I've followed Eisenstein's work - gingerly - since first learning about him from some of my grad students. Part of the popular education (as in educación popular inspired by the work of Paulo Freire) courses that I teach includes a significant amount of critical and anti-capitalist content including some of the anthropology and economics of gift economies that I have been studying for over 40 years. On a regular basis for several years, students would recommend Charles' work with more than a few mentioning travel to events with Charles. I finally read Sacred Economics and was, to put it in a word, underwhelmed. Given the research I had done, i was pleased to recognize almost all of his sources. But i also recognized the trope of separation/reunion which has been around in both scholarship and fantasy/science fiction writing for a long while. I recognized its appeal (very persuasive for me once) and could see that many of my students were energized and enthused by Charles' writing. But the closer i looked at Charles' work the more suspicious I became of the way he wielded his charisma. And i also recognized him as an example of the scholar-adjacent writer - i.e. free of the characteristic relationships of accountability that either movement activists or academic scholars are part of (there are flaws in these systems but they can help map someone's path to their claimed expertise). Charles fell short on that. And, by 2015/16 few if any students were mentioning him anymore. A few environmental activists mentioned him from time to time. But, his influence around here (Toronto and Canada) seemed to have waned. Then i noticed his COVID article which was bonkers crazy. And i've noted his descent (?) into conspiracy and right-wing thinking since. I've followed Russell Brand much less - only noting his rise in popularity and, of course, his slide into a similar space as Charles. As Naomi Wolf has done similarly (I recall writing a very positive review of her Beauty Myth book for the university student paper i worked for in the early 80s). How far she has fallen.

So, three thoughts: follow the money (including cultural capital); the vulnerabilities of privilege; the charisma & demoralization. I don't think i need say much about the money/cultural capital. Once that stuff starts to flow for someone, its allure kicks in and keeping that flow going seems to become a powerful motivator for people. Regarding the vulnerabilities of privilege, i'm reminded of the various studies that examine driver behaviour in stopping for pedestrians in relation to car value. In short, expensive cars stop less. Coupled with other behavioural research (including rigging board games in favour of one player and observing the entitlement to snacks by the "privileged" player and the others - i.e. the privileged player takes more while others claim less), this seems to point to either damage to one's capacity for empathy or, at least, an alteration to one's empathy - i.e. it lowers. It suggests that with wealth (and power) one practices empathy less. And I wonder who of us would be immune to this. My guess is few of us. You can read about some of the experimentation about this here: planetsave.com/articles….

Finally, it seems to me that these first two phenomena are pre-conditions for sliding towards more right wing/extremist positions and culture and politics. Finally, and this is my newest thinking, I think there's something in the way that charisma works and interacts with the degree of demoralization that someone experiences. By charisma I am referring to what David Graeber and David Wengrow identify in the book "The Dawn of Everything" as the third of three forms of domination. It seems to me that to understand charisma as a form of domination, we need to separate charisma from both the religious notion of divine gift and the sort-of-psychological notion of "personal magic." I think a lot of us know charisma when we see it and it certainly presents as a special talent of a particular individual. But i think something much more social and complex is happening which, i suggest, offers another piece of the puzzle of folks like Brand, Wold, Eisenstein, et al. What if charisma is, in fact a social phenomenon and not an individual trait? I'm exploring the notion that charisma is something that is simultaneously GIVEN to a person and USED (or performed) by that person. Another way of putting this is that charisma only exists in dynamic (real time, embodied, in person) relation with others. What some deem a "gift" is merely a recognition that some people are better positioned (by wealth, power, fame, etc.) and equipped (by virtue of the constellation of capacities they have developed in life) to engage (activate? consume? perform?) charisma. It is not as simple as the transactional commerce of material wealth, nor even as simple as the wages of privilege. Thus i wonder if, having drunk from the well of charisma and bathed in those heady waters, an individual might develop a hunger, if not a dependency, on the continued flow of what appears simply to be public attention, admiration, whathaveyou, but what is, as Graeber and Wengrow suggest, one of the fundamental forms of domination (just look at the perpetrators that have been exposed by the #METOO campaigns).