Would it be to set up big gardens for homeless people 00:07:08.768 --> 00:07:11.574 to take care of, and reconnect them to nature? 00:07:11.574 --> 00:07:15.267 Would it be to clean up a toxic waste site? 00:07:15.267 --> 00:07:16.329 What would you do? 00:07:16.329 --> 00:07:17.958 What beautiful thing would you do? 00:07:17.958 --> 00:07:20.208 And why isn't it practical to do these things? 00:07:20.208 --> 00:07:23.384 Why isn't there money in those things? 00:07:30.929 --> 00:07:34.393 An economy that embodies the principles of the gift 00:07:34.393 --> 00:07:38.268 is an economy that is simply grounded in the truth. 00:07:38.268 --> 00:07:41.318 The task before us is to align money 00:07:41.318 --> 00:07:45.020 with the true expression of our gifts. 00:07:45.020 --> 00:07:48.104 It requires a very different mechanism 00:07:48.104 --> 00:07:51.104 for the creation of money and the circulation of money. 00:07:51.104 --> 00:07:54.354 They include things like negative interest, 00:07:54.354 --> 00:07:56.955 which reverses the effects of usury. 00:07:56.955 --> 00:07:59.420 They include things like the internalization of costs, 00:07:59.420 --> 00:08:01.169 so you can no longer pollute 00:08:01.169 --> 00:08:04.296 and have somebody else or future generations pay the costs. 00:08:04.296 --> 00:08:06.008 They include a social dividend: 00:08:06.008 --> 00:08:10.354 sharing in the wealth that comes from what should be the commons 00:08:10.354 --> 00:08:13.555 -- the land, the aquifers, our cultural heritage. 00:08:13.555 --> 00:08:17.852 They include a relocalization of a lot of economic functions. 00:08:17.852 --> 00:08:22.484 They include all kinds of peer-to-peer financing 00:08:22.484 --> 00:08:25.318 and the peer-to-peer revolution. 00:08:25.318 --> 00:08:29.489 What will it take to shift away from the current money system? 00:08:29.489 --> 00:08:33.769 The current money system just works less and less well. 00:08:33.769 --> 00:08:37.249 Growth can only be maintained at a higher and higher cost. 00:08:37.249 --> 00:08:39.958 Even our best efforts can't keep the economy growing 00:08:39.958 --> 00:08:43.711 as fast as it needs to for the system to work 00:08:43.711 --> 00:08:45.928 -- and that creates further misery. 00:08:45.928 --> 00:08:48.382 People just can't take it anymore. 00:08:49.455 --> 00:08:51.964 Even the people on top, even the winners 00:08:51.964 --> 00:08:54.409 of this artificially induced competition, 00:08:54.409 --> 00:08:55.717 they're not happy either. 00:08:55.717 --> 00:08:58.722 It's not working for them either. 00:08:58.722 --> 00:09:02.807 So I think that we're going to see a series of crisis moments, 00:09:02.807 --> 00:09:05.309 each one more severe than the last. 00:09:05.309 --> 00:09:07.325 And at each crisis moment 00:09:07.325 --> 00:09:09.409 we'll have a collective choice: 00:09:09.409 --> 00:09:14.194 do we give up the game and join the people? 00:09:14.194 --> 00:09:16.862 Or do we hold on even tighter? 00:09:16.862 --> 00:09:21.999 It's really up to us to determine 00:09:21.999 --> 00:09:25.382 at what point this wake up point will happen. 00:09:31.668 --> 00:09:33.418 Was this all a big mistake? 00:09:33.418 --> 00:09:37.644 That's a good question, and it sure seems like it was sometimes. 00:09:37.644 --> 00:09:40.585 When you look around at just the horrors 00:09:40.585 --> 00:09:42.067 that have taken place on this Earth 00:09:42.067 --> 00:09:44.110 and that are ongoing right now. 00:09:44.110 --> 00:09:47.196 And some people think: I just don't want any part of this, 00:09:47.196 --> 00:09:50.197 civilization was a huge mistake. 00:09:50.197 --> 00:09:54.745 I came to see this whole journey of separation 00:09:54.745 --> 00:09:58.248 not as a mistake, but as part of a larger process. 00:09:58.248 --> 00:10:01.877 It started, I think, with the environmental movement in the 1960s, 00:10:01.877 --> 00:10:05.841 that was its first awakening into mass consciousness. 00:10:05.841 --> 00:10:07.978 And the astronauts went up 00:10:07.978 --> 00:10:11.929 and experienced the pinnacle of separation. 00:10:11.929 --> 00:10:14.181 And the photos that got beamed down, 00:10:14.181 --> 00:10:18.227 even today it still evokes love in us. 00:10:18.227 --> 00:10:20.188 So, we're falling in love with Earth. 00:10:20.188 --> 00:10:23.144 That's one part of our transition into adulthood. 00:10:23.144 --> 00:10:28.112 The other part is the coming of age ordeal, 00:10:28.112 --> 00:10:31.144 when the old world falls apart, 00:10:31.144 --> 00:10:35.240 and a new world is born. 00:10:36.316 --> 00:10:38.217 You know, a child plays 00:10:38.217 --> 00:10:41.664 a child plays and develops his or her gifts, 00:10:41.664 --> 00:10:45.370 but doesn't apply them toward their true purpose yet. 00:10:45.370 --> 00:10:46.671 And that's what humanity's been doing. 00:10:46.671 --> 00:10:48.870 We've been messing around, 00:10:48.870 --> 00:10:53.177 playing with our gifts of technology and culture, 00:10:53.177 --> 00:10:55.871 and developing these gifts. 00:10:55.871 --> 00:10:58.891 Now we're coming into adulthood and it's time 00:10:58.891 --> 00:11:02.121 to apply them to our true purpose. 00:11:02.121 --> 00:11:04.480 At the beginning, I think that'll be simply to heal 00:11:04.480 --> 00:11:06.064 the damage that's been done. 00:11:06.064 --> 00:11:08.037 And there's a lot of healing that needs to be done, 00:11:08.037 --> 00:11:12.371 and it's almost impossible actually. 00:11:12.857 --> 00:11:15.236 You could say that really we're in the business 00:11:15.236 --> 00:11:19.055 of creating a miracle here on Earth. 00:11:21.240 --> 00:11:24.537 I'm saying it's something that is impossible 00:11:24.537 --> 00:11:27.708 from an old understanding of reality, 00:11:27.708 --> 00:11:30.075 but possible from a new one. 00:11:30.075 --> 00:11:31.755 And, in fact, it's necessary. 00:11:31.755 --> 00:11:34.800 And, in fact, anything less than that isn't even worth trying.