Sunday, December 30, 2018

The Zeitgeist Movement gets compared to Scientology

Delusional Zeitard defends Scientology


Money is the root of evil, according to the Book of Timothy in the New Testament; burning it will heal the planet, argues the intriguing documentary “Zeitgeist: Moving Forward.” This is the third in a series of “Zeitgeist” films for director-producer-writer-cinematographer-composer-editor and narrator Peter Joseph, who goes only by his first and middle names. In this installment, he attacks the international monetary system and promotes a sustainable utopia.
Peter Joseph opened his earlier “Zeitgeist: The Movie” (2007) and “Zeitgeist: Addendum” (2008) with lines from Tibetan and Indian philosophers, respectively. Austrian communist Ernest Fischer, author of The Necessity of Art: A Marxist Approach, supplies the epigraph for “Zeitgeist: Moving Forward”: “Art must show the world as changeable. And help to change it.”
After circuituous discussions of human genetics, violence, addiction, currency, inflation and oil, the lengthy film gets around to changing the world using “the scientific method applied to human concerns.”
Social engineer and industrial designer Jacque Fresco plugs his Venus Project, in which he envisions a “cybernated society” of circular cities where “computers could replace the outmoded system of electing politicians.” Satellite-steered, collectively owned cars will eliminate traffic fatalities, he forecasts.
Peter Joseph’s most imaginative leap comes at the end when he dramatizes a scenario for peaceful revolt: citizens of Earth see the light and toss all their cash into fires outside banks. Although the first two “Zeitgeist” films spawned a grass-roots movement (the Illinois chapter is hosting the Chicago screenings) this tactic is not prescribed for offscreen activists.
At times, Peter Jospeh skirts with esoterica. Never as kooky as “visionaries” Lyndon LaRouche and L. Ron Hubbard, he nonetheless partakes in science worship, sci-fi mind-slavery metaphors, and a global banking obsessions. His films draw upon such disparate books as The Christ Conspiracy: The Greatest Story Ever Sold, The Cancer Stage of Capitalism, The Coming Oil Crisis and Confessions of an Economic Hit Man.
Economists, including the late University of Chicago seer Milton Friedman, are the big bad guys here. Their theories are based on the lie of “infinite resources.” The provocative “Zeitgeist: Moving Forward” advocates instead a “resource-based” society, rescaled under the “dictatorship” of nature.

The Zeitgeist Movement

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The Zeitgeist Movement
TZM logo.png
AbbreviationTZM
Formation2008; 10+ years ago
TypeAdvocacy group
Region served
International
Key people
Peter Joseph
WebsiteTheZeitgeistMovement.com
The Zeitgeist Movement is an activist movement established in the United States in 2008 by Peter Joseph.
An article in the Journal of Contemporary Religion describes the movement as an example of a "conspirituality", a synthesis of New Age spirituality and conspiracy theory.[1]
The group is critical of market capitalism, describing it as structurally corrupt and wasteful of resources. According to The Daily Telegraph, the group dismisses historic religious concepts as misleading, and embraces sustainable ecology and scientific administration of society.[2][3][4][5]
Michelle Goldberg of Tablet Magazine called the movement "the world's first Internet-based apocalyptic cult, with members who parrot the party line with cheerful, rote fidelity."[6] In her opinion, the movement is "devoted to a kind of sci-fi planetary communism", and the 2007 documentary that "sparked" the movement was "steeped in far-right, isolationist, and covertly anti-Semitic conspiracy theories."[6]
Alan Feuer of The New York Times said the movement was like "a utopian presentation of a money-free and computer-driven vision of the future, a wholesale reimagination of civilization, as if Karl Marx and Carl Sagan had hired John Lennon from his "Imagine" days to do no less than redesign the underlying structures of planetary life."[7]
The Zeitgeist Movement was formed in 2008 by Joseph shortly after the late 2008 release of Zeitgeist: Addendum, the second film in the Zeitgeist film series.[8][9]
Zeitgeist was first linked to the Venus Project. In April 2011, partnership between the two groups ended in an apparent power struggle, with Joseph commenting, "Without [the Zeitgeist Movement], [the Venus Project] doesn’t exist – it has nothing but ideas and has no viable method to bring it to light."[8]
The first Zeitgeist documentary which predates the organization Zeitgeist movement, borrowed from the works of Eustace MullinsLyndon LaRouche, and radio host Alex Jones.[6] Much of its footage was taken directly from Alex Jones documentaries.[6]
VC Reporter's Shane Cohn summarized the movement's charter as: "Our greatest social problems are the direct results of our economic system".[10]
The group holds an annual event, Z-Day (or Zeitgeist Day), an "educational forum" held in March. The New York Times reported on the second Z-Day held at Manhattan Community College in New York in 2009 which included lectures by Peter Joseph and Jacque Fresco.[7] This event sold out with 900 people paying $10 each to attend. The event's organizers said that 450 connected events in 70 countries around the globe also took place.[7]

See also

References

  1. ^ Ward, Charlotte; Voas, David (2011). "The Emergence of Conspirituality". Journal of Contemporary Religion26 (1): 109–111. doi:10.1080/13537903.2011.539846.
  2. ^ McElroy, Danien. June 17, 2012. Forest boy 'inspired by Zeitgeist movement'The Telegraph. Retrieved November 14, 2018.
  3. ^ Resnick, Jan (February 25, 2009). "The Zeitgeist Movement"Psychotherapy in Australia15 (2). ISSN 1323-0921.
  4. ^ Quotations and citations in this Wikipedia article are based on the translation from Hebrew to English of The Filmmaker Who Helped Recruit Millions for the Global Protests of the Bottom 99%, original Hebrew article by Asher Schechter, TheMarker (Israel), January 19, 2012.
  5. ^ Quotations and citations in this Wikipedia article are based on the translation from Hebrew to English of Imagine, original Hebrew article by Tzaela KotlerGlobes (Israel), March 18, 2010.
  6. Jump up to:a b c d Goldberg, Michelle (February 2, 2011). "Brave New World"Tablet. Retrieved November 14, 2018.
  7. Jump up to:a b c Feuer, Alan (March 17, 2009). "They've Seen the Future and Dislike the Present"The New York Times. Retrieved November 14,2018.
  8. Jump up to:a b Gore, Jeff (October 12, 2011). "The view from Venus Jacque Fresco designed a society without politics, poverty and war. Will it ever leave the drawing board?"Orlando Weekly. Retrieved September 17, 2015.
  9. ^ Cohn, Shane. "New world re-order". VCReporter. Retrieved May 28, 2015.
  10. ^ Cohn, Shane (May 12, 2011). "New world re-order". VCReporter. Retrieved November 14, 2018.