Here's a guide to the blog from the beginning in December 2015 until now, January 2019. I think it can be useful to find out what you might be interested in reading. I am very interested in being read!
It all started when I wrote Introduction to economia sagrada. It is by far the most read text among my essays. As its title says, that is exactly it: an introduction to this vision. This was a text that I wrote in a few hours of inspiration, after an acute personal crisis. It is a necessary writing, indispensable in many ways. It is highly drawn from the ideas of Charles Eisenstein, and I also add my own. I simply wrote it in freedom, from the heart and it flowed as it did. I published it in December 2015 when we created the blog, but it had been on Facebook since November of that year.
Also in December 2015, I published Human reason and When will we stop the destruction of nature? Two very close articles, which I rescued and revitalized from the endless drafts I tried to write of my 'Testimony of an Economist'. That is why they are like brothers because they were born of the same origin. They are texts that I feel like my children, because they co-express my insight into the limitations of human logical reasoning. This understanding was the fruit of my experience in the doctorate, experimenting with the rational paradigm in all its extension. At the same time, crucially, realizing that the deepest problem with our economic system was neither an ethical problem nor a problem of improving intentions.
About When will we stop the destruction of nature?, I usually say that this essay does NOT say what is already said about the destruction of nature and the beauty of life. It says something different. I implore you to read it, it is too important in my heart that you read it and share it. As I say with poetry on the home page, the destruction of nature stops Now, as the obsession with controlling life expires.
On December 25, 2015, a date that in many of our countries has to do with gifting, I posted Towards a gift culture I , where I reflect about the distance between our current culture and an implausible but urgent culture of the gift. In January 2017, I continued with Towards a gift culture II, motivated by a comment on facebook about the scheme I use to value my work in the workshops. Surely it is a theme to continue discovering, and continue opening my hands to give and receive.
In March 2016 I decided to respond publicly to the consultation that many friends had been making to me privately, about the look that my person and economia sagrada have on (what was then called) the "flower of abundance" (and later mostly called "dream looms"). A very potent social phenomenon, which viewed from the oneness of life is energy in motion. And which brought me quite a lack of understanding from every side of the equation. On the one hand, people who can't understand that I don't condemn it as a fraud (as the establishment do). And on the other hand, people who can't understand that I don't recommend it and I don't endorse it. I don't believe in the absurd separation between good and bad in life. From then on, the loom integration workshop was born and truly it has been an extremely enriching experience to work with the enormous feminine strength. Powerful energy in motion.
The amazing labyrinth of abundance, July 2016. Uf, my dear labyrinth. Now I realize that I wrote this text with a beautiful anger. The beautiful anger that was born when I was faced with simplifying looks of the economy. Where I felt there was a collective habit of "putting under the carpet", of ignoring our true feelings regarding the economy. Notoriously, the abuse of the view that money is only an energy of exchange and that the abundance or scarcity of it simply responds to our attitude of gratitude towards life. To me this is sometimes a justification, or a manipulation of the truth. In other words, the true nature and real scope of the economic and civilizing crisis we are suffering: the crisis of separation. Then I asked myself what abundance really is, where is it? A road with a lot of deconstruction to do.
Perhaps my most personal post of all, and the one that "least" has to do with economics, is Compassion, September 2016. As a result of a profound healing process, and what others unconditionally shared with me (love!), I discovered the understanding of compassion. And it is part of economia sagrada in the most essential sense of the vision. You will see it present in everything I observe, reflect on and work with. In fact, compassion is the same as the oneness of life, and it was there at the center of the vision before I could realize it.
The marriage between abundance and sufficiency (part I), (Oct 2016), is also the dance of Vincent and Alice. I began to investigate, with my heart, how these two such contradictory aspects of this moment in the history of humanity could meet. A moment when we urgently need to say enough to waste and the extraction of life. A moment when huge numbers of people suffer from insufficiency and yearn for that promise of abundance that life is supposed to be. A moment in life when, interestingly, this tension has a mirror in the relationship between man and woman. Everything is connected. So much so that the dance took on a life of its own. A story full of symbolism was born, with inevitable autobiographical comings and goings of my family. A story that is not over yet.
Later, my dear friend Omar Giraldo, a fellow at the culture and climate change seminar here in San Cristóbal de Las Casas, encouraged me to participate with a paper in the call for papers about Another Economy in the academic journal Polis. El Espacio para una Nueva Forma de Pensar nuestra Economía was finally published in April 2017. I translated it here as The space for a new way of thinking economics. In this essay, I was motivated by Aguilera's sharp criticism of conventional economics (in a previous article). In criticizing the critique, I had the invaluable opportunity to express, for the first time in an academic language, the central axes of my vision. Basically, to rigorously expose the deepest problems with economic thought, which are neither ethical problems nor problems of bad intentions. A vision that is extremely unacceptable and too radical even for many of the most radical thinkers.
I wrote Understanding money - story of a village in September 2017 guided by one of Charles' ideas. I realized that this writing was necessary to have at hand, whenever it was necessary to explain, with all the fullness of the word, the true nature of the institution of money. As in all my writings, I added my personal note. That which moves in me. "Money is not just an energy of exchange" became one of my recurring phrases. Then I was surprised how more than once people hear me say, mistakenly: 'Money is only an energy of exchange', interesting because in reality the only real sacred economy is the one that each one discovers in his own heart. In other words, those who misunderstood me also understood well. Hehe.
Also in September 2017 I wanted to say something about the Earthquakes in Mexico, which deeply shaken some cultural notions. For example, that of generational apathy, as if it were a disease in itself rather than a very healthy symptom of a deepest disease in society. No one is doing it wrong. The apathetic youth are not doing anything wrong, on the contrary. Apathy that became maximum vitality in the extreme situations of earthquakes.
In October 2017 the Nobel Prize in Economics 2017 for Thaler opened the door for me to express why psychology is not enough to enrich economic theory, although necessary. The proposal is simply not radical enough. Probably, for the most updated economics scholars my analysis has some academic deficiency, perhaps a lack of updating (not so much I think). However, the route of updating academically is not my route. It is that simple and that clear. After all, with more and more study, with more and more analysis, one can always say intellectually whatever one chooses to say. I choose to say from my heart, and the intellect I carry it goes to the service of what really matters to me.
In November 2017, I heeded the call of life that invited me to take it completely seriously to be at the service of this vision. I had to go through that fear of feeling too weird or alone, and realize what I already knew in my heart: it's not about me. It was hard to believe, but this vision doesn't belong to me, it belongs to life. Then... discover the support that there is unconditionally in the oneness of life. I don't even know how it happened anymore, but it happened... like I was just another witness. One day conversing with my brother Joe Golinveaux and another day I posted Economia sagrada's Coming of Age, with gofundme campaign and everything. Something I never imagined doing before (and maybe I'll have to do again soon hehe!). A whole process began there, as well as an intimate-personal rite of passage, culminating in the Launching of the new website in November 2018.
In December 2017 I posted Closing campaign, because we had already achieved the fundraising's goal. With much effort and Joe's good will we began working on the website. But at that moment not only did I receive money, I also received enormous energy in movement that led me to discover that "I kept that deep pain, that impotence that it was not possible to dream of freedom (even monetary!) for everyone... that now I feel being liberated".
In the middle of the process, in March 2018 I wrote Cultural Deconstruction: Towards an Integral Holistic Education, motivated by the invitation I received to the national pre-school education forum. It was a very interesting exercise of studying with the heart: my favorite methodology (someday I might write about that too). It makes me fall in love, because it moves things, it gives me freedom. Naturally, the vision of economia sagrada is oneness, holism. So the same vision can be used to look at anything. In this case it was true education: leading from the inside out (a process contrary to that of conventional education that goes from the outside in).
The transition to adulthood not only included fear, but also anger and much more: Photos and anger, August 2018. This is a very raw and vulnerable text from me - human being. It is not a permanent display of truth, but rather an expression. In fact, this text affected some dear people close to me (for which I apologize), who may have been frightened, or worried about so much honesty. I am also scared or worried about being seen on the inside, at the same time that I feel tremendously proud to have followed my path in this way, I feel very loyal to myself and I applaud my courage. This rage was energy in motion, and not stagnant.
As the end of the passage to adulthood approached, I felt that in order to complete the story of the economia sagrada website, I had to write The beginnings (August 2018). (A more personal story is given by my Testimony of an Economist, although that story is not in the blog but in the About section).
Here I leave you the index, complete until January 2019. The next projects may be holistic medicine, holistic politics, the healing of the archetypal wound of science, the divine ATM, and the therapeutic sacred economy, which may be useful to accompany healing processes.
Here we mark a before and an after.
Introduction to economia sagrada, December 2015
Human reason, December 2015
When will we stop the destruction of nature? December 2015
Towards a gift culture I, December 2015
About the "flower of abundance", March 2016
The amazing labyrinth of abundance, July 2016
Compassion, September 2016
The dance of Vicent and Alice (part I), October 2016
Towards a gift culture II, January 2017
The space for a new way of thinking economics, April 2017
Understanding money - story of a village, September 2017
Earthquakes in Mexico, September 2017
Economics' Nobel 2017 for Thaler, October 2017
Economia sagrada's Coming of Age, November 2017
Closing campaign, December 2017
The beginnings, August 2018
Photos and anger, August 2018
Launching of the new website, November 2018
A note regarding notifications for those who subscribe to the mailing list: you will receive notification of both the post in English and the post in Spanish. I regret that inevitable duplication for now, a small disadvantage of having a bridging, bilingual website.
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