For those in search of a new direction in the New Economy, after a year without using money, Steve McAllister provides the basics for the new revolution and hope for a new renaissance. At a time when financial systems are falling apart, economic and gender inequality abound, trust in government is at an all time low, people are losing faith in their religion, and the world faces possible cataclysmic climate change, Money, Sex, Power & Faith offers a glimpse at how we got to this point and where we go from here. Looking at how our culture was created by weaving these disparate entities together over the last 10,000 years, this book takes an insightful, witty, incendiary and hopeful look at the foundations of our civilization to ask the hard questions that must be asked about finance, equality, America and Christianity.“
… “a deep and historical, multi-cultural tour de force that sheds light on who we are as humans, and what we have become as a result of our pursuit of wealth and power. Perhaps partly due to the unique perspective conferred by his cashless year, Steve McAllister remains refreshingly optimistic and compassionate throughout.” – Richard Heinberg, Senior Fellow at the Post Carbon Institute and author of Afterburn, The Party’s Over and The End of Growth.
Human beings have used money for about 5% of our existence, and it has been in use for as long as we’ve used the written word. Although it purports to create value, this artifice has also propagated our separation from one another, from Nature, and from the Divine, resulting in large swaths of emotional, economic, and spiritual poverty. With its rise to power, it has been entwined with our developing traditions of government, religion, and human relationships, guiding us down a path of discrepancy, inequality, oppression, and indebtedness.
Yet money is not the cause of the suffering we manufacture in our struggle to fabricate comfort. As a tool we created to solidify our separation from the natural world, it has been instrumental in our drawing imaginary lines of ownership over the planetary property we all share, subjugating half of our population to subservience based upon their gender, and manufacturing a variety of means to control, manipulate, and conquer our fellow humans and the rest of our living planet. As the monetary system we’ve designed has culminated into its current incarnation of global capitalism, many are questioning the virtue of self-interest that has inspired this movement, and we are seeking ways to alleviate our self-imposed human suffering by welcoming reunion and consciously creating a new culture.
Money, Sex, Power & Faith questions the underpinnings of the culture we have cultivated based on division, patriarchy, punishment, and control. By exploring the circuitous path we have taken through the Agrarian, Agricultural, Industrial, and Information Revolutions, readers are given the ability to reconsider the assumptions that have guided us to our present state, and open up to the next great revolution toward sustainability, resilience, and a higher quality of life for all. Although the game of finance may have reached its endgame as America’s debt has ballooned to more than its GDP, and 90% of the wealth has been absorbed by 10% of the population, humanity still has a wealth of value at its disposal, and the ability to heal our societal mistakes by forgiving the past and embracing a renaissance of creativity, commerce, citizenry, and charity.
Watch the first five chapters of Money, Sex, Power & Faith unfold.