{"id":5510,"date":"2020-05-13T19:19:36","date_gmt":"2020-05-13T17:19:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/potulnauniverzita.cz\/?p=5510"},"modified":"2021-01-25T21:11:49","modified_gmt":"2021-01-25T20:11:49","slug":"charles-eisenstein-nedelani","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/potulnauniverzita.cz\/en\/charles-eisenstein-nedelani\/","title":{"rendered":"Charles Eisenstein: Not Doing"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cAt some point we will simply have to stop. Just stop, without any idea of what to do. \u2026 When your old story is over or is about to end, don\u2019t you feel like you tend to give up? \u2026 What once made sense no longer makes sense. You begin to withdraw from this world. \u2026 Doing nothing is not some universal instruction; it is specific to the time when one story ends and we enter the space between stories. \u2026 It means freedom from reflexive activity: to act when it is time to act, not to act when it is not time to act. Acting is thus in harmony with the natural movement of things, in service of what wants to be born.\u201d<\/p>Charles Eisenstein<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Before we can enter a new story, most of us\u2014and probably most societies\u2014must find a way out of the old one. There is an empty space between the old story and the new story. It is a time when the lessons and teachings of the old story are integrated. Only when this work is done is the old story truly finished. Then there is nothingness, the fertile void from which all being is born. By returning to essence, we regain the ability to act from essence. By returning to the space between stories, we can make decisions from a sense of inner freedom rather than from habit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A good time to \u201cdo nothing\u201d is whenever you feel stuck. I did a lot of nothing while writing this book. I spent days trying to write the conclusion, racking my brain and producing cheap rehash of previous material. The more I did, the worse it got. So I finally gave up and just sat on the couch, my baby wrapped around my chest, mentally going through the book I was writing, but without any plan for figuring out what to write. It was this empty space from which the conclusion spontaneously emerged.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Don't be afraid of that empty space. It is the source we must return to if we are to free ourselves from the stories and habits in which we are trapped.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If we are stuck and do not choose to visit that empty space, we will end up there anyway. You may know this process well on a personal level. The old world is falling apart, but the new one has not yet emerged. Everything that once seemed permanent and real is revealed to you as a kind of hallucination. You do not know what to think, what to do; you do not understand anything anymore. The life path you have planned for yourself seems absurd and you are unable to imagine another one. Everything is uncertain. Your time frame shrinks from years to this month, this week, today, and perhaps even this present moment. Without the semblance of order that filtered your reality and seemed to protect you, you feel naked and vulnerable, but also in a way free. Possibilities lie before you that did not exist in the old story at all, even if you have no idea how to get to them. The challenge in our culture is to allow ourselves to be in that space, to trust that the next story will emerge once the time between stories is over, and to trust that we will recognize it. Our culture wants us to keep going, to do. The old story that we leave behind, which is usually part of the conventional people's story<\/em>, is letting us go with great reluctance. So please, if you are in the sacred space between stories, allow yourself to be there. It is terrifying to lose old structures of safety, but you will find that even though you may lose things that were unthinkable to you, you will be okay. There is a kind of grace that protects us in the space between stories. It does not mean that you will not lose your marriage, your money, your job, or your health. In fact, it is very likely that you will lose some of those things. But you will find that even though you have lost them, you are still okay. You will find yourself in a more intimate connection with something much more precious, something that fire cannot burn and thieves cannot steal, something that no one can take from you and cannot be lost. Sometimes we may lose sight of it, but it is always there waiting for us. It is a resting place to return to when our old story falls apart. Once its fog is dissolved, we are able to embrace a realistic vision of another world, another story, another phase of life. From the marriage of this vision and this emptiness, great power is born.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I wrote, \u201cThere are possibilities before you that never existed in the old story, even if you have no idea how to get to them.\u201d That\u2019s a pretty good description of the place we\u2019re all moving towards together. Those of us who have, in various ways, left the old one behind people's story<\/em>, represent the sensory organs of the collective human body. When civilization as a whole enters the space between stories, it will be ready to embrace these visions, these technologies, and these social forms of coexistence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But civilization hasn't quite gotten there yet. Right now, most people still quietly believe that the old solutions will work. A new president is elected, a new invention is announced, a small economic boost is proclaimed, and hope resurfaces. Maybe things will go back to normal. Maybe the rise of humanity will continue. Today, it's still possible to imagine, without much effort at denial or pretense, that we're simply in a difficult situation. We can get out of this if we just find some new sources of oil, if we build more infrastructure to fuel economic growth, if we solve the molecular mystery of autoimmunity, if we deploy more drones to protect us from terrorism and crime, if we genetically modify crops for higher yields and add white pigments to cement to reflect sunlight and slow global warming.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Given that all of these efforts are likely to produce unintended consequences, even worse than the problems they are intended to solve, it is not difficult to understand the wisdom of doing nothing. But this does not mean, as I will explain later, that the activist should focus on obstruction. Doing nothing arises naturally from the breakdown of the old story that motivated the old ways of doing things, and therefore calls on us to do what we can to hasten the demise of that old story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My brother, whose clear mind is relatively uncorrupted because he rarely reads anything written after 1900, described to me his vision of how the change will ultimately play out. A bunch of bureaucrats and political leaders will be racking their brains over what to do about another financial crisis. All the usual central bank strategies, bailouts, interest rate cuts, quantitative easing, and so on, will be on the table, but the leaders simply won't be able to bring themselves to discuss it. "Screw it," they'll say. "Let's go fishing instead."<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At some point, we will simply have to stop. Just stop, without any idea what to do. As I have described with the examples of disarmament and permaculture, we are lost in a hellish landscape, navigating it according to a map that leads us in circles from which there is never a way out. To get out of here, we will have to put the map aside and look around.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When your old story is over or is about to end, don't you feel like you're giving up? Procrastination, laziness, half-hearted attempts, doing things mechanically - all of these indicate that the old story no longer motivates you. What once made sense no longer makes sense. You start to withdraw from this world. Society does everything it can to convince you that this retreat must be resisted; and when you resist it, it's called depression. It takes increasingly powerful motivational and chemical means to keep our attention on what we don't want to focus on, to keep our motivation to do what we have no interest in. If the fear of poverty doesn't work, then maybe psychiatric treatment will work. Anything that keeps you involved in maintaining the status quo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The depression that prevents us from engaging with the life we are offered also has a collective manifestation. Because our society lacks a compelling sense of meaning and purpose, it is confused and does things half-heartedly and superficially. The \u201cdepression\u201d manifests itself in an economic sense as an instrument of our collective will\u2014money stagnates. There is no longer enough of it to do anything great. Like insulin in the case of an insulin-resistant diabetic, monetary authorities pump more and more money into circulation with less and less effect. What once would have ignited an economic boom is now barely enough to keep the economy from stalling. Paralyzing the economy could, of course, be one way this \u201cstall\u201d manifests itself. But it could be anything that makes us give up our story and all its provisions once and for all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Doing nothing is not a universal instruction; it is specific to the time when one story ends and we enter the space between stories. I am drawing on a Taoist principle here. wu-wei<\/em>; sometimes translated as \u201cnot doing,\u201d a better translation might be \u201cunintentionality\u201d or \u201cnon-imposition.\u201d It means freedom from reflexive activity: acting when it is time to act, not acting when it is not time to act. Acting is thus in harmony with the natural movement of things, in the service of what wants to be born.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this regard, I draw inspiration from a beautiful verse from the book Tao Te Ching<\/em>. This verse is extraordinarily dense, with multiple meanings and layers of meaning, and I have not found a translation that highlights what I am drawing from it here. What follows is therefore my own translation. It is the last half of verse 16 \u2013 if you compare existing translations with this translation, you will be surprised at how much they differ from it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All things return to their root.
Returning to the root is silence.
In silence, true purpose returns.  
That's what's real.
To know the real is clarity.
Not knowing the real is a foolish act that causes misfortune.
From the knowledge of the real comes spaciousness,
From spaciousness comes impartiality,
from impartiality comes sovereignty,
from sovereignty comes what is natural.
What comes naturally is Tao.
From Tao comes that which is permanent,
our own persistent "self".<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
Charles Eisenstein (born 1967) is an American writer and teacher, and one of the most inspiring visionaries of the transition to a sustainable civilization. He describes himself as a non-growth activist. His work focuses on the transformation of human consciousness and civilization. The above excerpt is the twentieth chapter of the author's penultimate book The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know It Possible<\/em>, in which he deconstructs the old story of separation and describes the emergence of a new story of togetherness; Czech edition: A more beautiful world is possible, our hearts know it<\/em> (Maitrea 2018, pp. 149-154; translation by Hana Bernardov\u00e1).<\/strong><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cAt some point we will simply have to stop. Just stop, without any idea what to do. \u2026 When your old story is over or is about to end, don\u2019t you feel like you tend to give up? \u2026 What once made sense no longer makes sense. You start to withdraw from this world. \u2026 Doing nothing is not some universal instruction; it is specific to the time,\u2026 Continue reading Charles Eisenstein: Not Doing<\/span><\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5518,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[30],"class_list":["post-5510","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-texty","tag-charles-eisenstein","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/potulnauniverzita.cz\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5510","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/potulnauniverzita.cz\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/potulnauniverzita.cz\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/potulnauniverzita.cz\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/potulnauniverzita.cz\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5510"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/potulnauniverzita.cz\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5510\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7144,"href":"https:\/\/potulnauniverzita.cz\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5510\/revisions\/7144"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/potulnauniverzita.cz\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5518"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/potulnauniverzita.cz\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5510"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/potulnauniverzita.cz\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5510"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/potulnauniverzita.cz\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5510"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}