The logic is backwards. Genius is the result of doing what you love, not a prerequisite for it.
Let me repeat that: Our civilization is constitutionally incapable of reversing the annihilation of natural capital, or even slowing it down. Get used to that. When we really understand that, the project of reconceiving civilization itself will gain powerful impetus.
A revolution that leaves our conceptualization of self and world intact cannot bring other than temporary, superficial change. Only a much deeper revolution, a reconceiving of who we are, can reverse the crises of our age.
Community is woven from gifts, which is ultimately why poor people often have stronger communities than rich people. If you are financially independent, then you really don’t depend on your neighbors for anything. You can just pay someone to do it.
Non-inflationary economic growth – an increase in the production of goods and services – is structurally necessary for the current money system to exist. That is what drives the relentless conversion of life into money.
Enlightenment is a group activity.
The primary method by which governments increase their control is by creating fear.
A miracle is an invitation into a new story.
The financial crisis we are facing today arises from the fact that there is almost no more social, cultural, natural, and spiritual capital left to convert into money.
You can’t have community as an add-on to a monetized life. You have to actually need each other.
When both sides of a controversy revel in the defeat and humiliation of the other side, in fact they are on the same side: the side of war.
We have to believe in a more beautiful world in order to serve it.
The state of interbeing is a vulnerable state. It is the vulnerability of the naive altruist, of the trusting lover, of the unguarded sharer. To enter it, one must leave behind the seeming shelter of a control-based life, protected by walls of cynicism, judgment, and blame.
When do you manipulate others for your own advantage? When I notice myself doing it, usually it is when I am feeling insecure.
The world is on fire! Why am I sitting in front of my computer? It is because I don’t have a fire extinguisher for the world, and there isn’t a global 911 to call.
The holistic acupuncturist and the sea turtle rescuer may not be able to explain the feeling, ‘We are serving the same thing,’ but they are. Both are in service to an emerging story of the People that is the defining mythology of a new kind of civilization.
What you’re looking for, you won’t find. But only by looking for it can it find you.
The things we think we want are often substitutes for what we really want, and the pleasures we seek are less than the joy that they distract us from.
These include the need to express one’s gifts and do meaningful work, the need to love and be loved, the need to be truly seen and heard, and to see and hear other people, the need for connection to nature, the need to play, explore, and have adventures, the need for emotional intimacy, the need to serve something larger than oneself, and the need sometimes to do absolutely nothing and just be.
A fundamental premise of this book is that human beings naturally desire to give. We are born into gratitude: the knowledge we have received and the desire to give in turn. Far from nudging reluctant people to give unto others against their lazy impulses, today’s economy pressures us to deny our innate generosity and channel our gifts instead toward the perpetuation of a system that serves almost no one. A sacred.