Does Zeitgeist Movement Make Sense?

The Zeitgeist Movement Movies

[video=youtube;0kHhc67GopM]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0kHhc67GopM[/video]

[video=youtube;EewGMBOB4Gg]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EewGMBOB4Gg[/video]

[video=youtube;4Z9WVZddH9w]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Z9WVZddH9w[/video]

Saw the first movie thoroughly.

The movie talks about free-thinking and an inquisitive nature. What the movie says it that the people are too trusting, placing a large amount of faith in the establishment. Anyone with a desire to explore the mysteries of the world and learn the truth about global events should listen to multiple sources and seek out well-documented, skillfully researched articles which represent the unheard voices of legitimate scholars who can expose the lies which run rampant through society from ages.

Now heading over to Zeitgeist: Addendum

... and we complain about why there are no 'brainy' discussions on CE. The thing is, no one wants to participate in discussions that require extended use of brain. Huh?

Hi Abra

Sorry for it not being abundantly clear on the main page of TZM (#-Link-Snipped-#)
but the 1st movie was just for fun, an expression of anger by the author.

The movement started with the end of the second movie 😀.

And more importantly, the movies are just an appetizer ^_^, in the interest of answering the original question ("the points the promoters of the movement make, actually make sense?") part 2 of the "Where Are We Going?" lecture is more complete: <a href="https://vimeo.com/7938805" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Peter Joseph: "Where are we going?" Nov. 15th '09 | 2/2 on Vimeo</a>

Cheers!

The_Big_K... and we complain about why there are no 'brainy' discussions on CE. The thing is, no one wants to participate in discussions that require extended use of brain. Huh?

I am the last one to be offensive. However, to me this appears to be a case where one has to remove what little brain there is and leave it outside safely before entering into a discussion of this subject. Removal of scarcity, eradication of human labour and a borderless world culture seem pipe dreams. It will put a virtual end to all creativity.

One can only be grateful that Utopia will be easier to achieve than this Zeitgeist.

What a fearful, horrifying concept?

Instead of unlimited plenty minimizing wants as advocated by Indian sages may be the better option.

@Bioramani: I only meant that people don't participate in discussions that require some extra thinking.

Anyways, yes - minimizing wants is a better option too. But the Zeitgeist movement makes other points as well. I'd like to have opinions from all our CEans about it.

I have just seen the 2nd movie : The Addendum & am moved by the concepts discussed there.
The term 'Resource Based Economy' would be tough to digest at first and as pointed out by bioramani, it's seems a bit horrifying concept, but it's perfectly achievable. If we do make all the resources abundantly available, there will be no scarcity and if there is no scarcity - people won't have to worry about prices going up or down & would solve a majority of global problems.

With the abundance of renewable resources & the technology to harness it available at hands, if we take down the monetary system (which is the biggest hurdle & I know it would take years to do that) world will be a better place for sure.

I have gone through the first movie. It suddenly reminded me of reading Atlas Shrugged.
As in, the intensity of the ideas, the determination of the people involved, and the importance they give to following the core values of the movement.

Interestingly enough, the basic ideas of both the movements are entirely opposite to each other.
A number of people have been inspired by Ayn Rand's ideas and quite many have done notable things.
In the novel, you see the idea of giving the movers and producers the ultimate power, justifying their right to own the money for their effort,
while completely detesting open supply of resources (namely, to those who doesn't deserve). All these are best explained by a golden dollar symbol used throughout the novel as the prime powerful symbol - those of the movers of the world.

Remember how the same symbol is detested in the Zeitgeist movies. I guess I don't have to quote Zeitgeist movement's principles again to show how starkly the two contrasts.
Ayn Rand had been highly criticized and disliked by many while highly devoted by another large group.
And then there are people neutral to it, which is the majority. Those who want to absorb just the good things, and ignore the rest.
Those who don't want to be completely carried away in any specific ideology.

For now, I reckon the Zeitgeist is having a similar population of supporters and audience.
Whether the movement will grow to effect a greater impact?, whether the 'neutral' population will accept it as their way of life? - the answers are left to time alone.

@eternal: Great to know you watched it. I for one, couldn't point out the shortcomings in the ideology the Zeitgeist Movie propagates (apart from some of the factual errors in the movie).
Implementing this ideology in our day to day life is where lies the most difficult part. We had an interesting quote on one of the CE-Shirts. It said, "One little step in technology for an engineer, One giant leap for mankind."

@bioramani:

Do check out this video and share your views with us.

[video=youtube;zr7jKt7fWLU]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zr7jKt7fWLU[/video]

AbraKaDabra@bioramani: Do check out this video and share your views with us.

Nothing to disagree about. Makes sense. Commonsense. However, when it comes to sharing resources, even at individual level do we not hoard our ideas? Why do we have patent authorities in every country? Do we own or ideas?

I for one do not think so. I have stopped putting my name to any patents since a decade. Prof. Victor Papanek, of the California Design School, who was the one that inspired me in design, does not either.

#-Link-Snipped-# To me the Zeitgeist has to start with oneself. Charity begins at home. Let us all engineers garner information and technology for use by all.

I like the idea, but i guess its too ideal. I mean making cybernated resource-based economy is much complicated and i doubt its success. And its not like presently we are doing nothing for the environment.
I think the need of money or being superior than someone else gives birth to new ideas. I am not against it, but i dont think its practical.

P.S: Biggie was right, one has to use his "brain" to get it....😉 . Anyways correct me if i am wrong.

Today I came to know about Kibbutz, a few days ago, I came to know about Gandhiji's business policy. It is about distributing equal wealth to all.

So if you are a labor, you will earn the same as that of a manager and they will earn as much as the chairman of that organisation. Does it make sense? NO, the model will fail.

But Zeitgeist is a bit different. It is about making everything available to everyone. We should take it as much as we want. It is regarding everything from knowledge to money. The idea is really good.
But is it against the rule of nature? Because then what will happen of Survival of the fittest?

I posted this response in another forum, so it is not specifically oriented to engineers, but perhaps it will answer some questions about the Zeitgeist Movement and clarify others.

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The ideas of the Zeitgeist Movement is not a continuation of this society in any way, at least in terms of thought, and this society creates the opinions of 'human nature' and 'economics' and the other objections that are raised. I hear it all the time, on dozens of forums, this tendency to think that what was thought before is all that can be thought. LOL! It's like clerics of the Catholic Church in the middle ages arguing about how many angels can fit on the head of a pin.

If an ancient barbarian was faced with a simple motor or TV set, they would likely think there was a tiny human inside that is making it work, because they could not imagine that it was a totally different dynamic than the one they were taught by their culture was true.

Then again, in the European Middle Ages, they would likely smash it to 'kill the demons' within it. That was their social conditioning.

While the Zeitgeist Movement has existed only for a little over 3 years, and comes from several videos that fulfill a need in our society, (which is why they have been viewed millions of times) the ideas of the Zeitgeist Movement have been 'germinating' for many decades with people like R. Buckminster Fuller and Jacque Fresco and many others, including myself for the last 50 years. It is not just another 'ism'... it does not seek to impose anything on anyone.

It is not an 'ideology', but a new paradigm, a new set of ideas that are as supported by science and observation of nature as any other, certainly more than our current 'common sense' insanity. There is no 'hierarchy', nor 'leaders' in the old sense of the word, ie, the people who can coerce others to obey their dictates, instead, the Zeitgeist Movement is the first global 'cloud phenomena' which means nothing in it is 'fixed' or 'set in motion' yet, nor is there any way to know when that will happen, if ever.

The ideas are emergent, which means they will change with new information, and it is oriented to what is discovered by science, without dogmatically clinging to any old discovery or theory. Science is going through an acceleration of acceleration of discovery right now, so it is the time for a change like this. Science is the study of Nature, and technology is the application of Science, so it all comes from Nature, not spurious human cultural opinion. The application of the scientific method to human social concerns is a natural result of this wave of vast new discovery and the resulting knowledge. But it is not fixed, it continues to learn and grow.

It seeks maximum human freedom with maximum human prosperity in an ecologically sound and sane human culture. Utopia means 'no place' and in no way will it be a Utopia, like now might seem a Utopia to a serf in the Middle ages, but it is not either. And it is realized by most in the movement that it has to be global, not local, and the result of mass agreement on the global scale, or the implementation will be disastrous. Only a good means can create a good result... cause/effect.

The alternative is to continue with our current social paradigm, which has, according to most scientists, created the fastest and worse Mass Extinction Event in the history of the planet, and creating a world that the human species will likely not be able to survive in.

(This probably just seems like someone who feels 'superior' chiding someone who he thinks is his 'inferior'... but you cannot be more wrong on that. I would not put out this effort unless I didn't recognize your amazing capacity to think in new ways. As said in 'Matrix'... which are you going to take, the red pill or the green pill?) Adapt or die is the real law of nature.

I am not going to try to 'prove' this to you or argue with you about it, I am here only to answer questions about the Zeitgeist Movement so you have better data to work with in your own self-education. After all, we are all in that process.

I don't care if you agree or not, since it is not something that we propose to force on the world. The results of the continuing human created Mass Extinction Event will cause people to change the way they think... the question is rather or not we think survivable ideas and implement them, or we die out as a species on Planet Earth.

I am going to post this response on the Zeitgeist Websites for feedback from the membership. Like I said, we are all in the process of self-education.

@Worldmind: Thank you so much for the amazing reply.

it is not something that we propose to force on the world.

So true.
I believe its a process of self-realization and accepting only that is 'truth'. We have long been wooed away from the truth.

What will be your comment on Mr. Jacque Fresco being termed 'utopian'?
Aren't all ideas a step towards making things utopian aka 'towards perfection'?

Like bioramani said, Zetigeist has to start at our home. Zeitgeist by definition is 'the spirit of our times', but putting it quite bluntly, it looks to me as the need of our times.

AbraKaDabra@Worldmind: Thank you so much for the amazing reply.

So true.
I believe its a process of self-realization and accepting only that is 'truth'. We have long been wooed away from the truth.

'Self-realization is the root of all beneficial change. If the model we have in our minds is not true, then we will not behave in survivable ways.

But, the truth is, to me, what is discovered by science and experience, and it seems pretty relative. The idea of Truth as something fixed, passed down from 'on high' or suchlike, seems to be a justification for ignorance and slaughter. Science has been looking for the 'truth' for centuries, and has found that everything we come up with as a 'high truth' is overturned by new data that describes something far more wonderful. We will have to wait and see what we learn as time goes on, if we make it through this current crisis.

What will be your comment on Mr. Jacque Fresco being termed 'utopian'?
Aren't all ideas a step towards making things utopian aka 'towards perfection'?

'Utopian' is a meaningless grunt, which means whatever the person using it and the person hearing it thinks it is, which is probably very different. A complete variable that just causes confusion and jumping to mistaken assumptions. A great many words in our world are meaningless grunts, used in that way, often to justify slaughter and destruction.

To me, Universe is the definition of 'perfection' so I'm not sure what you mean. I mean that every atom is 'perfect', etc. As far as I can tell, only the human mind and it's virtual model of reality in our heads can be corrupt and imperfect... does not correspond with reality on a 1:1 basis. That ability to accept bad information as 'truth', imho, is the reason we got into this situation. Every massive chronicle of historical writings is a huge mess of information, disinformation, and misinformation, and sorting that out is part of what 'self-realization' is all about.

Like bioramani said, Zetigeist has to start at our home. Zeitgeist by definition is 'the spirit of our times', but putting it quite bluntly, it looks to me as the need of our times.

I agree. We are all on the sinking boat together, and people on a sinking boat, regardless of their differences, all think the same thing... Where's the lifeboats?'. lol. And it seems obvious that the situation is of our own making as a species, there are no lifeboats, and the situation can be overcome only by our species working together to survive. It cannot be forced or coerced or it will just speed up our extinction, mainly because of a thousand years of applying science to weaponry. Now it's time for Livingry. I see no other way, and to do that, much of the old paradigm will have to be discarded as the misinformation it is. All the scales of reality will have to be addressed, from our personal thoughts to how we behave en mass all over the planet. But it cannot be imposed in any way whatsoever... only a good means can create a good result. 'Do No Harm' This will be the biggest change in Humanity ever, without a doubt. If it is impossible, then Earth may become like Mars, apparently dead. And radioactive to boot.

I want to point out, btw, that there is no common assumptions in the Zeitgeist Movement, especially since it went from a couple of people to half a million in such a short time... the majority of people in the Movement have probably not realized that they are thinking in old unworkable terms and may not really even understand the goal of the Movement or that it is simply one part of a much larger movement that has no name, which is all the people working on new ways to generate power, find ecological harmony, clean up the pollution, etc, and prevent 30,000 people from starving to death every day. This is the biggest educational movement in history, will take decades, at least, and it has just begun.

We should avoid getting into the Nirvana Fallacy.

<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nirvana_fallacy#Perfect_Solution_Fallacy" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Nirvana Fallacy Perfect Solution Fallacy</a>

I don't think anyone is proposing a 'perfect' world or anything like it.