Investing and the Disappearance of the Sacred

I spent this weekend at the Bioneers conference and something shifted inside me. I understood at a deep level that the destruction of the natural ecosystems on which our survival depends, is rooted in the loss of our understanding of Nature as sacred. As Sufi scholar Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee mentioned during the panel on Spiritual Ecology: A Spiritual Response to the Ecological Crisis, indigenous cultures have retained the understanding of Nature as sacred while Western culture lost it at around 400AD, when monotheistic religions suppressed pagan earth-based religions, hence banishing the sacred from the Earth and relegating it to the heavens.

Nevertheless, many in our Western culture still seek connection with Nature as a way to nourish and uplift the spirit. Many intuitively understand that a walk through these woods can reinvigorate the body, mind and spirit.

How to Make the Debt Ceiling Obsolete

Money creation is a government function. Reversing the privatization of money creation will render the debt ceiling and government borrowing obsolete.

As I write, the US Congress is locked into a stalemate over the issue of raising the debt ceiling of the US Government. The issue of an ever increasing government debt forces us to lurch from one political crisis to the next. The current government shutdown and the looming default on US government debt are the handiwork of an irresponsible minority of ideologues in the House of Representatives using Congress’ power of the purse to subvert the democratic legislative process. They are undermining the very foundation of our democracy and endangering our economy. But, even in the absence of saboteurs in the very halls of Congress, the problem of an increasing level of government debt combined with a weak economy presents a very hard problem to solve, at least within the confines of conventional thinking.

First let’s look at the problem and then at the solution made available by some thinking outside the box.