Leif Hansen

“In the same vein, the problem in economic life is supposedly greed, both outside ourselves in the form of all those greedy people and within ourselves in the form of our own greedy tendencies. We like to imagine that we ourselves are not so greedy—maybe we have greedy impulses, but we keep them under control. Unlike some people! Some people don’t keep their greed in check. They are lacking in something fundamental that you and I have, some basic decency, basic goodness. They are, in a word, Bad. If they can’t learn to restrain their desires, to make do with less, then we’ll have to force them to. Clearly, the paradigm of greed is rife with judgment of others, and with self-judgment as well. Our self-righteous anger and hatred of the greedy harbor the secret fear that we are no better than they are. It is the hypocrite who is the most zealous in the persecution of evil. Externalizing the enemy gives expression to unresolved feelings of anger. In a way, this is a necessity: the consequences of keeping them bottled up or directed inward are horrific. But there came a time in my life when I was through hating, through with the war against the self, through with the struggle to be good, and through with the pretense that I was any better than anyone else. I believe humanity, collectively, is nearing such a time as well. Ultimately, greed is a red herring, itself a symptom and not a cause of a deeper problem. To blame greed and to fight it by intensifying the program of self-control is to intensify the war against the self, which is just another expression of the war against nature and the war against the other that lies at the base of the present crisis of civilization.”
― Charles Eisenstein, Sacred Economics: Money, Gift, and Society in the Age of Transition

“McMansions in sprawling suburbs, without mountains of unnecessary packaging, without giant mechanized monofarms, without energy-hogging big-box stores, without electronic billboards, without endless piles of throwaway junk, without the overconsumption of consumer goods no one really needs is not an impoverished world. I disagree with those environmentalists who say we are going to have to make do with less. In fact, we are going to make do with more: more beauty, more community, more fulfillment, more art, more music, and material objects that are fewer in number but superior in utility and aesthetics. The cheap stuff that fills our lives today, however great its quantity, can only cheapen life.”
― Charles Eisenstein, Sacred Economics: Money, Gift, and Society in the Age of Transition

“In 1875, when young Max Planck announced his interest in physics, the chairman of his physics department suggested he study something more exciting. Physics, he said, was just about complete: “All the important discoveries have already been made.”
― Bruce Rosenblum, Quantum Enigma: Physics Encounters Consciousness

“Through Red’s eyes, this entire Universe is about Relationship — between the most minute particles and the grandest galaxies, between the chicken and the egg, between the ocean and the sand, between this book and the Energy that inspired this book, between the light and the dark, between the masculine and the feminine, between spirit and soul, between everything and no-thing, between true and false, between inner and outer, between friend and foe, between that dimension and this dimension, between my hand and your heart, between your foot and the ground, and most important, between you and You, you (You) and God/dess, you (You) and “Them,” and well, you get the gist. Essentially, this makes everyone and everything our Lovers.”
― Sera Beak, Red Hot and Holy: A Heretic's Love Story