Showing posts with label Utopia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Utopia. Show all posts
Friday, February 14, 2020
Friday, February 7, 2020
InterReflections spoiler
This. This is what #tzm members and @ZeitgeistFilm spent over 5 years and hundreds of thousands of dollars on? This inaudible amateurish mess. Pathetic. https://t.co/kQNqqwHZhk— The Goodest Jim Jesus 🤘🏴💰🍕 (@JimJesus) March 31, 2020
Peter Joseph's first foray into feature-length fiction is a refreshingly sober, jarring, horror fantasy/sci-fi ride, taking risks that pay off in defining the contours of a new genre: the social purpose film.
For those who are familiar with Peter Joseph's body of work, a cerebral, feature-length sci-fi sounds about as intriguing as it does peculiar; what does a social activist known for verbosity know about making movies? The answer most likely lies in the near-decade it took to produce this movie. First announced nearly 10 years ago, what Joseph lacks in budget, he more than makes up for in conviction and execution. InterReflections may very well be the first fully meta modern film. Basing the film on his heavily sourced 2017 non-fiction book, The New Human Rights Movement, Joseph elevates the medium with informed pragmatism. What emerges when all these elements are set in motion is a film worthy of multiple viewings.
Warning: light spoilers ahead
We follow '23' in the era of the Great Debate - so named for her number in the HR queue at the company she's just been let go from - through an Alice in Nightmareland fever-dream sequence as she begins to see the ugly face of our society and how the undeserved are treated by it. Parallel to this plot (30 years in the future around the time of the Great Transition) is a subterfuge mission by an Edward Snowden-esque former alphabet soup defector named 'John Taylor' and the whistleblower group known as Concordia. The Central Authority that protects financial interests at the expense of planetary well being has captured John Taylor and is willing to negotiate a reduced sentence with him for help - they need his expertise catching anarcho-primitivist hackers known as 'Orion'.
The film begins with an idyllic scene of a family picnicking in a vibrant meadow, but this is obliterated almost inexplicably abruptly, destroyed by nuclear weaponry. Later we'll draw the lines between weaponry and livingry, but in this moment we have to trust that the creative team has a plan. This dream-like sequence ends with a fade to a young girl painting a representation of earth on a nuclear warhead. This will make sense to us by the end, when it's revealed this nuke is a weapon that Concordia, a group identified as terrorists by the state apparatus in the film, intends to use for their liberation.
Films like Tomorrowland and Midnight Special aim to similarly inspire, but fall short of substantial guidance. Similarly, Mr. Robot in it's premiere and first seasons addressed similar underlying socioeconomic distress, but collapsed on this plot by seeking to resolve the economic concerns with an interior journey. InterReflections goes further than these and deeper than other meta films/series like The OA or Adaptation in its honesty and abstractions. The film confronts us with the questions it knows we will ask, with answers ready: Is the film's premise too grand? Too utopian? It seems to be backed by scientific consensus, so why is this even a debate?
The director sits with us as filmmaker and co-conspirator, acknowledging that the film exists in the reality that produced it, and that we all have the capacity to contribute to a better future should we so choose. This is heavily supported by the film's concurrent timelines and multi-dimensional approach to the narrative, which manages to surprise and delight in a post-Inception landscape. Yes, apparently we can still go deeper without amping tired tropes to some ridiculously conceived next level of arbitrary complexity, giving plenty to theorize over. More immediately in the plot's pacing, we are afforded the opportunity to learn a great deal from our cynic antagonist, 'Simon,' Taylor's old boss, about the sinister UX-83 program, aka the Malthusian Mandate.
What Simon doesn't realize is that John has a plan of his own. Apparently driven to cynicism by the weariness of enforcing a paradigm with destructive consequences, Simon is a self-aware antagonist who playfully quotes UBS boss Arthur Jensen of Network. Simon, like Agent Smith before him, affords our protagonist the opportunity challenge his dominion while they let loose riffing off one another in a continuation of the Great Debate unfolding between their staked positions. Where Simon is incentivized to accept a misguided 'human nature' argument, John recognizes that we are all participants in the game we play and that we can choose a better suited paradigm as long as we understand the parameters. The key difference in these two figures seems to be the proximity each has to the fear of scarcity and the actions other humans might take in what each puts forth as likely projected scenarios. Joseph flexes here, using his credentials as an author to demolish socially darwinistic arguments and confidently construct counter-arguments through Taylor.
Interspersed among these parallel plots throughout the film is an interview documentary that takes place 100 years from our own 2020, delivering exposition and supporting arguments for the actions and malaise experienced by our protagonists in their respective times.
So far we have the Great Debate time (our present), the Great Transition (30 years in the future), and the Future/Present (100 years from our present, where a documentary is being filmed that views the prior timelines as past).
The imagery in InterReflections dispenses with “cope talk” and instead subverts euphemisms like “pink slip” with a more literal economic execution. Writers like Steven Pinker emphasize that the world is getting better while minimizing the systemic inefficiencies and structural harm produced by our economic system; however, Joseph makes a conscious choice to illustrate how subtle, normalized economic mechanisms can exacerbate into epidemics, like an opioid crisis plaguing the United States fueled by economic disenfranchisement. The film takes its time with each element, introducing them deliberately and with the evidence necessary to pull off a film laden with theory. After marinating us in nightmare fuel, Joseph breaks out with a musical number and counters the recent bleakness of Black Mirror with optimism as Chomsky defines it: “Optimism is a strategy for making a better future. Because unless you believe that the future can be better, you are unlikely to step up and take responsibility for making it so.”
Hot off the heels of hit blockbuster 'Joker', InterReflections is a much needed antidote to the cathartic despair of Arthur Fleck.
It's through this integration of sci-fi, horror, fantasy, and documentary-style film techniques that Joseph transcends the medium beyond merely breaking the 4th wall, it seems he aims to break the black mirror, the very looking glass that we - the audience - use to comfortably distance ourselves from the subject matter. Without spoiling what breaking the black mirror refers to, it's something that you'll recognize when you see it and it all comes together. Only a social activist with a sincere, uncompromised, and vulnerable adaptive vision can move the stale medium of film beyond superficial capes and crusaders, damning, by its very existence, the emptiness found by appealing to only empty calorie denominators. This facet of the film is where Joseph breaks new ground, placing the onus on us to understand what we can do with the information presented. Empowering us to do so.
Optimism and nihilism are transformed into a meta modern utilitarian pragmatism, and our blooming existential turbulence is given data-driven medicine far more powerful than the milquetoast manufactured hope of Pinker. By acknowledging the POSIWID (The Purpose of A System Is What It Does) of perspectives, InterReflections understands that while it proposes apparently lofty goals, we are merely limited by our own abilities and structural incentives. By involving the audience in the Great Debate through 23, the cast and director dare us as an audience to ignore the pragmatic design proposals of the film's future. It preempts 'utopian' critique, with a nod to Massive Change author Bruce Mau, and a blunt quip that we should only bother calling effective design 'utopian' if we want to sound stupid.
Finally, the film ends with wisdom and a warning. The director asks one of our documentary subjects that if they could reach someone in their distant past, aimless and disenfranchised prior to the Great Transition, for all the lost people out there listening for direction, what would they say? To which she replies: Recognize that you are all one, or find out the hard way.
We'll see if Dennis Villenueva's adaptation of Dune reaches what is now the bar for ambitious, purposeful sci-fi as Frank Herbert, an ecology activist, might have dreamed for Dune, but for now InterReflections, a low-budget indie production, holds that title.
Heading into the Soaring 20's, the timing for InterReflections couldn't be better. It may set an idealized tone, but it does so with a self-deprecating sense of humor and meticulous awareness of the subject's gravity. Don't miss this film, it may be the most important one you see.
Thursday, December 12, 2019
Sunday, April 26, 2015
Another Charles Robinson-like interview
A new interview to be published soon in a German Arts Magazine. Not sure if they will put it all in so I will just post the whole thing here, now. ~p
(1)What is the Zeitgeist movement and what does it hope to achieve?
-I suppose TZM is a few things, depending on what aspect one chooses to emphasize.
On the broad scale is it a sustainability movement. In this, we understand the importance of environmental sustainability and how it relates to social sustainability. Long story short, you cannot have social sustainability (i.e. social stability) without environmental sustainability. If we experience massive resource shortages throughout the world, we can rest assured that it will create social destabilization as a consequence. Therefore, habitat integrity precedes societal integrity.
On the other hand, TZM is a civil rights movement. While we do not embrace or promote any existing political structure as a means to an end, one could (perhaps) use the word "populist" to express the Movement’s interest to help the vast majority of the world – a majority that should now rise up and realize the state of their oppression and counter the dramatic amount of unnecessary suffering and structural violence endured – all resulting from the current socioeconomic system.
TZM does not blame specific people, groups or “political” policy. At the root of the problem is the system of economics itself. Namely, market capitalism. However, it is worth noting that capitalism is also a symptom of a deeper sociological disorder regarding how we view the world and how we view each other. Our culture has evolved within an archaic and fearful worldview based on scarcity, with our most primitive reactions constantly ‘pinged’ or excited by the negative stress of our environment. This has manifest the capitalist model as a natural consequence and, as of now, we are in a nasty feedback loop which keep humanity in a violent cycle of primitive reactions of fear and greed… slowly pushing everything towards collapse.
So, to stop the cycle and create a more humane value system and appropriate approach to our social management, we first need to remove the system that is reinforcing it – what is creating the destructive feedback loop. The vast majority of the world’s problems are not going to be resolved or even slowed by current “establishment” oriented attempts at change. It’s all just noise. Trivial in the long term. Only when a new, intelligent socioeconomic system is installed that relevant long-term change will commence. We title this new system a "Natural Law, Resource-Based Economy”.
This worldview essentially began in the early 19th century with a man named John Etzler who is currently condemned by history as the first “Technological Utopianist”. While there are some problems with Etzler’s early, primitive vision (his main thesis was written in 1833), the basic framework of what he noticed – the intelligent use of technology; aligning with natural law forces; and the raising of humanity to a new level beyond merely working for money and the inherent slavery that it is - has been embraced by many since that time, extending the logic. This includes thinkers/institutions such as R. Buckminster Fuller, Technocracy Inc., Jacque Fresco and many others.
Furthermore, while The Zeitgeist Movement exists as a grassroots, chapter connected global network, it is also an emerging 501(c)(3) nonprofit working within the United States. This tax-exempt NPO helps larger order actions of the global movement, such as major event, press relations, media productions and the like.
(2) The Zeitgeist film began as an artistic performance rather than a documentary per se... what do you think is more effective in terms of creating an impact on the audience (artistic performance vs. documentary paradigm?)
-I'm not sure if there is a clean answer to that question. Each approach has an effect in different ways, depending on the nature of the viewer. My first film was created as an emotionally driven aesthetic piece that worked to generate critical thought in an extreme, abstract way. This work was done with heavy gesture and over-simplified statements to create a broad worldview. However, gesture aside, it is also likely the most sourced documentary in filmmaking history. I am unaware of any film that has detailed everything in such great scrutiny as I later did in the 200+ page book written to support the claims made. I state that because even 8 years later there is a vast condemnation of the piece in certain circles, with endless propaganda and derisive association – mostly based upon an uneducated and unenlightened sense of artistic express and mixed genre style.
So, I hence believe a combination of art and science; of gesture and academic rigor, is key. It is a balance. In fact, this is probably truer than ever given how saturated media has become in the modern day. The very act of getting anyone to pay attention to anything out there requires some type of aesthetic persuasion that invariably must be somewhat entertaining rather than coldly intellectual. That is my view, at least.
(3) Do you think that being able to participate in activism is a luxury, to a certain extent? For example, if I have to struggle to work a mindless job 10 hours a day just to feed my family of 6, do I have the same opportunity to take an interest in changing the system as someone with more time and resources? Or is it a 'with privilege comes responsibility' kind of thing?
-A natural consequence of the economic structure and resulting incentive system is that people become locked into a feedback loop of narrow self-interest. People are not trained by the very nature of this society to care about anyone else but themselves and their ”tribe”, and the pressures – the structural coercion – that are built in to the system reinforces that need for apathy and hence the disregard of one’s external surroundings. This relates to both people and the habitat, in fact.
So, in that respect, for people to really care about the well being of others or to pay attention to what is really happening in the political sphere – one has to be able to distract themselves from their general survival for a moment. This is easier said than done. While, of course, we all realize that our existences relate to the systems around us such as the political and economic system – it is still extremely difficult to have time given all of the survival pressures to actually do anything about what is going on. And , sadly enough, most of the little things people do who think they are doing something… are actually pointless in the long run as, once again, they do not address the system problem.
I would also say that people have been bought off in this society, even if poor. One of the negative benefits of technological development in the current material culture is the vanity and bizarre fetishes that have been created surrounding superficial devices/gadgetry. The thought of people losing access to these fetishes keeps them more in line with establishment values, just like how the rich would obviously rather keep their great wealth. Needless to say, to ‘rock the boat’ puts in danger one’s stability. The feedback loop continues.
However, to answer your question "with privilege comes responsibility" I suppose I agree in theory but at the same time most who achieve a state of true financial privilege have usually been indoctrinated into being satisfied by the system since the system has accommodated them. Coupled with the inherent narcissism and self-interest that the system compounds, again “pinging” primal human fears and generating greed - more often than not those who do reach a state of "privilege" tend to be even more fearful of rocking the boat. Rather, they pretend. They start trusts and become “philanthropists” – which is probably the most offensive word in the culture today, if you think about how it is used.
So, back to my original point, there are system pressures on many levels that deter people from challenging the status quo. I would state that the most common deterrent is the general destitution and stress perpetuated by the social structure itself that restricts one's capacity to even pay attention to anything outside of one's personal survival. It is too inconvenient and risky.
I will also add that education is also a huge factor. Just like in abject slave times it was illegal in some regions for slaves to be literate – there is a natural propensity to avoid quality education for the masses because there is no advantage to freethinking individuals when the overarching aspect of the socioeconomic system is self-preservation and not progress.
(4) It's kind of ironic that you started out working in advertising and independent equity trading (or maybe it's exactly as it should have been). Did you always have an ideological stance against the system, but kind of went along to survive, or was it precisely these professions that lead you to dedicate your life to activism?
-While my critics seem confused by such associations, I would defend them as revealing how close I have been to the worst aspects of the social structure and how that has affected me. You have to be very close to such structural despotism and exploitation to really get a true sense, just like you really cannot understand the horrors of war unless you've seen someone killed directly next to you in real life.
In my early development, all I cared about was the art of classical and modern music. I closed myself off from reality just like many others do and, as per my introverted character; I preferred to develop myself in a very disciplined and detached way. It wasn't until the cold reality of having to survive as an adult did I begin to analyze the world around me. I ended up in advertising because it was the only thing my limited skill set would allow me to do, keeping some decent standard of living.
I moved to equity trading because it is the only occupation in existence with no boss and no employees. I wanted out of the corporate hierarchy. So, I see myself as having been pushed along the rails of the natural, structural coercion that is the socioeconomic complex. Coincidentally and virtually by accident (it seems), this path led me to where I am today.
(5) Talk to me about the power of filmmaking. Do you consider filmmaking the most effective medium to incite social change?
-Well, shocking to many as it might be, I don't particularly like the art of filmmaking compared to other art forms. I will not go on a tangent about that. I will state that within the spectrum of multimedia production, the film tradition has a tremendously large influence on culture today. When you see, say, the Academy Awards and all these huge directors and famous actors sitting in a single room – you are really seeing the most influential people on the planet. When it comes to people's values, these people have more power than the political establishment and the religious establishment. So, realizing this, and also thinking back on the bizarre success of my first film/performance piece Zeitgeist, I engage this art form with a kind of strategy to, again, play both sides - the art and the science of communication and expression.
So, to answer your question, I think it is a very effective medium but filmmaking is really comprised of multiple mediums. I would still suggest music has a longer-term, stronger power in some value shifting ways - but music also presents more ambiguity.
(6) Are there any particular artists or activists that you admire/like?
-Perhaps the greatest intellectual and artistic influence I have had, more from the standpoint of theory, was a man named Iannis Xenakis. He was a 20th century composer that dealt with various abstract ideas regarding aesthetics and how to represent intellectual systems with sound and form. John Cage was another important influence in the way he broke the separations of music and everyday life. As far as film, I'm not really much of a film buff. I create my films from an intuitive standpoint with very little reference to anything that I've seen.
Honestly, I create films from a musical standpoint. Music and the aural quality of the film comes first in style and form. My new film trilogy, "InterReflections” will be a vast exploration of this personal style. Musical phrasing is superior to filmic phrasing and I apply it as such.
As far as activists, I hate to split hairs but I would first object to the idea itself. I understand what you mean but this is worth pointing out. I honestly don't like the blanket term “activist” as it assumes the activity is irrespective of cause. A person might wish to change some aspect of society and therefore they are to be an activist in that context (so one can be an economic activist or an environmental activist, etc). However, to be an activist assumes such a category of function is inherently real. I find that annoying.
In theory, I hope one day there is no such thing as an “activist”. Perhaps, we will have a social system that prefers and directly facilitates actual intelligent change in a fluid way and the idea of needing an external entity that has to work against the establishment, as the term "activist" really denotes, will be a thing of the past.
That said – while I admire those working for relevant change, I also hold a great deal of contempt/frustration at this stage given how impotent, off-focus and commodified “activism” has become. I hate to say this publicly but everywhere I look these days I see popular “activists” doing little more than yelling at the wind, selling an identity for income and working to self-promote. I see communities created that are more about angst driven ceremony, catharsis and sociality then about true social change, challenge, problem solving and forward thinking.
It isn't that such people/groups are not dedicated and sincere – it is first that they take a narrow, “localized” view rather than a system’s view, while the sickness of the market system and its need for income gets the best of them. Over time, many great people of conscience turn their battle into a career and usually that is the end of it as they then begin to limit their debate in order to keep income and identity in line.
It is, once again, part of the feedback loop that keeps the current order in place. Today, being an “activist” is a pop culture idea, like being a circus performer. People spend billions a year on “activist media” and there is a massive sales industry for it.
In the end, the only people I truly respect anymore are those who take a "systems" perspective and realize that no real change is going to happen by talking about this or that new government policy or corruption or war or economic blight… It’s mostly all trivial. There is nothing new anymore. It is the same cycle of system output despotism, fraud, inhumanity and war. It isn’t going to change by talking about it directly, without the system context.
In other words, the only true activism relevant in the world today is the kind that will work to shut down market capitalism and replace it with an intelligent and sane economic model – a model that will then bring out the best of humanity – not the worst, which is what it does today. All other points of focus are really a waste of time. And I mean that sincerely.
(7) Do you truly think, in the bottom of your heart, that humans are capable of transitioning to this post-scarcity society that you are proposing? If so, how come we haven't already?
-Not only am I convinced that the very foundation of our human nature is primed for this type of society given the incredible public health revelations regarding how negative the current model is to our physical and psychological well-being – I believe once a small version of this type of world is created and shown – people will flock to it at an exponential rate.
Why? Firstly, because 99% of the world’s population is being screwed. It isn't just a well-being issue – it is a dignity and pride issue at this stage. Principle. Our social nature doesn’t like to get jerked around. We have an inherent sense of justice, just as our primate ancestors have proven in various anthropological studies. Sadly, most do not even understand how badly they are getting screwed and how the system is literally killing them slowly by its structural violence – not to mention the insane wealth inequity that is another level of an emerging public health crisis.
However, the main challenge is getting people to realize that the alternative is real and can be done. The reason we have not been able to make this change is because the pressures of the current structure are so severe. This change is a complete shift of everything in the social order. Therefore, my estimation is that some country will begin the transition. The fruits of this country are shown to the world and I then believe there will be a chain reaction. The Empire will fight it - but all empires fail eventually.
The main great catalyst will be the emerging trend towards localization of all production. With the advent of 3-D printing, zero marginal cost and nanotechnology, coupled with the ability to automate labor, we are seeing a massive economic transformation. Capital goods are becoming consumer goods while labor power is being built into consumer goods/capital goods through automation.
In other words, very soon in the future, due to the advancement of technology, a modern city will be able to grow all of its own food and essentially do all of its own production for the entire population without ever needing to import anything but perhaps some raw materials. Over time, due to the ability of emerging nanotechnology, the importing of raw materials will also be greatly slowed if not eliminated as a necessity.
In the end, you will have almost pure localization and hence decentralization. Once this happens the structural pressure to maintain associations in globalization – which is and always has been the new colonialism – will come to an end. BTW, I’m not saying detachment is economically ideal – I’m saying it is a transitional step.
As we approach 2030/2040, which will be virtually apocalyptic based on the negative trends at hand assuming no changes – this will also be the same time that we will be able to break free and societies will be able to work on their own without having to submit to larger order governmental or transnational interests (as the march of exponential technological growth continues to improve).
This isn’t to say the world no longer works together – it would have to in the end as it would be most optimized for efficient economic calculation/resource management – but normal everyday living would not have a heavy reliance on such global interaction. As the old saying goes “think globally, act locally.”
More on this – can be found in the book “The Zeitgeist Movement Defined" which is available free on our website and is in print form at cost.
(8) Your mom was a social worker, your dad was a mailman. There is no apparent connection to arts/filmmaking from your family side. How did you get involved with music/arts and who supported you in this?
-Well, there are different degrees of artistic interests in my family and extended family. But, as far as my development, my parents were exceptionally supportive in whatever I wanted to do. There was very little coercion in my upbringing and a great deal of trust. Unlike many traditional approaches to child raising, I support the idea that children are designed by evolution to learn just as much on their own as they require guidance from those older. There is a balance and independence is just as important as social trust and feelings of support and security.
As far as my musical interests, I couldn't tell you where they originated. I would be seen around my house banging on pots and pans and I believe I took my first snare drum lesson when I was about seven. From there, I was accepted into a college conservatory for music at the age of 13 (which oddly had an academic program for my age) and remained there until high school graduation. I then moved to New York to go to college and dropped out after two years realizing the debt I was incurring was not appropriate for the type of life in music I was intending. I was a modern solo classical percussionist which, thinking back on it, is just about as ridiculous as you can possibly get as far as making a living 
(9) Internet and technology definitely helped you reach millions of people; what is your message to all the artists out there that want to bring positive impact with their art, and reach as many people as possible, but that do not know where to start, how to proceed?
-Honestly, I wish I had relevant advice. The difference between today and the year 2007 (year of Zeitgeist) is that today everyone has the ability to make a movie. Obviously, I think this is a great thing but at the same time it creates saturation when it comes to one finding time to watch so many good productions. This is particularly a problem when it comes to documentary. I, for example, receive many emails with many fine documentaries and I simply do not have time to watch all of them. There are not enough hours in the day. I strongly doubt the viral nature of my first film would have been as strong if it was released today.
However, I will say this: stylistic and intellectual progress is about honesty when creative. If you look carefully at modern society, in all fields, people actually consciously adhere to some degree of tradition when they are communicating. When I made, for example, Zeitgeist: Addendum and Zeitgeist: Moving Forward, I did so with a more traditional documentary focus in style. While I would never change these films, I do feel it extended beyond my comfort zone.
Zeitgeist, the original film - on the other hand - came from a completely different place. I didn't care how it changed other people's views. I didn't care if it had any impact or not. I saw it as a personal expression. And, I think what that means is that to truly break through and bring people to a new place and hence maybe even spark high levels of attention one needs to run the risk of being absolutely honest. Sad to say, it's almost impossible for people to be absolutely honest because we are deeply social organisms and we always look at our actions through the view of others.
Regardless, my core advice is to produce what YOU want to see and if your feelings and observations have merit – it just might strike a chord that went unnoticed before in others.
(10) TZM’s ultimate mission is the installation of a new socio-economic model based upon technically responsible resource management, allocation and design through what would be considered the scientific method of reasoning problems and finding optimized solutions. What’s the role of artists in this rather technical approach?
-It is unfortunate that the arts and the sciences appear detached. The reality is that our everyday viewing of the world and the very process of the way we change, invent and embrace our inherent human ingenuity - is first artistic. Science doesn't have any real novel leads. Science is a verification/analysis process mostly and this explains why so many scientific breakthroughs are achieved by accident. One could argue that humans can't actually invent anything - we can only deductively analyze phenomenon around us as we perform different experiments, seeking a lucky combo. Therefore, we have to have a creative expectation. We have to have a hypothesis and a hypothesis is invariably a creative deduction or inference – an experiment.
So, there is no purely “technical approach” as the arts and the sciences are part of the same system - of creative ingenuity and problem solving. As far as pop culture art, as per the more traditional definition of “art”, I could only expect it to flourish in a way unimaginable.
First, the polluting monetary influence is gone. No more contrived artists looking to manipulate prior trends to sell something. This means the artist will be much more pure in his/her intentions from the start. There would be no real reason to create anything otherwise unless you loved doing it. Money pollutes everything.
Second, the stress relief coming from the basic nature of the new social system and the free-time realized would set the stage for an explosion of human creativity on all levels. Just imagine all the wasted minds working at fast food restaurants today who might have a propensity for great contribution in our ‘Group Mind’ societal-creative apparatus… but have never been given a chance to realize it or participate. Millions if not billions of lost minds are toiling in market BS roles trying to just live, polluted by modern culture.
Anyway, creative thinking and the act of creation itself would be the new norm of human consciousness, I think. It would be profound.
Monday, May 14, 2012
Wednesday, February 15, 2012
Peter Joseph invades X
Your twitter writings, so full of weariness, show an entirely different side of you than the wisdom in your books and movies.
— Greenwashing is killing the planet. 🌎🇵🇸☮🏴☭ (@leftymathprof) October 5, 2021
I’m a disciple of you. My book is a sequel to the zeitgeist movement defined - because you couldn’t find a solution to the transition problem - I tried. Your attitude has become a part of the problem. Information allows the world to improve - your personal cynicism doesn’t.
— Creating Utopia (@creating_utopia) October 4, 2021
Seems to me this isn't you. I've met you before. More like someone is using your name to put out all these tweets. With you knowledge of course. Just my take.
— Frederick Gramcko (@FGramcko) December 20, 2021
I don't care what you think or say, that all can be debated. I'm just shocked at the sheer volume of the amount of tweets that come from such a busy person. There are many sockpuppets, bots & CoIntelPro trolls out there, even using semi or famous people. If this is you, so be it.
— Frederick Gramcko (@FGramcko) December 20, 2021
Wednesday, January 11, 2012
Peter Joseph tries to define "Civilization"
"The First Civilization" - A free book about a Resource Based Economy http://t.co/KSIwNuKc— Zeitgeist Movement (@tzmglobal) January 11, 2012
"It would be the dawn of a world we could actually labeled a civilization; and if that isn't a goal worth working... http://t.co/FEBpR2dHFo— Zeitgeist Movement (@tzmglobal) January 19, 2014
“Since the beginning of civilization, those in power have successfully restricted the interest of the majority by... http://t.co/jTcKwowEFI— Zeitgeist Movement (@tzmglobal) April 28, 2014
Science is fundamental; underlying the fabric of human civilization, from modern medicine, to transportation, to... https://t.co/sYFkIMd5UE— Zeitgeist Movement (@tzmglobal) April 24, 2017
A great deal of energy is now needed to deliberately shift the course of civilization. #howwillyourespond #TZM... https://t.co/Q5kYwm9WsG— Zeitgeist Movement (@tzmglobal) November 9, 2017
"Here's how the rich are destroying civilization" #money..."it’s like #addiction in the sense that you think it’s going to bring you something that it doesn’t...in the metaphor of addiction, the only way to stop is when you hit rock bottom." #Extinction?https://t.co/jVohreospp pic.twitter.com/jOKCJhabKD— Zeitgeist Movement (@tzmglobal) December 2, 2018
The Disease Of Our Global Civilization - Peter Josephhttps://t.co/FeLNPYa9Yg https://t.co/FeLNPYa9Yg— Zeitgeist Movement (@tzmglobal) January 27, 2019
— μνημονικον (@mnemoneis) September 30, 2019
Tuesday, August 2, 2011
The last word on Utopia by Corbett
Against Utopia
Welcome. This is James Corbett of corbettreport.com with the last word on utopia.
Those with evil intent are seldom courteous enough to announce their intentions openly. As history has shown us time and again, oppressive tyrants seldom come to power campaigning on oppression. Quite the contrary. The most pernicious evil always presents itself as something necessary, something transitory, a mere waypoint on the road to the land of milk and honey. In this way the masses can be led to not only tolerate the most intolerable conditions, but actually to support those who would seek to rule over them.
In the early days, even the most ruthless dictators are wildly popular. By the time the public realizes it’s been had and the blood starts flowing in the streets, it’s too late: the regime is in place and the promises that the tyrant used to gain power are already replaced with the yoke of repression.
In France the revolutionaries rallied under the banner of “Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity.” Within a few short years their revolution had morphed into the Reign of Terror, a bloody dictatorship of the guillotine in the name of securing the utopia that the public had been promised. Even at the height of the campaign, as the blood of the people flowed in the streets, Robespierre argued that the bloodshed was a virtuous outgrowth of democracy and even wrote that it represented “the despotism of liberty against tyranny.”
In Russia the Bolsheviks came to power under the slogan “Land, peace, and bread.” Within just five years, however, Lenin had insured a smooth transition from tsarist dictatorship to Soviet dictatorship: he dissolved the Constituent Assembly, which the Bolsheviks did not control, after its first meeting; he disbanded the factory committees which promised to give industrial workers democratic control over their own operations; and he vastly expanded the state security services which imprisoned tens of thousands of anti-Bolsheviks and summarily executed thousands more.
In Cambodia, the communist movement grew in strength and size on the back of the promise to “restart civilization” and return to “Year Zero,” a mythical paradise in which agrarian peasants would become rulers of their own destiny. On his rise to power, Saloth Sar, the leader of the Communist party, stopped living with and consulting with the party leadership. Once he had attained control of the country he changed his name to Pol Pot and began an extermination of two million of his own people, a full quarter of the country’s population. One out of every four people in Cambodia died in Pol Pot’s delusional pursuit of his imagined utopia.
Nor are these by any means the only example of this phenomenon. The English Roundheads overthrew the king just to find they had replaced him with a Lord Protector of artistocratic pretensions. Mussolini marched on Rome on the back of mass public support and proceeded to set up a prototypical fascist dictatorship. The Chinese were promised a Great Leap Forward and ended up bathing in the blood of 60 million of their countrymen. Time after time, the masses have been whipped into a revolutionary fervour by leaders promising a perfect system of governance. And time after time, they have paid for that fervour with their lives.
The term ‘utopia’ itself was coined by Sir Thomas More in a tract written in the early 1500s. The name contains a play on words between the Greek term for nowhere, ou, and the prefix eu-, meaning good. Utopia, then is both an imaginary world, a nowhere land, and a good place, an ideal that we can strive toward in thinking of a good or just system of rule.
More’s utopia was distinctly socialist in nature: there is no money or private property; the economy and the work day are centrally planned to benefit the state; the community eats together in a common dining hall; children are separated from their parents to be raised by nurses. In many ways, this depiction of a perfectly harmonious, perfectly regimented society laid the foundation for the last 500 years of utopian socialism. Time and again utopian revolutionaries have returned to these ideas, whether from a misguided attempt to create an ideal society or a cynical understanding that the utopian urge can be commandeered by an unscrupulous dictator for his own advantage. In the end, the results are always the same: the promised “worker’s paradise” never seems to come, and the few at the top reap all the benefits.
In modern times, a technological idealism has been grafted on to this utopian socialism to create an even more enticing strain of thought with which to capture the imagination of the masses. As the mechanization of the industrial era increased productivity beyond what could ever have been dreamed in the pre-industrial era, a group of technocrats emerged promising a world in which technology itself would make possible a world of plenty. In this technological utopia, the machines would do the work and the workers would be freed from the mundane jobs that had always defined their existence.
The Bolsheviks especially latched on to the promise of technology in the early days of the Soviet Union. Aware of the enormous task before them, the Soviets hoped to create a modern, industrial, centrally-planned economy out of the poor, feudal, agricultural Russian state they had taken over. The centrepiece of this technological transformation of Russia was to be Magnitogorsk, a steel manufacturing city in the Urals that was mandated into existence by Stalin’s first Five Year Plan of 1929. The city was to be built from scratch and serve as an example of a technological utopia. The public was shown propaganda films depicting a modern paradise, a testament to the wonders of industry and the technocratic method.
The reality, of course, turned out to be exactly the opposite of what the public had been promised. Today, Magnitogorsk is as dilapidated as the American industrial cities it was based on. The city is dirty and run down, residential areas awash in the noxious fumes of the factories that were supposed to be the marvels of this modern age. The residents, far from delighting in a world of plenty, long suffered under the yoke of Soviet repression and struggled to get their daily needs fulfilled.
Ironically, Magnitogorsk did serve as the showcase of the Soviet’s promised technological utopia. Unfortunately for the technocrats, what it showed was not how the machinery of the modern age would magically free those who had never been free, but how the very system of technological planning was fundamentally flawed, unable to provide even for the most basic needs of the citizenry.
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Remarkably, even now, long after the 20th century technocrats and their vision of the industrial nirvana have been so thoroughly discredited, after hundreds of years of utopian socialist fantasies have shown to lead to nothing but suffering and bloodshed, there is a new class of technocrats who are rising up to once again offer the masses a technological utopia which will provide for all their needs.
Once again we are being told that in this coming utopia an army of benevolent machines will provide for all our needs. There will be no need for money or property, no need for violence or coercion of any kind ever again. In fact, we are told, this technological revolution will not only transform our society, but human nature itself. Freed from the shackles of want by the machines that will provide for all our needs, humans will no longer be violent or selfish or greedy.
This system, we are told, will be “rational” and “logical.” The machines will know what resources are needed, how to acquire them, and how to distribute them. The machines will be able to calculate our needs and provide for them better than we ever could. The machines will be programmed by scientists, and, we are led to believe, they will always know how many toothbrushes to make.
There is no need to worry about who owns the machines, we are told, no cause for concern about how they are programmed or how they make calculations about things we don’t know. In this utopia, the proponents of this movement tell us, there will be no evil people, no elite class that tries to control others, no one at all who tries to control the system, because human nature itself will no longer allow for it.
Ultimately, perhaps it is not surprising that such utopian fantasies can still attract acolytes. The masses have always wanted the quick fix, the wave of the magic wand that will free them from this world of work, toil and strife forever. How appealing it is to be offered the promise of a perfect system, a way to organize our society that will allow us to live in peace and harmony forever. After all, if such a system were really possible, who wouldn’t want to attain it?
But that, then, is the danger of the utopian ideal. The fact that it is always just out of reach, always just one step further down the path of good intentions, means that those who are willing to use this unattainable fantasy to lead society in a dictatorial direction can dangle it before the public like a carrot to lead them further down the garden path. It is, in short, nothing but a tool to enslave the public in the name of creating the perfect society. Indeed, not just to enslave them, but to get them to work toward their own enslavement.
Until this is realized, utopia will always be a powerful motivating force for shaping our society. Those who promise us a world of plenty, where we will receive everything for nothing, will always be popular with a public looking for an easy solution to all their problems. And those who warn against the dangers of utopian thinking will never be popular. They will always be cast as obstacles in the path to the ideal society, and dismissed as charlatans by the masses who are swept into revolutionary fervour, their judgement clouded by the comforting fog of utopian visions.
No, it is never a popular thing to warn against utopia. But it is nonetheless necessary.
For The Corbett Report in western Japan, I am James Corbett.
Saturday, March 26, 2011
Russia Today admits it's all utopia
Maybe it’s just me but I see more than a little televangelist in this guy–the black suit, the hair, the condescending swagger and I’ve no doubt he has the arrogance that usually goes with it.
I think he’s right about one thing. The world won’t go back to Marxism. The brand has been discredited by too many millions of dead bodies in China, Cambodia, the USSR, etc. But the old wine will find new skins. Frankly, I don’t see a penny worth of difference between Zeitgeist and Marxism. It’s just got updated talking points for a tech savvy age.
The irony of course is that the movement’s whole appeal is based on envy. What’s wrong with the world is banks, money, the rich. Capitalism is the villain. Self-interest is once again going to be replaced with social consciousness, just like it was supposed to be in Mao’s China and Stalin’s Russia. The difference between “Do it for the party, comrade!” and “Do it for the good of the world” is, as I said, slim to none. And when people begin to starve as they inevitably do when guys like Peter Joseph gain enough power, they’ll claim it’s just a passing phase. And anyway, you can’t make an omelet…
Oh, incidentally, Zeitgeist is the view of the world embraced by Jared Loughner, the Tucson shooter. Of course, he was crazy. You’d have to be really.
Wednesday, February 2, 2011
Brenton Eccles exposes the Zeitgeist Movement
Brave New World
The Zeitgeist movement is the first Internet-based apocalyptic cult, centered around a doomsday-proclaiming film and an ideology filled with classic anti-Semitic tropes
A moment in Zeitgeist: Moving Forward. (Photoillustration: Tablet Magazine; film still: Zeitgeist: Moving Forward: theater photo: iStockphoto)
Over the last two weeks, Zeitgeist: Moving Forward, the third in a series of apocalyptic cult documentaries, has been screening around the world, translated by devotees of the so-called Zeitgeist movement into more than 30 languages. There were engagements in Buenos Aires and Athens, Sarajevo and Tel Aviv, Mumbai and Tokyo, among hundreds of other cities. In the United States, it showed at indie movie houses, underground bookstores, public libraries, and universities from coast to coast, including a five-day run at New York’s Tribeca Cinemas.
About 30 people turned out for a Wednesday evening showing in Manhattan. After being greeted by earnest volunteers in Zeitgeist T-shirts and given the chance to pick up pamphlets and newsletters about the Zeitgeist movement—or TZM, as its acolytes call it—they sat through a two-and-a-half-hour film, alternately frenetic and soporific, explaining the necessary and imminent collapse of economies based on money, the root of all the world’s sufferings. The film prophesied the emergence of a superior “resource-based economy,” in which decisions about the allocations of goods and services will be made by computers free from corrupting “opinions.” Robots will do most menial work, liberating people for more creative, humanistic pursuits, and technological innovation will ensure abundance for all. The movie ends with scenes of crowds worldwide surging into the streets and, realizing that money is but an enslaving illusion, dumping their cash in great piles in front of the now-impotent central banks. Amazingly, only one person walked out.
Zeitgeist: Moving Forward is silly enough that at times I suspected it was all a put-on, a sly satire about new-age techno-utopianism instead of an example of it. But to hundreds of thousands of people worldwide, the Zeitgeist movement is entirely serious. At times, it even seems like the world’s first Internet-based cult, with members who parrot the party line with cheerful, rote fidelity. In a phone conversation, Brenton Eccles, a former member from Melbourne, described how his involvement cut him off from reality. “It’s very, very, very isolating,” says Eccles, who was part of the communications team in the movement’s Australia branch. “You’re encouraged to kind of exit the real world. There’s kind of this us-and-them attitude.” A few days later, he sent me a document recanting most of his charges and claiming that his conflicts with the organization had in fact been his fault. This did not make it seem less cult-like.
There are lots of strange things about the Zeitgeist phenomenon, but strangest is how it got started. It’s a global organization devoted to a kind of sci-fi planetary communism, but it was sparked by a 2007 documentary steeped in far-right, isolationist, and covertly anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. The first Zeitgeist documentary borrowed from the work of Eustace Mullins, Lyndon LaRouche, and conspiracy-mad Austin radio host Alex Jones to rail against the cabal of international bankers that purportedly rules the world. It was this documentary that reportedly obsessed Jared L. Loughner, the disturbed young man who allegedly shot Rep. Gabrielle Giffords.
Since the shooting, conservatives have latched on to the Zeitgeist movement’s new-age side to argue that Loughner hailed from the left. Others, myself included, have pointed out that the original Zeitgeist film is full of fringe right-wing ideas that have migrated toward the mainstream via the Tea Party. Zeitgeist warns, for example, that the United States could soon be subsumed into a North American Union as a precursor to the establishment of totalitarian one-world government. Members of the Zeitgeist movement, not surprisingly, reject any connection between the shooting and their ideology, even as some of them welcome the new attention that it has brought their ideas. “It’s ultimately a positive thing,” says Keith Embler, the earnest aspiring actor who co-chairs the New York chapter. “It’s press. And”—with the third documentary just released—“the timing couldn’t be better.”
Meanwhile, the evolution of the movement itself remains obscure. How did a modern gloss on The Protocols of the Elders of Zion inspire a global organization of wide-eyed technophile environmentalists? What is the Zeitgeist movement?
***
The documentary that started it all began as an art project. “The original Zeitgeist was not a film, but a performance piece, which consisted of a vaudevillian style multi-media event using recorded music, live instruments and video,” the Zeitgeist website explains. The director, a young college dropout who goes by Peter Joseph, his first and middle names, says he “tossed” it up online, where it soon was getting hundreds of thousands, then millions, then tens of millions of views on Google Videos. It has since been removed from that site, but several people have posted it on YouTube, where various versions have received millions of views each, and on Vimeo, where it’s been seen almost 600,000 times in the last six months. DVDs of the first two documentaries are also for sale online.
“The work was never designed as a film or even a documentary in a traditional sense—it was designed as a creative, provoking, emotionally driven expression, full of artistic extremity and heavily stylized gestures,” the Zeitgeist website says. This might, however, be a bit of a post-facto rationalization, meant to distance Joseph from some of the reactionary ideas in his film. It certainly doesn’t explain how the piece made the transition from performance art to relatively coherent two-hour documentary.
The original Zeitgeist has a three-part structure, and if you just saw the first third, you might think it came from the left. It begins by arguing, using a characteristic mix of fact and invention, that Christianity is a colossal fraud, a set of myths appropriated from pagan sun cults for purposes of social control. Control is the film’s real theme: All our politics and our institutions, it suggests, derive from a conspiracy of international bankers who manipulate world events for their own profits. The second part argues that Sept. 11 was an inside job, engineered by these moneyed interests. Much of its footage was taken directly from documentaries created by the far-right radio host Alex Jones, whose work is devoted to exposing the global elite’s plan for totalitarian one-world domination.
From there, Zeitgeist launches into a pseudo-exposé of the international monetary system, a theme that runs through both its sequels. According to Chip Berlet of Political Research Associates, a think tank that studies right-wing movements, much of it derives from two books: The Creature From Jekyll Island by G. Edward Griffin, a member of the John Birch Society, and Secrets of the Federal Reserve by Eustace Mullins. Mullins hated Jews, but his references to Jews in the book are oblique. “It’s bait, written by one of the world’s most notorious anti-Semites to lead people into that analytical model,” says Berlet.
Zeitgeist works the same way. Though it says nothing about Jews, its analysis mirrors classic anti-Semitic canards. Immediately after footage of the twin towers falling, for example, the film features an excerpt from a speech that Charles Lindbergh gave to an America First group in 1941: “When hostilities commenced in Europe in 1939, it was realized that the American people had no intention of entering the war. But it was realized that this country could be enticed into the war, in very much the same way that it was enticed into the last one.” As his words play, headlines about Iraq float across the screen. “We cannot allow the natural passions and prejudices of other peoples to lead our country to destruction,” he concluded. Lindbergh, of course, was talking about the Jews. Viewers attuned to anti-Semitic rhetoric would naturally conclude that Joseph was, too.
After Joseph put Zeitgeist online, it quickly became an Internet sensation. Clips appeared on the websites of Ron Paul supporters, white nationalists, and, before long, some Tea Party groups. Anarchists and anti-imperialists embraced it as well. Stories about it appeared in newspapers worldwide. Some were admiring: South Africa’s Cape Times compared it to An Inconvenient Truth. Even the debunkers testified to its reach. An article in the Irish Times described the “massive interest” the documentary had attracted before lamenting, “One really wishes Zeitgeist was a masterful pastiche of 21st-century paranoia, a hilarious mockumentary to rival Spinal Tap.”
As Zeitgeist’s audience grew, people started asking Joseph what they should do with his explosive information. He didn’t know what to tell them. He supported Ron Paul, but he believed the system to be too irredeemably corrupt for a political solution. That’s when he met Jacque Fresco, a radical futurist and would-be secular prophet who has been preparing for his moment in the limelight for more than five decades.
Born to a Sephardic Jewish family in Harlem in 1917, Fresco moved to Los Angeles after World War II. The journalist Lionel Rolfe, in his memoir of California bohemia, Fat Man on the Left: Four Decades in the Underground, wrote that in the early ’50s, “Fresco had a circle of disciples who considered him next only to Albert Einstein, although the friends and relatives of those disciples often thought Fresco was a fraud and a charlatan.”
Back then, Fresco, a self-educated industrial designer, had already developed his ideas about machines making traditional economics irrelevant. In the 1970s, he moved to a compound in Venus, Fla., where he and his partner, Roxanne Meadows, set about creating designs for the cities—and civilization—of the future. They call their work The Venus Project.
Joseph learned about the Venus Project when Fresco, having seen Zeitgeist, sent him one of his books. For Joseph, Fresco’s highly detailed vision of a world without money, a world where work itself is largely unnecessary and human ills like greed and crime are obsolete, was a revelation.
Soon, Joseph was devoting himself to spreading the word about Fresco and The Venus Project. His second film, Zeitgeist: Addendum, starts in much the same vein as the first, with an attack on the international financial system. But then it shifts to a worshipful examination of Fresco’s work, offering it as a solution to the ravages of the current system. Joseph’s latest film, Zeitgeist: Moving Forward, further elaborates Fresco’s irenic vision of a “resource-based economy,” one without poverty, inequality, or environmental strain.
***
The Zeitgeist movement emerged in 2008, after the release of the second documentary, as chapters formed worldwide to figure out how to prepare for immanent economic collapse and technological salvation. Joseph never acknowledged his massive ideological shift from decrying a one-world system to embracing it—he just powered through the contradictions with an intense, weirdly mesmerizing self-confidence. He seems entirely sure of his movement’s capacity to fundamentally reshape human beings. In the first Zeitgeist newsletter, he explained to a letter-writer why there would be no gluttony in a resource-based economy. “[F]or a person to want ‘more’ than another is an unsustainable, conflict invoking value which serves only a selfish conditioning generated by the current cultural climate of ‘survival of the fittest’ via the Market System of Competition,” he wrote. “TZM seeks to remove this system, hence removing the distorted values that coincide and are hence imposed and reinforced.”
Lots of right-wing fans of the original documentary have since deserted Joseph, though not all—the Zeitgeist newsletter features an essay by a former Ron Paul activist who described trying to get his Tea Party group to embrace Fresco’s ideas. Meanwhile, new cadres of progressive seekers have joined, going to meetings and throwing themselves into the movement’s vibrant online community. At 96, the bearded, impish Fresco suddenly has a large global following—last year, he visited 18 countries on an international lecture tour.
Since 2009, the movement has celebrated Z-day in March, with chapters worldwide putting on events. The New York Times covered the inaugural Z-Day gathering in Manhattan, which attracted a sold-out crowd of around 900 to hear Joseph and Fresco speak. It was, wrote reporter Alan Feuer, “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.” This year’s Z-Day will take place on March 13, with a main event in London and local happenings worldwide.
Most members, particularly the new ones, are probably unaware of the Jew-baiting subtext of the documentary that launched their movement. Many were genuinely baffled in 2009 when a German social networking site, studiVZ, banned Zeitgeist groups because of their implicit anti-Semitism. Others seem a bit embarrassed by the first Zeitgeist; they’ll often say it’s “irrelevant”—one of TZM’s favorite epithets—because it came out before the movement got started. But no one is disavowing it, and so a growing global movement of tech-savvy idealists continues to promote a work of far-right paranoia.
“I’m willing to accept that the filmmaker is a person who has a great energy and tremendous ignorance who inadvertently replicated the Nazi view of money manipulation,” says Berlet. “In which case he needs to repudiate it.” That seems unlikely. In a video interview available online, Joseph rails against his critics, “the self-appointed guardians of the status quo.” The first Zeitgeist, he insists, “is based on pre-existing information. There isn’t one thing in that film that doesn’t come from a source.” True enough. The problem is what the sources are.
@OccupyLSX except School of Ideas invited the antisemitic Zeitgeist Movement to lecture. Prejudice can lurk in otherwise admirable movements
— Rob Palk (@robpalkwriter) January 7, 2012
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