Ascent of Humanity

The evolution of the human sense of self

A large book by Charles Eisenstein about the evolution of life as a process of separation from ones environment. Tracing modern alienation a looong way back (before protozoa!) he takes a detailed look at what is happening around the world, putting forward an animist view of spirituality that emphasises the fundamental connectedness of all things/life. He looks forward to what he refers to as "the age of reunion", in which technology and human ingenuity is turned to the task of nurturing life and celebrating its difference, spontaneity and chaos, rather than attempting to separate and dissociate ideas and events and thus to bring them under human control.

Read by Lyn from episodes 461-486

Introduction

1. The Triumph of Technology
   • Gee Whiz—The Future!
   • Utopia Postponed
   • The Addiction to Control
   • From Separation to Boredom
   • From Affluence to Anxiety
2. The Origins of Separation
   • The Biological Origins of Self
   • Fire and Stone
   • Labeling the World
   • Mathematics and Measure
   • Keeping Time
   • Images of Images
   • The Marvelous Piraha
   • Cultivation and Culture
   • The Machine
   • Religion and Ritual
   • The Playful Universe
3. The Way of the World
   • The Scientific Method
   • My Personal Age of Reason
   • Masters of the Universe
   • The Quest for Certainty
   • Reducing Reality
   • The Ghost in the Machine
   • The Origin of Life
   • Alone in the Universe
4. Money and Property
   • The Realm of Me and Mine
   • Alone in a Crowd
   • The Anonymous Power
   • Social Capital
   • Cultural Capital
   • Natural Capital
   • Spiritual Capital
   • Time, Money, and The Good
   • The Economics of Other
   • Interest and Self-Interest
   • The Crisis of Capital
5. The World under Control
   • The Total Depravity of Man
   • The Winners and the Losers
   • Life and Death
   • Yes and No
   • The Pressure to Break Free
   • Molding Minds
   • The Great Indoors
   • Life under Contract
   • The War on Germs
   • The War on Suffering
   • Life in a Playpen
6. The Crumbling of Certainty
   • The End of Objectivity
   • Truth without Certainty
   • Order without Design
   • The Nature of Purpose
   • The Purpose of Nature
   • Life without a Replicator
   • The Community of Life
   • The Genetic Plenum
7. The Age of Reunion
   • The Convergence of Crises
   • The Currency of Cooperation
   • The Restorative Economy
   • The Age of Water
   • Technologies of Reunion
   • Work and Art United
   • Back to Play
   • The Medicine of Interbeingness
   • The Spirit of the Gift
   • Storyteller Consciousness
   • In Love with the World
8. Self and Cosmos
   • Human Nature Restored
   • The Fall
   • The Perinatal Matrix
   • The Gaian Birthing
   • Eulogy and Redemption
   • At Play Beside The Tower

See Also

• http://www.ascentofhumanity.com, the full text on line, with other writings in different languages