Charles Eisenstein, born in 1967, is an American speaker, writer and activist. He became known through books such as The Ascent of Humanity, Sacred Economics and The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible. His work covers the history of human civilization, economics, spirituality and the environmental movement, with central themes including anti-consumerism, interdependence and the role of myth and storytelling in shaping culture.
According to Eisenstein, global civilization is immersed in a destructive “story of separation,” and a central aim of his work is to present an alternative “story of interdependence.” Much of his thinking draws on Eastern philosophy, Indigenous spiritual teachings and New Age themes. As an activist, he participated in the Occupy and New Economy movements, promoting ecovillages, permaculture, local currencies, gift economies, degrowth and universal basic income.
Eisenstein graduated from Yale University in 1989 with a degree in Mathematics and Philosophy. He lived in Taiwan for nine years, where he became fluent in Mandarin Chinese and worked as a translator. He describes the period from his late twenties to his mid-thirties as “a long period of intensified crisis,” during which he worked occasional jobs as a construction worker, university teacher and yoga instructor, while spending most of his time as a stay-at-home father. He then devoted four years to writing The Ascent of Humanity, which was published in 2007 and became his first commercially successful book. He has four sons and lives in Rhode Island, New England.
He has published opinion articles in The Guardian and Huffington Post on subjects such as genetic modification, seed patents and debt, and appeared on Oprah Winfrey's Super Soul Sunday in 2017. In May 2023, he announced that he had taken an advisory role in the election campaign of Robert Kennedy Jr., then a Democratic and later an independent presidential candidate. In that role, he participated in a fundraising event in June 2023 that brought together prominent anti-vaccine activists such as Del Bigtree and Joe Mercola. According to federal records, he was paid up to $21,000 a month for his services to the campaign.
After Kennedy withdrew from the presidential race and endorsed Donald Trump, Eisenstein said he was willing to influence Trump's thinking if asked, but said he would not join his campaign. Early in Trump's return to the White House, he was sympathetic to Trump's anti-establishment diagnosis and some of his goals, but deeply skeptical of his methods. By 2026, his criticism of the second Trump administration had grown considerably, particularly his sense that Trump had failed to keep his anti-war promises in the lead-up to the war in Iran in 2026. In September 2026, he said of Kennedy: “I'm no longer close to him... I have friendly feelings toward him, even though I'm appalled by some of his positions and by the administration.”
His first major book, The Ascent of Humanity (2007), explores the development of what he calls a “separate human realm,” distinguishing between hunter-gatherer and agricultural societies. In his view, a growing sense of separation from nature began with the emergence of agriculture and continues to accelerate today. He also examines how language, mathematics, art, religions and other symbolic systems structure subjective reality at the individual and cultural levels, influencing our attitudes toward time and the natural world largely unconsciously.
Sacred Economics (2011) was written within the context of the New Economy movement. The book argues that today's monetary system, based on interest and usury, together with the abandonment of the gift economy, has led to social alienation, competition and the need for an economic system based on continuous growth. Eisenstein proposes restoring some form of gift economy as a way to strengthen relationships, in contrast to monetary economies that commodify relationships and make people interchangeable. The book also examines proposals such as a negative-interest currency along the lines of Silvio Gesell's ideas, social dividends, economic degrowth and an emphasis on “right livelihood” over financial incentives, while criticizing what he calls the “myth of scarcity.”
In The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible (2013), Eisenstein argues that many social, economic, political and environmental problems stem from an underlying worldview he calls the “Story of Separation”—the idea that humans are separate from one another and from the rest of the natural world. A new story that is emerging, the “Story of Interdependence,” is, in his words, “a story of the world we truly care about.” The book describes the transition as an internal transformation of the experience of being alive and an external transformation of humanity's role on the planet. Publishers Weekly called it a “revolutionary and interactive book,” adding that Eisenstein “will be remembered in antiquity as one of the foundational and pioneering storytellers of this new world.”
In Climate—A New Story (2018), Eisenstein proposes “flipping the script” on climate change, criticizing the framing, tactics and goals of our approach to environmental issues. He argues that if we felt that rivers, forests and the creatures of the natural world were sacred, or at least valuable in themselves, our response would be more comprehensive and ultimately more effective. He disapproves of valuing the living world solely in terms of carbon credits or preventing a species from becoming extinct.
In the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020, Eisenstein published an essay titled “The Coronation” that went viral. In it, he argued that the emerging global pandemic offered an opportunity for collective spiritual transformation, provided we resisted systems of political, medical and information control. During the pandemic, he expressed skepticism about vaccines and questioned public health measures such as masks, social distancing, lockdowns, vaccine passports and vaccination mandates. He also used René Girard's mimetic theory to argue that those who chose not to be vaccinated were being scapegoated by society and government authorities.
These positions led his publisher, North Atlantic Books, to end their relationship in 2021. The publisher publicly disavowed his essay “Mob Morality and the Unvaxxed,” pledging to donate all net profits from sales of his books to organizations defending the rights of people whom, according to the publisher, the essay renders invisible and exploits. His pandemic essays were later published as a book titled The Coronation: Essays From the Covid Moment by Chelsea Green. Journalist Rory Spowers had earlier described Eisenstein as a “refreshing new voice,” while his work influenced the Occupy movement. The essay “Coronation” was shared on Twitter by Jack Dorsey.
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