Zeitgeist & The Venus Project

It's time to wake up.

We live in a world where 1% of the population owns 40% of the planets wealth, where 34000 children die every single day from poverty and preventable diseases and where 50% of the world's population lives on less than 2 dollars a day.

It should be clear to everyone that something is very wrong.



http://www.thevenusproject.com/

The Venus Project presents a bold, new direction for humanity that entails nothing less than the total redesign of our culture. There are many people today who are concerned with the serious problems that face our modern society: unemployment, violent crime, replacement of humans by technology, over-population and a decline in the Earth's ecosystems.

The Venus Project is dedicated to confronting all of these problems by actively engaging in the research, development, and application of workable solutions. Through the use of innovative approaches to social awareness, educational incentives, and the consistent application of the best that science and technology can offer directly to the social system, The Venus Project offers a comprehensive plan for social reclamation in which human beings, technology, and nature will be able to coexist in a long-term, sustainable state of dynamic equilibrium.


http://www.thezeitgeistmovement.com/

The Zeitgeist Movement is the activist arm of The Venus Project, which constitutes the life long work of industrial designer and social engineer Jacque Fresco.

Watch the documentary movie at http://www.zeitgeistmovie.com/

 

Welcome to the boards!

We will deal with that sweet idealism of yours.

 

Zeitgeist is pretty much full of crap. Christianity wasn't plagiarized from other religions as a shadowy global conspiracy for control, the 9/11 attacks were terrorist attacks and not demolitions, and you can feel free to try not paying your income tax but you'll be buried in the ensuing court case by the mountains of law and precedent that Zeitgeist says aren't there but actually are.

That being said, I do think the Venus Project is a neat idea; we're actually already discussing it -- or at least, the general concept of neo-communism -- in this thread. I think it can work if people want it, the problem is most people don't want it and/or can't get their minds around it.

 

unemployment, violent crime, replacement of humans by technology, over-population and a decline in the Earth's ecosystems

Threats to "society" that have been echoed many times in history, but we still manage to get pass it right? Face it the world isn't perfect, we should strive to make it better for as many, but we won't be seeing Utopia anytime soon.

And believe me the Earth and it's ecosystems can take care of themselves it's the Human Species that might go bust.

 

Zeitgeist is pretty much full of crap. Christianity wasn't plagiarized from other religions as a shadowy global conspiracy for control, the 9/11 attacks were terrorist attacks and not demolitions, and you can feel free to try not paying your income tax but you'll be buried in the ensuing court case by the mountains of law and precedent that Zeitgeist says aren't there but actually are.

There is a lot of criticism against Zeitgeist even among conspiracy theorists.

 

It never fails to amaze me how conspiracy theories gain ground on very little traction.

 

If only we could develop cars that go that far on that little.

 

Well, I for one would really like to have a discussion about some of the stuff in Zeitgeist.

First of all, have any of the above posters actually seen it from beginning to end? Because the whole debunking Jesus thing was NOT talking about how Christianity is tied to the New World Order or any other conspiracy. The whole point was that in our culture we are persuaded to believe in "myths", which would allow us to believe in the myth of 9/11 being an accident.

We could go on forever talking about 9/11. There are other threads here that discuss it. Right now I am most interested in the religious points Zeitgeist makes and how that fits in to the larger cultural context with the Venus Project. Anyone want to have a REAL discussion?

Thanks for posting this thread, Daco. Not everyone here is sarcastic and dismissive.

Do you think a large shift in our culture is possible? Would it only happen if there was some kind of "revolution"?

 

,,
Do you think a large shift in our culture is possible? Would it only happen if there was some kind of "revolution"? "

I think we are witnessing a silent revolution against institutional authority. Were is this going to lead us is an interesting question.

 

I see what you're saying because I've noticed the same trend, but sometimes I just think it's increasing paranoia and distrust because of the farce and disgrace that was George Bush's presidency. People realize they've been lied to by a criminal, someone they voted for and even trusted for a while.

I have my doubts that this silent revolution is really going to lead to fundamental cultural change, however. Most Americans don't have the confidence or bile to actually reject the established order and live outside of it. The closest we've come in recent years in the revolution of the 1960's--just think about what freaks those people were! Haha. Since then, they've dumbed down the educational system to ensure that the next generation is desensitized and depressed, obsessed with money and material wealth and popular culture. Do you really think we can reject those values that are so deeply entrenched in our culture?

 

,,Do you really think we can reject those values that are so deeply entrenched in our culture?"

THIS IS AN INDIDUALISED CULTURE, one way or another people will realize the elite is just selling them the image of hapiness, not hapiness itself.
dO YOU SEE what political leaders have to do? Some of them want too look cool. They simply dont fit into average joes life. What are they going to win by voting for someone they dont trust?

Would they reject those so called values, i think yes, but one way or another things will change, leaders cannot do things like they would live in the 19th century, they have less and less too count on.

 

I watched that movie, and the Venus project would set up a society that would be similar to the Star Trek federation society, Individual wealth no longer exists. It's a resource based economy. No greed or corporate capitalism

I have only one issue with it, how do you motivate lazy people to contribute to be productive in society where wealth and possessions become irrelevant?

 

Did YOU watch the whole thing? Because the first third quite clearly was making the fraudulent case that Christianity was willfully plagiarized from other religions with the express intent of some kind of shadowy conspiracy.

I watched the whole film, both Zeitgeist and Addendum, and regardless of what the "point" was, the issue is that Zeitgeist was lying. Whether out of ignorance or intentionally (probably ignorance). Most of what it says about Mithra, Horus, etc. just plain isn't in those pagan religions.

I'll be the first one to stand up and say that the Christian myth is just that, and even that it incorporated elements of previous religions -- mostly their celebration traditions rather than their religious teachings, though. But when you make that case based on outright fabrications, all it does is hurt your case. It doesn't take much digging to discover that, and then religious folks have every reason in the world to stop listening when you try to demonstrate using ACTUAL facts the origins of their mythology.

I certainly do, which is why I posted a thread dedicated to the idea of a resurgent form of techno-communism (which is really all the Venus Project is), removing it from the pall of Zeitgeist's crummy scholarship.

Though I have to wonder -- if the guys behind the Venus Project are for real, why haven't they yet been invited to TED? Seems like exactly the venue for what they want to do.

It's happening already. Look at Wikipedia, look at filesharing, look at YouTube. People are working hard, or giving away something they paid to own or for which in the past they could have demanded money, in the sole interest of reciprocal gain. The attitude is already shifting, but it's happening so subtly that no one realizes it.

Well, that's the thing about the Venus Project idea. You have automation replace the production-based workforce, so that ultimately if lazy people don't want to work, they frankly don't have to. Since resources would theoretically be infinite, no one represents a "burden" to the system or to each other. So everyone can pursue what motivates them -- and if that happens to be nothing at all, then so be it. Everyone else will be doing what makes them happy, they will want for nothing, and so will be unlikely to begrudge anyone else their own happiness.

 

I have watched Zeitgeist. I can't really defend all of the things discussed in the Christianity part because I have never seen any information that supports OR contradicts what it claims. A lot of it very well may be false. However, I don't remember the claim that it's part of a conspiracy. The Roman empire may be largely responsible for the rise in power and popularity because it was declared as the official religion for political purposes, if that's the conspiracy you are referring to. But maybe I'm just not remembering everything.

 

Communism/Socialism/General Evilness is bad. I'll keep my personal wealth, thank you very much.

 

Except in the socialism that ryan is talking about, you would have your "wealth", it would just be that everyone else had as much money as they wanted and so would you. But people will have no need to use money because there is an abunance of resorces.

I personally agree with Dorkman,

 

Then my wealth is worth nothing (and, as such, really isn't wealth). Economically, its incredibly stupid.

 

How is having personal wealth in any way relevant to this discussion? We are talking about a shift in VALUES, a decrease in materialism, perhaps--but not establishing communism.

 

It's worth would then only be what its worth is to you. Because in this situation everyone would be infinitely rich, and there would no longer be need of money. We wouldn't have the same type of economy anymore, with unlimited products and no need for labor. It would be a completely different way of life. Without reason for greed or competition to exist, people would then actually become less materialistic and more altruistic. It's not economicaly stupid, it's a whole new economy.

 

If you could eliminate all power struggles, greed, selfishness, and corporatism away form humanity, organized society would benefit enormously.

Imagine no wars, all of humanity treated equally throughout the world.

The present organized human system of thing will NEVER bring this about simply because of the power struggles & greed that is embedded into the very fabric of the system.

Indeed we do need a "New System" for society to prosper.

 

We are, though. A resource-based economy where everyone shares and shares alike is communism. Don't waste your energy trying to equivocate and convince people it's not communism -- focus your energy instead on helping people see past the Pavlovian response of assuming communism is a bad thing.

The difference from previous incarnations of "communism" is that the resources would be effectively infinite, whereas in previous iterations it was people being forced to share finite resources and spread them thin.

But you are right in the sense that for this to work, people have to want it. As long as people measure their personal value by how much more of X they have than their neighbors, they're not going to be happy in a society where everyone has equal and infinite access to X. As you say, people will have to learn to value themselves from a framework other than that which devalues those around them.

 

This whole thing seems to center on an impossible concept. At no point in the conceivable future will there ever be "unlimited resources." That's principally because, even ignoring the immense scientific barriers they're trying to hand wave away, there's a finite amount of matter and energy in the Universe. Eventually, growth would continue until you consumed all of it. The only way to simulate "unlimited resources" is tight population control that holds you far beneath the biological carrying capacity of wherever you have to be. That, though, isn't really a solution, is it?

 

The only way to simulate "unlimited resources" is tight population control that holds you far beneath the biological carrying capacity of wherever you have to be. That, though, isn't really a solution, is it?

Eventually, that will be the only solution.