Post-pandemia
Hey everyone, I haven’t written about Covid issues much for several months. Partly, like a lot of people, because I so much wanted to be done with it; partly because the span of my interests goes way beyond public health.
Nonetheless, I intend to return my attention to it again in one or two essays. Why? Because we as a society seem to have moved past Covid without fully absorbing its lessons. As some of the polarized intensity has dissipated over the past few months, there is now an opening for deeper consideration of underlying issues. I would like to revisit what I wrote about in 2020 and 2021 from the perspective of today. I’m curious, readers, what you would particularly like me to address?
I would also like to share some of my excitement for the launch of my book, The Coronation. I’ve described it here before. Here is what some of the early readers have said about it. I hope it doesn’t feel like boasting to share these. It feels that way a little to me, but honestly, I do think the book can have an important impact and I want to circulate it widely.
Charles Eisenstein has taken on the hardest task in the world—writing an intelligent, compassionate, and uncompromising book on the Covid-19 pandemic, without falling into either partisan hysteria or a shameless defense of power. This is a necessary and brave read.
—Paul Kingsnorth, novelist; founder, Dark Mountain Project
There are moments in our history in which the art of the written word captures the extraordinary beauty of the human condition as it hangs suspended in tenuous polarity at a tipping point of evolution. The Coronation is one of these moments. In between these words that are as prophetic as they are poetic is the space of our collective metamorphosis. Tread lightly and dive deep here to find your own sovereign beauty.
—Zach Bush, MD
Pre-order on Amazon. On Bookshop dot org.
We’ve been visited by this wild ferocious goddess [called Covid], and few can do as well as Charles does in tracing out an ethnography of her passing.
—Bayo Akomolafe, PhD, author of These Wilds Beyond Our Fences
Charles Eisenstein is one of the most original writers working today, and his essays on the social and spiritual impact of the pandemic event are among his best work. The Coronation is essential reading for anyone concerned about the damage that has been done to our societies and how we might recover and collectively go forward from here.
—C. J. Hopkins, award-winning playwright, novelist, and political satirist
Charles Eisenstein is one of those courageous dissidents who also holds the faith that people can return to love after a hiatus of hate. As we go deeper into this new era of permacrisis, Charles’s writings will become ever more pertinent.
—Professor Jem Bendell, professor of sustainability leadership; founder, Institute for Leadership and Sustainability (IFLAS), University of Cumbria (UK)
Charles Eisenstein is one of the few voices worldwide who have the capacity to be critical and gentle at the same time. His work is brilliant, crystal clear at the logical level, evocative and eloquent at the stylistic level. Charles went down the road of rationality to the very end, and at the end of it, he entered a world of mystical and spiritual knowledge and beauty. Charles’s discourse contains the seeds of a new way of living together and of a true solution for the series of crises our culture is going through at this very moment.
—Mattias Desmet, author of The Psychology of Totalitarianism
Thank you for indulging this share. Again, pre-order links are Amazon and Bookshop.
Rebuilding trust is so important in our individual connections but also in those who purport to act on our behalf. After covid, I don't feel I can believe anything that any representative of any government on either side of the political/ideological divide has to say. My work no longer has meaning and all I want to do is leave the city we live in and head for the hills. I have reached the point where I doubt everything and question everything I read from mainstream media sources. I have running battles with people I don't know and will never meet on online platforms. Everywhere I look I see manipulation and indoctrination. I fear for my daughter who is starting high school next year. She is so excited but how can I share in her excitement when they are taught that they are vectors of disease and don't have the power within themselves to heal and fight infection? Everything has become ultra polarised. It's all so sad, so tragic that we have been pitted against each other and it's only a matter of time before another event is used to amplify / reignite the divisions between us and drive fear into our hearts. What is the point of politics if politicians are increasingly self-serving, or, worse, handmaidens to an elite and unelected ruling class whose agenda is self-serving and constitutes the eradication of our freedoms and our spirit?
Charles thanks for asking! My family in the US refused to allow me to visit for 1.5 years (because non jabbed). Just this week that has changed. One of them "can't wait to see me." I don't at this moment feel the same, it is going to take me time to figure it out on an emotional level. One of my friends thought it was fine for kindergartners to wear masks, another wouldn't go to events unless the jab was required, these are people on spiritual path and were some of my closest friends. On top of the tear in the fabric of these individual relationships there is the loss of trust on a macro level with government and economic structure, the realization of the depth of the rot in the western health systems and how the global elite fit into it all. It has been a shock to my system honestly. The overarching theme taking place now feels surreal to me -- many people are going on with life as if nothing has happened while myself and others look on at the catastrophic breakdown that continues to happen. Even knowing this will lead us in a better direction, knowing these systems needs to breakdown, on a day to day level it is challenging. If you could address any of these topics that would be wonderful. All the best to you.