Zeitgeist: Addendum + Commentary

It is so easy to get sucked into believing lies...especially when the lies are mixed with truth and then packaged in an artsy, very well directed film such as Zeitgeist: Addendum.  I'm going to point out something that I believe is truth, and then (hopefully) apply it later on.

Rape is a horrendous crime.  It is something that is horrible to society and punishable by society's laws.  It is not, however, caused by one's environment or by the offering of pornography.  Although these things are catalysts in the culmination of the crime, they are not the cause.  The cause is lust.  And lust is not punishable by law.  It is not a crime.   But it is a sin.  And as long as humans are sinful beings, then no amount of structure or interconnectivity or technology can being about a peaceful world.  This is a small example of why I think the latter half of this video is, as Harry G. Frankfurt would put it, bull$#!+.

Watch the film, and then check out the commentary below.

(this commentary is kind of rough, so I might edit it in the future)

Ok, so there's a problem.  We're basically being enslaved by those in power.  Not those in the government, but those who are really in power, the ones that control the money. I think this first part of the film is true.  Just look around and observe the world around you.  These things are obviously true in my opinion.  We're being controlled.  So, what is the proposed solution?  I was definitely surprised to learn that technology and human ingenuity are our saviors.

We need to work in order to make money.  We need money in order to buy the things we need to survive; food, shelter, water, and clothing (and entertainment of course).  It is proposed that if the monetary system currently in place is usurped by a single global resource/technology based economy, then we will no longer need to burden ourselves with the slavery that is work.  Technology is to a place where it can take the place of human labor.   We don't need industrial fuels for energy.  We can use wind, solar, wave, tidal, and geothermal energy to power the entire world infinitely.  We can use electric cars for short-distance travelling and Maglev trains for long-distance travelling. Sounds kind of good, huh?

The lie that is perpetuated in the film is the lie that humans are basically good.  That it is possible, if we choose to be intelligent about these issues, then we can be totally free and live in peace.  It is touted that the prison population is so high because of environmental conditioning; because we are conditioned to need money and material things.  The lie is that there is no human nature, there is only human behavior.  The lie is that we can all be free if we work together with technology.

The ideas put forth in the latter part of Zeitgeist: Addendum are extremely humanist.  We are the solution to our problems.  We can free ourselves.  Intelligence and utilization of the intellect is what gives us value now.  Another idea posited is that we are all one.  God is connectivity to one another and love is extensionality.  We are all everything, and we are all the same.  You are the teacher and you are the pupil.  You are everything.   We are one.  And our divinity is in our power to create.  And the solution to our slavery to work and to money and to authority is that we must embrace ourselves we must depend on ourselves.  We must embrace our creativity and our connectivity.  We must take care of the whole community, including plants and animals.  That is what will bring us joy.  We must be open to all ideas and information even if it challenges our ideologies and beliefs, and hence out being.  Being proven wrong should not be seen as failure but celebrated because information and awareness are increased.   Our divinity is in our power to create.  Our divinity is in our intellect and the technology it spawns.

"...Our loyalties are to the species and to the planet.  Our obligation to survive and flourish is owed not just to ourselves but also to that cosmos ancient and vast from which we spring."

--Carl Sagan(quoted in the film)

Are you kidding me?  You must be joking.  It is a sad sad joke isn't it?  What alternate existence do you live in?  You act as if before the central bank(the Federal Reserve) and before the monetary system and before the Roman empire, we were all a-ok.   Greed, money, and religion have destroyed us all?  We were never, we have never been ok.  We have never lived in peace.  We are eternally flawed and history shows it.  Greed, monetary systems, and people controlling others using religion are symptoms of the greater disease!  It is ridiculous that the flaws of the past are brushed off as a lacking in intellect & technology.   Are you nuts?  Wake up!  Stop smoking whatever it is you're smoking.  It is stated that everything, if left to itself, undergoes fluid perpetual change.  Humans have not changed.  We have continuously been a greedy, lustful, murderous, self-centered, lying, and cheating entity.

Haven't you watched 'Demolition Man?'  You can't please everyone.  All people do not think the same way.  So, sooner or later in this proposed humanist-Utopian world you are either going to have to suppress certain people or kill them off.

Something else worth pointing out.  In the film, they say that this type of global society has never been tried before, and that it probably isn't perfect, and that we can never achieve perfection.  Why?  Why can't we achieve perfection??  If it is inherent in that we cannot achieve perfection, then isn't it worth saying that this inability is part of a universal human nature, and that that nature is flawed?  Maybe the filmmaker would respond that we don't need perfection or that perfection isn't natural.  As long as a system or product or technology functions then it's good for us.  Well, if there was a product, system, technology or ideology that worked/functioned better than the first one, wouldn't you want the one that worked better?  Of course.  Why?  What is the ultimate conclusion to the pursuit of systems or products that work better than the predecessors?  The ultimate conclusion is perfection.  The perfect product or system, one that functions flawlessly.   The admission that perfection cannot be reached is the admission that there are flaws. It is the admission that we are flawed, and if we are flawed then we, our own intellect, cannot be the solution to our grand problems.

If the ultimate problem is that man is sinful and has the propensity to lust after that which he does not have and lust after power over it, then it is impossible to blame man's circumstance for his actions.  You must blame man.   And if man cannot be his own solution, then what is?