Hey all,
I recently watched Zeitgeist II (a.k.a. Addendum) and I thought I would share my thoughts with all.
Aside from the rage-inducing piece on the Monetary system (money is created out of thin air!?!? WTF?!?!) the invention of which I’ve always held to be our second mistake after being stupid enough to come down out of the trees, the section on a Resource-Based economy really held my attention, and I’m convinced it may be the way forward for our wayward social structure.
One of the comments that really spoke to me was the fact that the monetary system is based on scarcity, e.g. diamonds are kept scarce to keep their price up, and yet if something is abundant no-one in their right mind would ever accept having to pay for it, something like air or water (yeah, i know about water charges).
The other things that had my jaw dropping in awe (and a twinge of anger) was the 4,000mph mag-train technology (making a trip from L.A. to Beijing a matter of an hour or two) and the fact that there is enough clean, free and, most importantly, self-renewing energy in the earth’s core that we could easily begin to harvest within the next 10years that would power the ENTIRE GLOBE’s energy needs for 4,000 years, eliminating the need to have to pay for an electricity bill ever again.
If you haven’t seen it, or its predecessor, I highly recommend it!! I also recommend checking out The Venus Project, which is a plan for a viable, sustainable resource-based economy. It is featured in the documentary and the people behind give interviews about the current state of society and their hopes for the project.
Now, I know I sound like one of those crazy 9/11 theorist wackos talking about a “New World Order” etc… but I’m not. While I realise the makers of the documentary do believe some of this crap, I don’t. I don’t buy that all our problems are caused by the “elite 1% of the population”. They, and the problems they cause, such as blocking global-scale Electric Car development, are merely a symptom of the Monetary system and I do believe that this Monetary-based system we’ve applied to our societies is crippling ourselves, our planet and our growth.
If you haven’t realised, we now have (and have had for quite some time) the technology, the resources and the manpower to house every single family on the planet. And yet we sit around watching people die of AIDS in Africa while the U.S. wastes tens of billions of dollars on “defense”, pharmaceutical companies charge 1500% the actual cost of their medicines and idiots like Edward Current‘s satirical Christian blame Satan for plane crashes.
So, anyone else believe that a social revolution is in order before we destroy ourselves and our planet?
Filed under: ethics, skepticism |
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I’ve only seen the first Zeitgeist movie and wasn’t gonna be in any hurry to see the second one, but i’ll keep an eye out for it now.
On another note, I enjoy a lot of EdwardCurrents videos, some of them are top notch and great satire. I don’t think he’s an idiot.
yes, the hope is that we will progress towards such a world, however slowly
“there is NOTHING naive about realising that our current system is broken and attempting to come up with a better solution”
I agree wholeheartedly with that sentiment, and I’d like to direct my assertion of naivety towards those who point the Venus Project as a viable future for the human race, who merely ignore any troubling facts of life that would interefere with the realisation of such a society, like human nature.
That said – the only thing I know about the Venus Project is what I saw in this film, and that was at least two months ago.
To expand on my earlier comment – I do tend to find value in the rhetoric of such extreme dissenters, as their overly-ambitious pipedreams might inspire the more pragmatic to take baby-steps towards a better world.
well, to be fair, I did point out that I was wary of the conspiracy crap myself and didn’t share those views, and I was merely expressing shock that the 4,000mph mag-train technology actually exists as opposed to proposing we adopt a highly expensive, possibly not feasible transport system on a global scale, but I do need to stress two things.
First off, he whole point is that the cost of such a project should be irrelevant if the monetary system is the source of the problem, since the only things stopping such a system from rolling out IS the cost. And secondly, there is NOTHING naive about realising that our current system is broken and attempting to come up with a better solution.
I watched the film – I found the monetary system exegesis certainly compelling, but the rest was mostly naive utopianism. While I certainly agree that it’s good to have something to work towards, I could easily poke holes in many of the utopian notions that the Venus Project propose.
Also, more Maglev trains aren’t being built because they are obscenely expensive to build – allow Wikipedia to expound on this:
“The Shanghai maglev cost 9.93 billion yuan (US$1.2 billion) to build. This total includes infrastructure capital costs such as manufacturing and construction facilities, and operational training. At 50 yuan per passenger and the current 7,000 passengers per day, income from the system is incapable of recouping the capital costs (including interest on financing) over the expected lifetime of the system, even ignoring operating costs.”
Don’t get me wrong – I always appreciate an alternative viewpoint, (I watched Expelled, ferchrissakes!) but I would certainly never endorse a film like this, unless I got the point across that only the first part is worthwhile.
I’d sound a note of caution about the Zeitgeist films. I’ve only seen the first one but several of the claims in that film were simply wrong. They also repeated several already dis-proven 9/11 truther claims.
Take a look at http://www.conspiracyscience.com/articles/zeitgeist/ & http://www.conspiracyscience.com/articles/zeitgeist-addendum/ & http://zeitgeistchallenge.com/ and see what you think.
yeah, i know, but a satirical idiot is an idiot nonetheless, since what he’s satirising actually looks like that
Just to be sure you know – Edward Current is satire…