I’ve been reading “Sacred Economics” by Charles Eisenstein for a couple of days and now I’ve finished reading the entire introduction. When I first began reading this book, I was immediately able to connect with the author. It was like we shared the same thoughts and opinions, although his are quite obviously more detailed and specific. The author starts off by letting the reader know the whole purpose of the book and that is to make the economy, but more importantly money, sacred. A sacred object is something that is held in high regards. It is something that is beautiful and untarnished, something that is left undisturbed so as to be an inspiration to others. Someting loved, revered and special.

The author states that from at least the time that Jesus threw the money changers from the temple, we as human beings have sensed that there is something unholy about money. Money has a mysterious, magical quality with enough power to alter human behavior and coordinate human activity. I find this very true as I’ve witnessed people change because of money and do crazy things for it. We experience money as an extension of ourselves and use the pronoun “mine” to describe whatever we buy. I find this peculiar and humourous at the same time because we shouldn’t claim things we buy as ours but rather the very things that we were so obviously born with, such as our arms or legs.

The author goes on to compare money to the divine, which is the human spirit. To be divine was to be supernatural, nonmaterial. We think that the spirit is separate and nonwordly and can intervene in material affairs and animates or directs us in some mysterious way. In that case, money seems to be eternal. While reading I pondered if there was any way to get rid of it but what I found instead was without a doubt the most powerful sentence in the entire introduction.

“What has fled is money. That is the only thing missing, so insubstantial (in the form of electrons in computers) that it can hardly be said to exist at all, yet so powerful that without it, human productivity grinds to a halt.” My interpretation of this sentence is that people feel like there is no money because the general population doesn’t have it, but if money were to actually be removed, no one would work because there would be no motivation for it. Money animates people as well as machines and without it, we are dispirited.

The author continues with the aspect of sacredness and explaining how precious and irreplaceable it is; how it has no finite value, for value can only be determined by comparison. Another sentence that really made me think was, “What is the difference between a supermarket tomato and one grown in my neighbor’s garden and given to me? What is different between a prefab house and one built with my own participation by someone who understands me and my life?” To me, the difference between these things is that one of them needs to be bought with money, thus making it ordinary. The other one is made by hand, making it special and unique.

The author then concludes the chapter with his opinion on why he wrote the book and provides a logical, fundamental analysis of what was gone wrong with money. I’m really starting to like this book and I hope next chapter he explains what we can do to make things sacred again.