Charles Eisenstein's Sacred Economics and some other "provocative documents for thought"

On the advice of an old and trusted friend I've just got hold of Charles Eisenstein’s book "Sacred Economics". I look forward to reading it and seeing what he has to say. Here's the basic blurb about the book:

Sacred Economics traces the history of money from ancient gift economies to modern capitalism, revealing how the money system has contributed to alienation, competition, and scarcity, destroyed community, and necessitated endless growth. 

Today, these trends have reached their extremebut in the wake of their collapse, we may find great opportunity to transition to a more connected, ecological, and sustainable way of being.

It was this latter thought in mind that I walked around Cambridge this afternoon taking a few street photographs. This kind of photography is, inevitably, set in a untransformed, highly capitalist context and, as I looked at the people around me I wordlessly felt that, Yes! how much better their lives, and mine, would be were we able to change our relationship to and with money.

But, as I've just intimated, on the street and right now as I post this piece I don't have the necessary words to speak of this powerful feeling. So, I fall back on my photographs and remind myself of the Manifesto of the “Provoke Group” (1968) signed by Kohi Taki, Takuma Nakahira, Takahiko Okada, Yutaka Takanashi, and Daido Moriyama:

“Today, when words have lost their material base—in other words, their reality—and seem suspended in mid-air, a photographer’s eye can capture fragments of reality that cannot be expressed in language as it is. He can submit those images as a document to be considered alongside language and ideology. This is why, brash as it may seem, Provoke has the subtitle, ‘provocative documents for thought.’” 





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