The Zeitgeist Movement criticize Peter Joseph

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Peter Joseph answers TVP question

TVP Question

Q:
Hi Pete
Myself and some friends are going to attend Jacque Fresco’s 100 birthday party in March and I was wondering if you were going to be there after all this time…since you were the one who basically put them on the map with your movies and TZM’s support it seems like a good idea make amends…i mean, he is so old now. Why any grudge? …also, is there anything about the venus project you no longer agree with?

A:
Hello,
I think it is great people are supporting Fresco’s Bday. He deserves to have a great reception for this efforts. But no, I won’t be there. First, for the sake of community solidarity I have spoken little publicly amount TVP since 2011 as there is no point in sparking tension between what are two groups looking toward similar ends. However, I will break this rule for moment and give you my basic thoughts and you can read into it as you see fit.

I have gotten many hundreds of emails since the TVP/TZM spilt, many also asking a good question. “How can we expect to move forward when the two groups promoting the new direction can’t even get along?
First, this makes assumptions about personal human relationships that are impractical. Sometimes damage occurs on a level that no matter how “Gandhian” we may hope to be, the pain is too strong. I’m sure we have all experienced betrayal by friends or even horribly ending romantic relationships where, even if the parties “forgive” each other, it still isn’t the same. Some pain is physical and lingers no matter what the minds does. Sad to say, I do not respect Jacque and Roxanne enough given their past behavior towards myself and the TZM community. Of course, their personalities have nothing to do with their work towards a better world. I hold no active hard feelings and have been in loose, positive contact with them, wishing them well. TZM as a group has always been supportive. In fact, that was the whole point at the start. To support TVP and we did so by 3 years of helping unaccounted donations, their world tour, event days, etc.

As far as your question regarding “if I disagree with TVP” now, well that depends on which side of it you look at. As an .org TVP is frustrating as Jacque will pass without ever actually providing any technical details about the society he specifically envisions. I meet lots of TVP folks and I often ask them to explain exactly how the resource and labor processes will work in a RBE. I mean technically. How does the design translate? They can’t do it without generalizations and platitudes such as “we have to make all resources common heritage” or “using the scientific method for social concern”. There is no real information in any of that, even though the ideas are good. To date, I have never seen any kind of real technical plan that shows the dynamics. The money funneled from TZM to TVP went I have no idea where and I state that not to question their motives but to show what I think is a kind of incompetence and disregard for taking the next step. I feel this is a viable criticism as we all needed to see real plans, not mere graphics. This is why an enormous amount of time was spent on the third part of The Zeitgeist Movement Defined book to express the function:

which is very crude but at least serves to start an algorithmic modeling that can be understood and transferred. But this isn’t Fresco’s model and I have no idea exactly what he thinks its going to happen on the system level outside of very general relationships. This doesn’t mean he doesn’t know. But he hasn’t released the work, if it exists. Overall, I see little more than talk from TVP after 30-40 years and while one could say the same about TZM, we have only been around for 6 and very soon are going to launch a series of open source, interactive design platforms to start multi-tier modeling of real dynamics. This has to be done if the scientific community will ever take this view seriously...and without extended support, little can be hoped for. To date, no one in the mainstream scientific community has taken this stuff seriously and it isn’t always because they are biased -- they are simply not being given the language they need to make judgments.

As far as the Frescoian RBE model itself, I will say the greatest communicative weakness is the over emphasis on technology and less real attention on changing human values. Big machines creating huge structures isn’t the solution to anything. Yes, a change in values will occur to a large degree, over time, once transition is made. But in 99% of the literature it talks about relieving labor and creating an “abundance” only. In most cases, it doesn’t even clarify what an abundance is. On the surface this seems like enough since it is implied this will change values in the end... but it is only a fraction of the conversation required. We need sociological confirmation through 3rd party study for the theory to be taken seriously.

The “abundance” is only relevant to the degree humans understand its role to ease economic stress/aberrant behavior, knowing however that there will never be a time of total abundance. And this means more than a change of the socioeconomic infrastructure; and while TVP knows this, their materials do not convey it well at all. Implying people can have anything and everything they want isn’t smart, especially in the current culture. The last thing I will comment on is how the powerful influence of others on Jacque’s work should be better known, at least for the sake of shutting down the guru shit. Fresco has fostered and allowed a notorious guru-like culture to breed, regardless of his posturing. He is too centric when he talks and things appear much more novel than they are. I find this problematic in general as people do not explore as much as they need to in furthering intellectual development.

Regardless, Jacque has done a great job of making the work of Buckminster Fuller more accessible and I’m glad he did as Fuller is a hard read. He also refined the general ideas of Technocracy Inc and simplified Thorstein Veblen, while carrying the torch of the raw originator of the RBE in outline: John Adolphus Etzler. His 1833 work “The Paradise within the reach of all Men” shows the exact “train of thought” we all promote. This history is important to know.

Jacque’s work is landmark in the time and energy spent to get to such a place, regardless of any deficiencies and I hope he lives for another 100 years. ~pj