Event

The Gift: Ecology, the Commons, and your Future

Friday, March 1, 2013 10:00to11:30
Macdonald-Stewart Building Faculty Lounge, 21111 Lakeshore Road, St Anne de Bellevue, QC, H9X 3V9, CA

Charles Eisenstein is a teacher, speaker, and writer focusing on themes of civilization, consciousness, money, and human cultural evolution.

This seminar will tie together three issues under the common rubric of the gift. Ecology: a web of giving and receiving that we rupture at our peril. Economy: based on the gifts of Earth and the gifts of the ancestors (nature and culture). Life purpose: life itself is a gift, and its purpose is not to maximize self-interest, but to give onward.

We will explore questions like, "How can we make economy an extension of -- and not an exception to -- ecology?" and, "Since that transition has not yet happened, how do we live from gratitude for
the gift of life, when money pushes us in the opposite direction?"


Charles Eisenstein's books (The Ascent of Humanity and Sacred Economics) as well as his other essays and blog posts on web magazines have generated a vast online following; he speaks frequently at conferences and other events, and gives numerous interviews on radio and podcasts.

Writing in Ode magazine’s “25 Intelligent Optimists” issue, David Korten (author of When Corporations Rule the World) called Eisenstein “one of the up-and-coming great minds of our time.” Eisenstein graduated from Yale University in 1989 with a degree in Mathematics and Philosophy, and spent the next ten years as a Chinese-English translator. He currently lives in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania with his wife and three sons.


This event is free of charge. Space is limited – RSVP to development.macdonald [at] mcgill.ca by February 22

This event is co-sponsored by the Faculty of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences and the Social Economy Initiative of the Marcel Desautel Institute for Integrated Management

A first event, entitled "Sacred Economics: Money, Gift and Society in the Age of Transition. An evening with Charles Eisenstein",  will be held on February 28 @ 4:00 p.m. on the Downtown Campus

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