Zeitgeist: Moving Forward
In episode 245 of the C-Realm Podcast, Eric Boyd and I discussed our responses to the new Peter Joseph film, Zeitgeist: Moving Forward. Some listeners thought we missed the filmmaker's point and asked that we listen to the following podcast:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/peter-joseph/2011/02/09/2911--peter-joseph-weekly-zm-radio-show
I have not yet heard the podcast, but I sent the link to Eric, and he responded with:
I listened to it, and I don't think we missed his point at all. He's still hammering on how 'technical evaluation' and 'removal of humans' from decision making is what makes his new vision different from the older socialistic ways of organizing the world that he is often compared to. I still think that just adding a fancy mainframe to centralized control doesn't make it better, in fact it clearly makes it worse, in my opinion, precisely because you're trying to remove real human debate and decision from the system.
But he does say at one point that as long as money is part of the system, then centralization is a really bad idea. It's just not at all clear to me how he intends to remove money from the system. His thoughts about how humans would have to behave before they would be allowed into the new system (listen to minute 78 onwards) are totally eye-opening. The man does not understand human nature, especially not our status-seeking behavior...
Eric
my notes on the zeitgeist podcast:
Good questions at 30-33
minute 45 - centralization: system is "open source", but again he falls back on "technical evaluation" and "removal of humans"
minute 78 - talk about how we would get into the city. Clearly shows how he's completely missed an important part of human nature: STATUS SEEKING. Same thing at minute 82 ("why would even someone want to have clothing that isn't the maximum efficiency"). He's clueless. We have all the options he says that we don't have - mostly because it's so hard to say exactly what would satisfy his preferences, these things are not as "scientific" as he seems to think they are, see for instance all the trouble with life-cycle-analysis LCA work.
minute 93 - some good comments about the dangers of centralized planning in a money economy
Also, here's some notes I have jotted down about what I'd do with the platform that he has, i.e. how I would work to change the system
<<
I'd really like to present my own picture of how we can get from where we are (corporate feudalism, globalization, military/industrial complex, financial and ecological overshoot) to where we want to be (earth friendly, technologically mature, humanistic equality).
- move towards humanistic equality:
- progressive taxation
- death tax
- end war on drugs; greatly reduce prison population
- stop subsidizing the status-quo elite (agribusiness, fossil fuels, etc)
- reduce military spending as fast as possible
- universal health care
- move towards technological maturity
- start having real discussions about technology in our society
- analogy to how an ecology evolves from bare field to mature forest
- society-wide recognition & treatment of future shock
- increase transparency of products & their production, disposal, etc.
- direction: *meaningful* careers for all: importance of education...
- move towards earth friendly
- reduce global warming emissions
- protect natural habitats
- reduce our footprint
- cyclic, renewable material economy
"science, nature and technology vs religion, politics and money" - it's not an either or. Politics and money are the mechanisms that our society uses to regulate the other things. We get to *decide*, using politics and money, how our resources are spent. So the above is a list of things that we should use our decision mechanisms to support.
I asked Eric if I could post his response. He answered:
Go ahead and post. Obvious my notes at the end are super preliminary, but I think it's fairly obvious from their form that that's true, so people can take them for what they are worth.
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/peter-joseph/2011/02/09/2911--peter-joseph-weekly-zm-radio-show
I have not yet heard the podcast, but I sent the link to Eric, and he responded with:
I listened to it, and I don't think we missed his point at all. He's still hammering on how 'technical evaluation' and 'removal of humans' from decision making is what makes his new vision different from the older socialistic ways of organizing the world that he is often compared to. I still think that just adding a fancy mainframe to centralized control doesn't make it better, in fact it clearly makes it worse, in my opinion, precisely because you're trying to remove real human debate and decision from the system.
But he does say at one point that as long as money is part of the system, then centralization is a really bad idea. It's just not at all clear to me how he intends to remove money from the system. His thoughts about how humans would have to behave before they would be allowed into the new system (listen to minute 78 onwards) are totally eye-opening. The man does not understand human nature, especially not our status-seeking behavior...
Eric
my notes on the zeitgeist podcast:
Good questions at 30-33
minute 45 - centralization: system is "open source", but again he falls back on "technical evaluation" and "removal of humans"
minute 78 - talk about how we would get into the city. Clearly shows how he's completely missed an important part of human nature: STATUS SEEKING. Same thing at minute 82 ("why would even someone want to have clothing that isn't the maximum efficiency"). He's clueless. We have all the options he says that we don't have - mostly because it's so hard to say exactly what would satisfy his preferences, these things are not as "scientific" as he seems to think they are, see for instance all the trouble with life-cycle-analysis LCA work.
minute 93 - some good comments about the dangers of centralized planning in a money economy
Also, here's some notes I have jotted down about what I'd do with the platform that he has, i.e. how I would work to change the system
<<
I'd really like to present my own picture of how we can get from where we are (corporate feudalism, globalization, military/industrial complex, financial and ecological overshoot) to where we want to be (earth friendly, technologically mature, humanistic equality).
- move towards humanistic equality:
- progressive taxation
- death tax
- end war on drugs; greatly reduce prison population
- stop subsidizing the status-quo elite (agribusiness, fossil fuels, etc)
- reduce military spending as fast as possible
- universal health care
- move towards technological maturity
- start having real discussions about technology in our society
- analogy to how an ecology evolves from bare field to mature forest
- society-wide recognition & treatment of future shock
- increase transparency of products & their production, disposal, etc.
- direction: *meaningful* careers for all: importance of education...
- move towards earth friendly
- reduce global warming emissions
- protect natural habitats
- reduce our footprint
- cyclic, renewable material economy
"science, nature and technology vs religion, politics and money" - it's not an either or. Politics and money are the mechanisms that our society uses to regulate the other things. We get to *decide*, using politics and money, how our resources are spent. So the above is a list of things that we should use our decision mechanisms to support.
I asked Eric if I could post his response. He answered:
Go ahead and post. Obvious my notes at the end are super preliminary, but I think it's fairly obvious from their form that that's true, so people can take them for what they are worth.