Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 20:55, 8 April 2014

The neutrality of this article is disputed. Relevant discussion may be found on the talk page. Please do not remove this message until conditions to do so are met. (November 2011) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

Mission Statement

Founded in 2008, The Zeitgeist Movement is a Sustainability Advocacy Organization which conducts community based activism and awareness actions through a network of Global/Regional Chapters, Project Teams, Annual Events, Media and Charity Work.

The Movement's principle focus includes the recognition that the majority of the social problems which plague the human species at this time are not the sole result of some institutional corruption, scarcity, a political policy, a flaw of "human nature" or other commonly held assumptions of causality.

Rather, The Movement recognizes that issues such as poverty, corruption, collapse, homelessness, war, starvation and the like appear to be "Symptoms" born out of an outdated social structure. While intermediate Reform steps and temporal Community Support are of interest to The Movement, the defining goal here is the installation of a new socioeconomic model based upon technically responsible Resource Management, Allocation and Distribution through what would be considered The Scientific Method of reasoning problems and finding optimized solutions.

This "Resource-Based Economic Model" is about taking a direct technical approach to social management as opposed to a Monetary or even Political one. It is about updating the workings of society to the most advanced and proven methods Science has to offer, leaving behind the damaging consequences and limiting inhibitions which are generated by our current system of monetary exchange, profits, corporations and other structural and motivational components.

The Movement is loyal to a train of thought, not figures or institutions. In other words, the view held is that through the use of socially targeted research and tested understandings in Science and Technology, we are now able to logically arrive at societal applications which could be profoundly more effective in meeting the needs of the human population. In fact, so much so, that there is little reason to assume war, poverty, most crimes and many other money-based scarcity effects common in our current model cannot be resolved over time.

The range of The Movement's Activism & Awareness Campaigns extend from short to long term, with the model based explicitly on Non-Violent methods of communication. The long term view, which is the transition into a Resource-Based Economic Model, is a constant pursuit and expression, as stated before. However, in the path to get there, The Movement also recognizes the need for transitional Reform techniques, along with direct Community Support.

For instance, while "Monetary Reform" itself is not an end solution proposed by The Movement, the merit of such legislative approaches are still considered valid in the context of transition and temporal integrity. Likewise, while food and clothes drives and other supportive projects to help those in need today are also not considered a long term solution, it is still considered valid in the context of helping others in a time of need, while also drawing awareness to the principle goal.

The Zeitgeist Movement also has no allegiance to a country or traditional political platforms. It views the world as a single system and the human species as a single family and recognizes that all countries must disarm and learn to share resources and ideas if we expect to survive in the long run. Hence, the solutions arrived at and promoted are in the interest to help everyone on the planet Earth, not a select group.

Concepts advocated by the Zeitgeist Movement

The core idea advocated by TZM is the replacement of current civilization with a money-free and cybernated "resource-based economy". The Zeitgeist Movement and the Venus Project promote replacing human labour with automation, government will be through collective participation of the public, aided by advanced cybernation. According to the movement, there will be no decision-making process regarding greater social issues by human beings, those decisions are arrived at by using the scientific method, based on the carrying capacity of the Earth, rather than using human opinions. The replacement of human decision making by artificial intelligence is termed 'Social Cybernation'. Private property will not be abolished, but it will become obsolete as culture grows, being replaced by "a system of universal access".

Activities and publications

Zeitgeist Day (Z-Day)

The Zeitgeist Movement holds an annual "Z-Day" in March. The first Z-Day was on March 15, 2009 and the second on March 13, 2010. On this day, the Zeitgeist Movement has local gatherings to learn and share information with all interested individuals. In 2009 there were more than 450 events held in 70 countries around the world. In 2009, among other events, Peter Joseph and Jacque Fresco spoke to a sold-out crowd of around 900 at the Borough of Manhattan Community College for over two hours. The third Z-Day was on March 13, 2011. Peter Joseph and others spoke to a sold-out audience of 1100 at "Friends House" in Euston, London.

Michelle Rodriguez of Avatar attended Z Day 2011 in Los Angeles on March 12, 2011 at Los Angeles Convention Center. She said she is intrigued by the idea of the Venus Project.

Brandon Boyd of Incubus also attended Z Day in Los Angeles with his girlfriend Baelyn Neff. He said Zeitgeist Moving Forward is his favorite Zeitgeist film so far. He also said he is very familiar with Jacque Fresco and watched a documentary film about Jacque Fresco's work called Future by Design.

Media Project

According to a press release circulated to members on May 12, 2010, the Zeitgeist Media Project (ZMP) Beta was released. According to the press release the Media Project is an extension of the Communications Team.

Chapters

The Zeitgeist Movement members are organized into country/regional, state and city "sub"-chapters. Each chapter/sub-chapter is hosted and maintained independently on its own domain, or in sub-domains from the Zeitgeist Movement's main site. The chapters are coordinated by individuals or groups of individuals who are well-versed in the movement's tenets and direction and have chosen to donate their time to help further its current goals. According to the Zeitgeist Movement July 2010 Newsletter, the Zeitgeist Movement has 46 official country chapters and over 200 regional sub-chapters internationally. This includes all 50 official U.S. state chapters.

Radio address

Peter Joseph, the founder and head of the Zeitgeist Movement, along with some other members of the movement deliver a weekly radio address which is broadcast every Wednesday on BlogTalkRadio. These broadcasts define the Zeitgeist Movement and discuss the progress of the movement's efforts, hold interviews with various relevant personalities, and provide information for the Zeitgeist Movement's chapters. When Peter Joseph is hosting, he provides guidelines to followers and answers questions submitted by listeners/movement members. There are two other BlogTalkRadio shows that discuss the Zeitgeist Movement, a resource-based economy and the Venus Project. One is Z Radio, a weekly broadcast co-hosted by Thunder and Franklee, and produced by Shawn Hodgins. The other, known as V-Radio, is hosted by Neil Kiernan Stephenson.

Reception

This article contains too many or overly lengthy quotations. Please help summarize the quotations. Consider transferring direct quotations to Wikiquote or excerpts to Wikisource. (November 2011)

Media reviews

On April 30, 2009, Rhonda Swan of the Palm Beach Post wrote:

Who can argue with such a movement? What we have never has worked for the benefit of society as a whole. How much longer can we really expect it to last? Isn't keeping our current system and expecting something different from what it's always given us insanity?

— Palm Beach Post

On March 17, 2009, Alan Feuer of the New York Times wrote in an article:

"The mission of the movement is the application of the scientific method for social change,” Mr. Joseph announced by way of introduction. The evening, which began at 7 with a two-hour critique of monetary economics, became by midnight 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.

— New York Times

From the same article:

"If this sounds vaguely like a disaster scenario out of 2001: A Space Odyssey, Mr. Fresco did not seem worried in the least. Machines are unemotional and unaggressive, unlike human beings, he told the crowd during the question-and-answer phase. “If you took your laptop and smashed it in front of 50 other laptops, trust me, none of them would care.”

Alan of The Sovereign Independent wrote of the Zeitgeist Movement:

"The idea, though it is not new, (but is packaged in hypnotising emotional propaganda movies) sounds lovely. Lets give up our power to machines. In one generation we lose every skill we ever had at managing the earth, growing food, existing as a family unit, forget how to exercise, work at anything and become so dependant on the system that should an error occur the engineers become the new elite, the rulers of the technocratic communist sci-fi dystopia."

— The Sovereign Independent

Criticism

1. Libertarian: Some beleive the Resource Based Economy requires central planning and control (wich is false, since it is a dynamic system composed of decentralized units linked to a central unit that can in theory manage the earths resources efficiently, no human control is imposed), libertarians criticize it as an extreme form of authoritarianism. Such a system, once programmed, would be an unalterable (therefore ultra-conservative) straightjacket on mankind (this is also false because such a system needs to be contunally updated to new discoverys).
2. Economic: Assuming that no scarcity will exist - that human desire will never exceed the available resources - is naive according to classical and neo-classical economic thought. The failure of central planning to satisfy consumer demand has an extensive literature - see calculation problem. In short, most economic information is local, and unavailable to central planners. The farmer knows what grows best in his soil, not a far-off government bureaucrat. (this view lacks the understanding of how a resource based economy works, localization is a big part of it, you dont need a global central computer to manage and automated agracultural facility, you need a local system that has access to the global central system for other purposes then the critical funtions of the facility. another problem is that desires are regarded as needs and infinite, when in fact it is the environment that generates those desires an the beleif that those desires are needs)
3. Systemic: The central planning approach ignores the possibilities and potential for emergent order. Cosmos, the emergent order of ecosystems, markets, and various other phenomena may be a better solution than taxis, planned order from above. (a resource based economy is not centrally planned, it is calculated in real time considering multiple factors including space-time location.)
4. technology not available yet:If such machines existed to automate almost everything, they would already be used as they would make huge amounts of money(although after a while prices would have to drop to zero). Also, a computer than runs everything would be extremely hard to create, since computers cannot respond to a change that hasn't be programmed into it (a computer can only do what a human programmes (tells it) to).

See also

• Post scarcity
• Criticism of fractional-reserve banking

References

1. Copyright
2. "thezeitgeistmovement.com – Traffic Details from Alexa". Alexa Internet, Inc. Retrieved 6 November 2011.
3. ^ Feuer, Alan (March 17, 2009). "They've Seen the Future and Dislike the Present". The New York Times.
4. Jacque Fresco "Construction", The Venus Project
5. Zeitgeist India FAQ
6. The Zeitgeist Movement FAQ
7. Jacque Fresco "City Systems", Cybernetic Government The Venus Project
8. Peter Joseph "The Zeitgeist Movement Orientation Guide", page 69.
9. "What is Zday".
10. Alan Feuer (March 16, 2009). "They've Seen the Future and Dislike the Present". New York Times. Retrieved December 17, 2009.
11. "Michelle Rodriguez from Avatar at Zeitgeist Day Los Angeles".
12. "Brandon Boyd of Incubus at Zeitgeist Day Los Angeles".
13. http://www.zeitgeistmediaproject.com
14. The Zeitgeist Movement Polish
15. http://www.thezeitgeistmovement.com/July2010NL.pdf
16. "The Zeitgeist Movement Website". The Zeitgeist Movement. Retrieved 2010-04-02.
17. "V-Radio".
18. Rhonda Swan (April 30, 2009). "COLUMN: A dream worth having". The Palm Beach Post. Retrieved May 4, 2009.
19. http://www.sovereignindependent.com/?p=13193 Peter Joseph, Jacque Fresco and the Zeitgeist Movement: Venus Flytrap or Final Solution?

External links

• Official Website
• Zday 2010 Review
• Zday 2009 Review by New York Times
• The Venus Project

The neutrality of this article is disputed. Relevant discussion may be found on the talk page. Please do not remove this message until conditions to do so are met. (November 2011) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

Mission Statement

Founded in 2008, The Zeitgeist Movement is a Sustainability Advocacy Organization which conducts community based activism and awareness actions through a network of Global/Regional Chapters, Project Teams, Annual Events, Media and Charity Work.

The Movement's principle focus includes the recognition that the majority of the social problems which plague the human species at this time are not the sole result of some institutional corruption, scarcity, a political policy, a flaw of "human nature" or other commonly held assumptions of causality.

Rather, The Movement recognizes that issues such as poverty, corruption, collapse, homelessness, war, starvation and the like appear to be "Symptoms" born out of an outdated social structure. While intermediate Reform steps and temporal Community Support are of interest to The Movement, the defining goal here is the installation of a new socioeconomic model based upon technically responsible Resource Management, Allocation and Distribution through what would be considered The Scientific Method of reasoning problems and finding optimized solutions.

This "Resource-Based Economic Model" is about taking a direct technical approach to social management as opposed to a Monetary or even Political one. It is about updating the workings of society to the most advanced and proven methods Science has to offer, leaving behind the damaging consequences and limiting inhibitions which are generated by our current system of monetary exchange, profits, corporations and other structural and motivational components.

The Movement is loyal to a train of thought, not figures or institutions. In other words, the view held is that through the use of socially targeted research and tested understandings in Science and Technology, we are now able to logically arrive at societal applications which could be profoundly more effective in meeting the needs of the human population. In fact, so much so, that there is little reason to assume war, poverty, most crimes and many other money-based scarcity effects common in our current model cannot be resolved over time.

The range of The Movement's Activism & Awareness Campaigns extend from short to long term, with the model based explicitly on Non-Violent methods of communication. The long term view, which is the transition into a Resource-Based Economic Model, is a constant pursuit and expression, as stated before. However, in the path to get there, The Movement also recognizes the need for transitional Reform techniques, along with direct Community Support.

For instance, while "Monetary Reform" itself is not an end solution proposed by The Movement, the merit of such legislative approaches are still considered valid in the context of transition and temporal integrity. Likewise, while food and clothes drives and other supportive projects to help those in need today are also not considered a long term solution, it is still considered valid in the context of helping others in a time of need, while also drawing awareness to the principle goal.

The Zeitgeist Movement also has no allegiance to a country or traditional political platforms. It views the world as a single system and the human species as a single family and recognizes that all countries must disarm and learn to share resources and ideas if we expect to survive in the long run. Hence, the solutions arrived at and promoted are in the interest to help everyone on the planet Earth, not a select group.

Concepts advocated by the Zeitgeist Movement

The core idea advocated by TZM is the replacement of current civilization with a money-free and cybernated "resource-based economy". The Zeitgeist Movement and the Venus Project promote replacing human labour with automation, government will be through collective participation of the public, aided by advanced cybernation. According to the movement, there will be no decision-making process regarding greater social issues by human beings, those decisions are arrived at by using the scientific method, based on the carrying capacity of the Earth, rather than using human opinions. The replacement of human decision making by artificial intelligence is termed 'Social Cybernation'. Private property will not be abolished, but it will become obsolete as culture grows, being replaced by "a system of universal access".

Activities and publications

Zeitgeist Day (Z-Day)

The Zeitgeist Movement holds an annual "Z-Day" in March. The first Z-Day was on March 15, 2009 and the second on March 13, 2010. On this day, the Zeitgeist Movement has local gatherings to learn and share information with all interested individuals. In 2009 there were more than 450 events held in 70 countries around the world. In 2009, among other events, Peter Joseph and Jacque Fresco spoke to a sold-out crowd of around 900 at the Borough of Manhattan Community College for over two hours. The third Z-Day was on March 13, 2011. Peter Joseph and others spoke to a sold-out audience of 1100 at "Friends House" in Euston, London.

Michelle Rodriguez of Avatar attended Z Day 2011 in Los Angeles on March 12, 2011 at Los Angeles Convention Center. She said she is intrigued by the idea of the Venus Project.

Brandon Boyd of Incubus also attended Z Day in Los Angeles with his girlfriend Baelyn Neff. He said Zeitgeist Moving Forward is his favorite Zeitgeist film so far. He also said he is very familiar with Jacque Fresco and watched a documentary film about Jacque Fresco's work called Future by Design.

Media Project

According to a press release circulated to members on May 12, 2010, the Zeitgeist Media Project (ZMP) Beta was released. According to the press release the Media Project is an extension of the Communications Team.

Chapters

The Zeitgeist Movement members are organized into country/regional, state and city "sub"-chapters. Each chapter/sub-chapter is hosted and maintained independently on its own domain, or in sub-domains from the Zeitgeist Movement's main site. The chapters are coordinated by individuals or groups of individuals who are well-versed in the movement's tenets and direction and have chosen to donate their time to help further its current goals. According to the Zeitgeist Movement July 2010 Newsletter, the Zeitgeist Movement has 46 official country chapters and over 200 regional sub-chapters internationally. This includes all 50 official U.S. state chapters.

Radio address

Peter Joseph, the founder and head of the Zeitgeist Movement, along with some other members of the movement deliver a weekly radio address which is broadcast every Wednesday on BlogTalkRadio. These broadcasts define the Zeitgeist Movement and discuss the progress of the movement's efforts, hold interviews with various relevant personalities, and provide information for the Zeitgeist Movement's chapters. When Peter Joseph is hosting, he provides guidelines to followers and answers questions submitted by listeners/movement members. There are two other BlogTalkRadio shows that discuss the Zeitgeist Movement, a resource-based economy and the Venus Project. One is Z Radio, a weekly broadcast co-hosted by Thunder and Franklee, and produced by Shawn Hodgins. The other, known as V-Radio, is hosted by Neil Kiernan Stephenson.

Reception

This article contains too many or overly lengthy quotations. Please help summarize the quotations. Consider transferring direct quotations to Wikiquote or excerpts to Wikisource. (November 2011)

Media reviews

On April 30, 2009, Rhonda Swan of the Palm Beach Post wrote:

Who can argue with such a movement? What we have never has worked for the benefit of society as a whole. How much longer can we really expect it to last? Isn't keeping our current system and expecting something different from what it's always given us insanity?

— Palm Beach Post

On March 17, 2009, Alan Feuer of the New York Times wrote in an article:

"The mission of the movement is the application of the scientific method for social change,” Mr. Joseph announced by way of introduction. The evening, which began at 7 with a two-hour critique of monetary economics, became by midnight 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.

— New York Times

From the same article:

"If this sounds vaguely like a disaster scenario out of 2001: A Space Odyssey, Mr. Fresco did not seem worried in the least. Machines are unemotional and unaggressive, unlike human beings, he told the crowd during the question-and-answer phase. “If you took your laptop and smashed it in front of 50 other laptops, trust me, none of them would care.”

Alan of The Sovereign Independent wrote of the Zeitgeist Movement:

"The idea, though it is not new, (but is packaged in hypnotising emotional propaganda movies) sounds lovely. Lets give up our power to machines. In one generation we lose every skill we ever had at managing the earth, growing food, existing as a family unit, forget how to exercise, work at anything and become so dependant on the system that should an error occur the engineers become the new elite, the rulers of the technocratic communist sci-fi dystopia."

— The Sovereign Independent

Criticism

1. Libertarian: Some beleive the Resource Based Economy requires central planning and control (wich is false, since it is a dynamic system composed of decentralized units linked to a central unit that can in theory manage the earths resources efficiently, no human control is imposed), libertarians criticize it as an extreme form of authoritarianism. Such a system, once programmed, would be an unalterable (therefore ultra-conservative) straightjacket on mankind (this is also false because such a system needs to be contunally updated to new discoverys).
2. Economic: Assuming that no scarcity will exist - that human desire will never exceed the available resources - is naive according to classical and neo-classical economic thought. The failure of central planning to satisfy consumer demand has an extensive literature - see calculation problem. In short, most economic information is local, and unavailable to central planners. The farmer knows what grows best in his soil, not a far-off government bureaucrat. (this view lacks the understanding of how a resource based economy works, localization is a big part of it, you dont need a global central computer to manage and automated agracultural facility, you need a local system that has access to the global central system for other purposes then the critical funtions of the facility. another problem is that desires are regarded as needs and infinite, when in fact it is the environment that generates those desires an the beleif that those desires are needs)
3. Systemic: The central planning approach ignores the possibilities and potential for emergent order. Cosmos, the emergent order of ecosystems, markets, and various other phenomena may be a better solution than taxis, planned order from above. (a resource based economy is not centrally planned, it is calculated in real time considering multiple factors including space-time location.)
4. technology not available yet:If such machines existed to automate almost everything, they would already be used as they would make huge amounts of money(although after a while prices would have to drop to zero). Also, a computer than runs everything would be extremely hard to create, since computers cannot respond to a change that hasn't be programmed into it (a computer can only do what a human programmes (tells it) to).

See also

• Post scarcity
• Criticism of fractional-reserve banking

References

1. Copyright
2. "thezeitgeistmovement.com – Traffic Details from Alexa". Alexa Internet, Inc. Retrieved 6 November 2011.
3. ^ Feuer, Alan (March 17, 2009). "They've Seen the Future and Dislike the Present". The New York Times.
4. Jacque Fresco "Construction", The Venus Project
5. Zeitgeist India FAQ
6. The Zeitgeist Movement FAQ
7. Jacque Fresco "City Systems", Cybernetic Government The Venus Project
8. Peter Joseph "The Zeitgeist Movement Orientation Guide", page 69.
9. "What is Zday".
10. Alan Feuer (March 16, 2009). "They've Seen the Future and Dislike the Present". New York Times. Retrieved December 17, 2009.
11. "Michelle Rodriguez from Avatar at Zeitgeist Day Los Angeles".
12. "Brandon Boyd of Incubus at Zeitgeist Day Los Angeles".
13. http://www.zeitgeistmediaproject.com
14. The Zeitgeist Movement Polish
15. http://www.thezeitgeistmovement.com/July2010NL.pdf
16. "The Zeitgeist Movement Website". The Zeitgeist Movement. Retrieved 2010-04-02.
17. "V-Radio".
18. Rhonda Swan (April 30, 2009). "COLUMN: A dream worth having". The Palm Beach Post. Retrieved May 4, 2009.
19. http://www.sovereignindependent.com/?p=13193 Peter Joseph, Jacque Fresco and the Zeitgeist Movement: Venus Flytrap or Final Solution?

External links

• Official Website
• Zday 2010 Review
• Zday 2009 Review by New York Times
• The Venus Project

• Misplaced Pages neutral point of view disputes from November 2011
• Social movements
• Zeitgeist