• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Charles Eisenstein

  • About
  • Essays
  • Videos
  • Podcasts
    • Charles Eisenstein Random
    • New and Ancient Story Podcast
  • Courses
    • Climate — Inside and Out
    • Conversations with Orland Bishop, Course One
    • Conversations with Orland Bishop, Course Two
    • Conversations with Orland Bishop, Course Three
    • Dietary Transformation from the Inside Out
    • Living in the Gift
    • Masculinity: A New Story
    • Metaphysics & Mystery
    • Space Between Stories
    • Unlearning: For Change Agents
  • Books
    • The Coronation
    • Climate — A New Story
    • The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible
    • The Ascent of Humanity
    • Sacred Economics
    • The Yoga of Eating
  • Events
  • Donate

Latent Healing

January 7, 2013 by Charles Eisenstein Leave a Comment

January 2013


The purpose of this essay is not to instruct the reader on the fallacy of the technological fix. We can assume that by now the environmentally conscious person has seen through the delusion of applying technology to remedy the problems that have been caused by previous technology.

It is obvious that a new pesticide won’t finally eliminate the superweeds that evolved to resist the previous pesticide; that new and more powerful antibiotics won’t bring a final victory over the superbugs that evolved to resist previous antibiotics; and that massive geo-engineering projects – such as seeding the stratosphere with sulphuric acid or the oceans with iron to combat climate change – will likely cause horrific unanticipated consequences.

What is less obvious is how pervasive the mentality behind the technological fix is. In the United States, we respond to the failure of metal detectors, lockdowns and other forms of control in our schools by calling for even more control.

European countries unable to pay their debts are lent even more money, with the proviso that they try even harder to pay their debts. Imperialist powers apply military violence to fight the terrorism that is a response to previous imperialism and violence. Doctors prescribe drugs to address the side effects caused by other drugs. Urban planners address traffic congestion by building more roads (which leads to more development and more traffic). And millions of people manage the emptiness of a life of material acquisition by buying more material possessions.

As the word ‘fix’ implies, the logic of technology has very often been the logic of addiction. Feel bad? Have a drink. Feel even worse the next morning? Get drunk again. Depressed because you’ve now lost your job, your marriage and your health due to drinking? Well, why not do what made you feel better last night? Have another drink. As with agricultural chemicals, ever-increasing doses become necessary to maintain what was once your natural, normal state, and all at the cost of everything precious.

Where does the mentality of control come from, and what is the alternative? Is technology fundamentally a violation of Nature? Surely not. After all, all beings use their physical capacities to influence and cocreate their environment. What is different about what we humans have been doing? How can we embrace technology, and not reject this uniquely human gift?

We environmentalists decry human exceptionalism when we criticise the ideology of endless growth, linear extraction and toxic waste, but to say that our capacity for technology has no useful purpose on this planet is another kind of exceptionalism.

Ecology says that each species has a gift that enhances the wellbeing of the whole. The extinction of one species impoverishes the whole. Humanity is no different. The problem isn’t that we have the power of technology. The problem is that we have not used that power in the spirit of a gift. We have not used it in the spirit of ecology. We have not asked: “How might we best serve the totality of all life on Earth?” In contemplating a nuclear power plant, an incinerator, a subdivision, a mine, even a new patio behind our house, we are not in the habit of asking: “Does this best serve the wellbeing of all interested parties?” Our cost–benefit analyses do not include the trees, the water, the fish or the birds.

Why not? Is it because we are Nature’s big mistake? Is there something wrong with us? To think so would be to invoke human exceptionalism once again. It would imply as well that the way to live in harmony with the planet would be to conquer or suppress this badness. How different is that from the mentality of spraying pesticides and exterminating wolves, damming rivers and levelling mountains? The war on Nature, whether internal or external, is part of the problem; it is not the solution.

One simple explanation for why we fail to use technology in the spirit of service to all life is that we have lost touch with our unity, or as Thich Nhat Hanh terms it, our interbeingness, with the rest of life. Seeing Nature as separate from ourselves, of course we see it as inconsequential to our wellbeing. We might acknowledge our conditional dependency on Nature, but not our existential dependency. We might therefore imagine that someday we may become independent of Nature, if only we perfect technological substitutes for Nature’s gifts.

This indeed was the explicit vision of scientific futurists of the 20th century: some day, they dreamed, we will synthesise food, create artificial air, live in bubble cities, abandon the Earth for space colonies, even conquer death with bionic parts or by uploading our consciousness into computers. To some extent, such ambitions are still with us today in the ravings of nanotechnology and genetic-engineering evangelists.

Well, let us not call these visions ‘ravings’, as if they had lost touch with reason. These people are as rational as anyone. What has happened to them is the same thing that has happened to humanity generally (at least to modernised humanity): their reason operates within a narrative – shall we call it a mythology? – in which their aspirations make perfect sense. It is a story that casts us into an alien universe of impersonal forces, in which matter is a purposeless, insensate substrate upon which (why not?) we can impose our designs with impunity, and in which the tendency of all things is towards entropy, disorder, chaos.

In this story, Nature is devoid of purpose or intelligence. Any semblance of purpose is just the accidental result of the senseless cacophony of interacting forces and masses, the blind melee of genetically programmed flesh robots, each seeking to maximise its own genetic self-interest.

Underneath the technological fix is a way of perceiving ourselves and the world. More than a mere mentality of separation and control, it comes from a disconnected state of being that is blind to the indwelling purpose and intelligence of Nature.

For example, the skilled organic farmers might see unwanted weeds or bugs not as interlopers but as a symptom of imbalance in soil ecology. To address them holistically, they must believe there even is such a thing as soil ecology. In other words, they must believe in the wholeness and interconnectedness of all beings that make up soil. They must see soil as a collective, emergent entity in its own right, and not as an inert, generic substrate that plants grow in.

Conventional agriculture, on the other hand, sees weeds as an outbreak of badness, similar to the way we have seen terrorism, or violence in schools, or disease. To see them otherwise – as a symptom of a deeper disharmony – presupposes there is such a harmony, an integrity, a beingness, and not just a senseless jumble. The technological fix addresses the symptom while ignoring the illness, because it cannot see an integral entity that can become ill.

I don’t want to gloss over the profundity of the paradigm shift we are accepting if we are to see Nature as intelligent and purposive, to do which is to abdicate the exclusive domain to which we have appointed ourselves: the sole intelligence of the world. It is to humble ourselves to something greater, and seek our place not as Cartesian lords and possessors of Nature, but as contributors to an unfolding process beyond our selves. This inescapable conclusion is, perhaps, the reason why teleology is anathema to orthodox science. Purpose was supposed to be our domain! And the king of that domain was the scientist, wielding technology to enact its dominion.

The idea of an inherently purposeful universe is far more radical than religious notions of intelligent design, which agree with mechanistic science about matter and cede intelligence to an external, supernatural being. Such a narrative offers no compunctions to limit the despoliation of Nature. It asks us to humble ourselves to nothing of this world.

To be so humbled, we must see that the soul of Nature – its purpose, intelligence and beingness – comes not from without but from within. It is an emergent property born of non-linear complexity. In non-linear systems, small actions can have enormous consequences. The technological fix is based on linear thinking. The alternative is to develop sensitivity to the emergent order and intelligence that wants to unfold, so that we might bow into its service.

What would the expression of our uniquely human gifts of hand and mind look like exercised in the spirit of service to all life? In the short and medium term, this is not a difficult question to answer. The most urgent need before us is to heal the damage that has been done in the millennia-long course of separation. Vast realms of technology, much neglected today, have been developing in the margins, awaiting their moment for full expression.

Here are just a few:

• Regenerative agriculture and permaculture to heal the soil, replenish the aquifers and sequester carbon – all while producing far more food than chemical monocropping and GMOs can. (Industrial agriculture maximises yield per unit of labour, but not per unit of land, energy or water.)

• The use of fungi to detoxify PCBs and petrochemical waste.

• Restoration of deserts. This is not done by pumping in water (which leads to salinisation and the necessity for some new fix), but by identifying and encouraging latent healing processes.

• Conservation technologies that could reduce energy consumption to a fraction of what it is today without any big sacrifice.

• Waste-water treatment with reed beds, aquaculture, and so on (and composting toilets).

• Healing modalities that take seriously the intelligence of Nature and the body, including herbalism, mind-body modalities, touch-based therapies, bioenergetic modalities, and pretty much anything that goes by the name ‘holistic’ or ‘alternative’ today.

• And, since I am veering off the territory of scientific respectability, I may as well mention a few more controversial technologies (along with some so unorthodox they aren’t even subject to controversy) – cold fusion and other unorthodox energy technologies; unorthodox ways to neutralise radioactive waste; Schauberger-inspired water technologies; technologies of the mind called psi phenomena; and shamanic technologies based on direct communication with the hidden beings and forces of Nature.

Every one of the above technologies clashes in some way with our civilisation’s current operating systems. In some cases the clash is paradigmatic: the technologies contradict conventional scientific beliefs. In other cases the clash is economic: there just isn’t much money to be made in establishing public space or generating positive externalities such as aquifer restoration or carbon sequestration. Sometimes laws, building codes and conventional practices impose obstacles as well.

All of these – scientific orthodoxy, the economic system, and law and habit – are expressions of the same mythology of separation. Our money system, for example, rests on the conversion of Nature into products, and relationships into services, reifying the binary subject–object distinction that is at the heart of separation. If you examine closely the phenomena that science refuses to acknowledge, you will find that most of them imply intelligence, purpose and interconnectedness.

What about the long term? What is the purpose of technology on a healed planet? What is the purpose of this unique species to which Gaia has given birth? To that, no one can offer anything but speculation. I think it is something that we can only discover on the other side of the healing journey.

That journey has begun.

Today, painfully, we are becoming aware of the folly of the delusion that we can, with clever enough technological solutions, avoid the consequences of what we do to the world. The pretence of separation is increasingly difficult to maintain. We are learning that we are not separate from Nature, and that it bears a wholeness that we ignore at our peril.

Our techno-utopian dreams and scientific paradigms are unravelling in tandem with many of our social institutions, because the underlying narrative of separation is unravelling as well. These converging crises – social, ecological and intellectual – are expelling us from our old story. As that happens, none of our fixes, technological or otherwise, are working any more to control the pain: the grief, the rage, the loneliness we feel as we gaze out upon what we have wrought.

Thus begins the healing journey, out of the old story, through the space between stories, and ultimately into a new story of cocreative participation in the unfolding destiny of our planet.

This essay first appeared in Resurgence Magazine


Previous: 2013: The Space between Stories
Next: The Cynic and the Boatbuilder

Filed Under: Self & Psyche Tagged With: environmental activism, Essay, force, interbeing, nature, technologies of reunion, technology

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Primary Sidebar

All Essays

Peace-building

Time to Push

The Rehearsal is Over

Some Stuff I’m Reading

Beyond Industrial Medicine

A Temple of this Earth

The Sacrificial King

Words to a Young Man

How It Is Going to Be

What I’m doing here

Charles Eisenstein, Antisemite

Mob Morality and the Unvaxxed

Fascism and the Antifestival

The Death of the Festival

Source Temple and the Great Reset

To Reason with a Madman

From QAnon’s Dark Mirror, Hope

World on Fire

We Can Do Better Than This

The Banquet of Whiteness

The Cure of the Earth

Numb

The Conspiracy Myth

The Coronation

Extinction and the Revolution of Love

The Amazon: How do we heal a burning heart?

Building a Peace Narrative

Xylella: Supervillain or Symptom

Making the Universe Great Again

Every Act a Ceremony

The Polarization Trap

Living in the Gift

A Little Heartbreak

Initiation into a Living Planet

Why I am Afraid of Global Cooling

Olive Trees and the Cry of the Land

Our New, Happy Life? The Ideology of Development

Opposition to GMOs is Neither Unscientific nor Immoral

The Age of We Need Each Other

Institutes for Technologies of Reunion

Brushes with the Mainstream

Standing Rock: A Change of Heart

Transcription: Fertile Ground of Bewilderment Podcast

The Election: Of Hate, Grief, and a New Story

This Is How War Begins

The Lid is Off

Of Horseshoe Crabs and Empathy

Scaling Down

The Fertile Ground of Bewilderment

By Their Fruits Ye Shall Know Them

Psychedelics and Systems Change

Mutiny of the Soul Revisited

Why I Don’t Do Internet Marketing

Zika and the Mentality of Control

In a Rhino, Everything

Grief and Carbon Reductionism

The Revolution is Love

Kind is the New Cool

What We Do to Nature, We Do to Ourselves

From Nonviolence to Service

An Experiment in Gift Economics

Misogyny and the Healing of the Masculine

Sustainable Development: Something New or More of the Same?

The Need for Venture Science

The EcoSexual Awakening

“Don’t Owe. Won’t Pay.”

Harder to Hide

Reflections on Damanhur

On Immigration

The Humbler Realms, Part 2

The Humbler Realms

A Shift in Values Everywhere

Letter to my Younger Self

Aluna: A Message to Little Brother

Raising My Children in Trust

Qualitative Dimensions of Collective Intelligence: Subjectivity, Consciousness, and Soul

The Woman Who Chose to Plant Corn

The Oceans are Not Worth $24 trillion

The Baby in the Playpen

What Are We Greedy For?

We Need Regenerative Farming, Not Geoengineering

The Cynic and the Boatbuilder, Revisited

Activism in the New Story

What is Action?

Wasting Time

The Space Between Stories

Breakdown, Chaos, and Emergence

At This Moment, I Feel Held

A Roundabout Endorsement

Imagine a 3-D World

Presentation to Uplift Festival, 12.14.2014

Shadow, Ritual, and Relationship in the Gift

A Neat Inversion

The Waters of Heterodoxy

Employment in Gift Culture

Localization Beyond Economics

Discipline on the Bus

We Don’t Know: Reflections on the New Story Summit

A Miracle in Scientific American

More Talk?

Why Another Conference?

A Truncated Interview on Racism

A Beautiful World of Abundance

How to Bore the Children

Post-Capitalism

The Malware

The End of War

The Birds are Sad

A Slice of Humble Pie

Bending Reality: But who is the Bender?

The Mysterious Paths by Which Intentions Bear Fruit

The Little Things that Get Under My Skin

A Restorative Response to MH17

Climate Change: The Bigger Picture

Development in the Ecological Age

The campaign against Drax aims to reveal the perverse effects of biofuels

Gateway drug, to what?

Concern about Overpopulation is a Red Herring; Consumption’s the Problem

Imperialism and Ceremony in Bali

Let’s be Honest: Real Sustainability may not make Business Sense

Vivienne Westwood is Right: We Need a Law against Ecocide

2013: Hope or Despair?

2013: A Year that Pierced Me

Synchronicity, Myth, and the New World Order

Fear of a Living Planet

Pyramid Schemes and the Monetization of Everything

The Next Step for Digital Currency

The Cycle of Terror

TED: A Choice Point

The Cynic and the Boatbuilder

2013: The Space between Stories

We Are Unlimited Potential: A Talk with Joseph Chilton Pearce

Why Occupy’s plan to cancel consumer debts is money well spent

Genetically Modifying and Patenting Seeds isn’t the Answer

The Lovely Lady from Nestle

An Alien at the Tech Conference

We Can’t Grow Ourselves out of Debt

Money and the Divine Masculine

Naivete, and the Light in their Eyes

The Healing of Congo

Why Rio +20 Failed

Permaculture and the Myth of Scarcity

For Facebook, A Modest Proposal

A Coal Pile in the Ballroom

A Review of Graeber’s Debt: The First 5000 Years

Gift Economics Resurgent

The Way up is Down

Sacred Economics: Money, the Gift, and Society in the Age of Transition

Design and Strategy Principles for Local Currency

The Lost Marble

To Bear Witness and to Speak the Truth

Thrive: The Story is Wrong but the Spirit is Right

Occupy Wall Street: No Demand is Big Enough

Elephants: Please Don’t Go

Why the Age of the Guru is Over

Gift Economics and Reunion in the Digital Age

A Circle of Gifts

The Three Seeds

Truth and Magic in the Third Dimension

Rituals for Lover Earth

Money and the Turning of the Age

A Gathering of the Tribe

The Sojourn of Science

Wood, Metal, and the Story of the World

A World-Creating Matrix of Truth

Waiting on the Big One

In the Miracle

Money and the Crisis of Civilization

Reuniting the Self: Autoimmunity, Obesity, and the Ecology of Health

Invisible Paths

Reuniting the Self: Autoimmunity, Obesity, and the Ecology of Health (Part 2)

Mutiny of the Soul

The Age of Water

Money: A New Beginning (Part 2)

Money: A New Beginning (Part 1)

The Original Religion

Pain: A Call for Attention

The Miracle of Self-Creation, Part 2

The Miracle of Self-Creation

The Deschooling Convivium

The Testicular Age

Who Will Collect the Garbage?

The Ubiquitous Matrix of Lies

You’re Bad!

A 28-year Lie: The Wrong Lesson

The Ascent of Humanity

The Stars are Shining for Her

All Hallows’ Eve

Confessions of a Hypocrite

The New Epidemics

From Opinion to Belief to Knowing

Soul Families

For Whom was that Bird Singing?

The Multicellular Metahuman

Grades: A Gun to Your Head

Human Nature Denied

The Great Robbery

Humanity Grows Up

Don’t Should on US

A State of Belief is a State of Being

Ascension

Security and Fate

Old-Fashioned, Healthy, Lacto-Fermented Soft Drinks: The Real “Real Thing”

The Ethics of Eating Meat

Privacy Policy | Contact

Charles Eisenstein

All content on this website is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Feel free to copy and share.

Celo: 0x755582C923dB215d9eF7C4Ad3E03D29B2569ABb6

Litecoin: ltc1qqtvtkl3h7mchy7m5jwpvqvt5uzka0yj3nffavu

Bitcoin: bc1q2a2czwhf4sgyx9f9ttf3c4ndt03eyh3uymjgzl

Dogecoin: DT9ECVrg9mPFADhN375WL9ULzcUZo8YEpN

Polkadot: 15s6NSM75Kw6eMLoxm2u8qqbgQFYMnoYhvV1w1SaF9hwVpM4

Polygon: 0xEBF0120A88Ec0058578e2D37C9fFdDc28f3673A6

Zcash: t1PUmhaoYTHJAk1yxmgpfEp27Uk4GHKqRig

Donate & Support

As much as possible I offer my work as a gift. I put it online without a pay wall of any kind. Online course contributions are self-determined at the time you register for each. I also keep the site clean of advertising.

This means I rely on voluntary financial support for my livelihood. You may make a recurring gift or one-time donation using the form below, in whatever amount feels good to you. If your finances are tight at all, please do not give money. Visit our contact page instead for other ways to support this work.

Recurring Donations

Note from the team: Your recurring donation is a resource that allows us to keep Charles doing the work we all want him doing: thinking, speaking, writing, rather than worrying about the business details. Charles and all of us greatly appreciate them!

One-Time Donation

Your gift helps us maintain the site, offer tech support, and run programs and events by donation, with no ads, sales pitches, or pay walls. Just as important, it communicates to us that this work is gratefully received. Thank you!

Cryptocurrency Donation

Hi, here we are in the alternate universe of cryptocurrency. Click the link below for a list of public keys. If your preferred coin isn't listed, write to us through the contact form.

View Keys



What kind of donation are you making?(Required)


Recurring Donation

We are currently accepting monthly recurring donations through PayPal; we use PayPal because it allows you to cancel or modify your recurring donation at any time without needing to contact us.


Choose what feels good, clear, and right.

One-Time Donation

We are currently accepting one-time donations with any major credit card or through PayPal.


Choose what feels good, clear, and right.
Donation Method(Required)

Name(Required)
Email(Required)