Zeitgeist Addendum documentary
Ah money, the necessary evil.
I watched Zeitgeist: Addendum recently, a documentary about the monetary establishment and its amazingly overt power over the world. I highly recommend watching this documentary—scoff at some of the conjectures by all means but try to keep an open mind. You can watch it here (or grab the torrent).
Of course, it is always good to have a healthy dose of scepticism. What I like to do with a film like this (such as Michael Moore films or An Inconvenient Truth) is sit there and try to absorb it all first, no matter how far fetched the ideas presented might be. And then do a double take. If you’re constantly thinking ‘naa, that’s bullshit’ in your mind all the way through, you can never hope to expand your horizon. Like one of those annoying people in a conversation who continuously interrupt to pull you up on pedantic little points without actually listening to the overall train of thought.
And now for the (hypocritical) pedantic points…
Firstly, something that most conspiracy theorists get wrong is that they assume the powers-that-be are smart, organised and incapable of misjudgment. To err is human. Surely chaos dictates that not everything is contrived. Can war be a by-product of personal rivalry or rash, hot-headed decisions?
One of the interesting and controversial topics near the end of the film was about addressing the problems that arise by being enslaved by a monetary system. In a nutshell these amount to poverty, debt, wage-slave, inequality, war, crime and plundering of natural resources.
The Venus Project proposes an alternative to the monetary system, which is built on the foundations of sustainability and sharing of resources.
While I very much like with the premise of The Venus Project, it feels a little too optimistic. They argue that since scarcity is the inherent property that drives profit—the root of capitalism—and creates the problems stemming from inequality; abundance should alleviate them. That is, if we have the tools to create an abundance of basic necessities for all humans then we would no longer have the desire to steal, fight or exhibit corrupt behaviour—all products of a system geared towards selfish gain. That the ultimate goal is not material possessions gained through sacrifice, but establishments of bonds, connections—to kin, to the natural world.
They don’t factor in a key issue, that people are fallible. Stupid, selfish and fearful. Connectedness and symbiosis are philosophical concepts that goes over most people’s heads. Sure we recognise the drive to love thy neighbour, but how do you get the majority to overcome self-serving motives and laziness and all the dark emotions lurking unvoiced behind wary eyes? Even without money, some will continue to have more status and better women than the rest of us. Inequality is inherent in all systems and hence trade.
On the one hand, the technology to automate our lives and create abundance is, for the first time in history, almost feasible. But swaying the masses to conform to a system without coercion, like herding cats, seems futile. Emotionally, we haven’t come very far from our cavemen ancestors and without institutions to instill fear and demand servitude, most societies would fall into anarchy.
I would sincerely love to see a system like this where there is no control-freak master and no ignorant slaves. But will it ever be possible? How flawed were the implementations of the ideals of Communism that Karl Marx envisaged? I truly respect the optimism of the Venus Project and am keen to learn more about it. But like a nagging toddler, the question lingers—who will clean the toilets?
Tags: documentary, money, zeitgeist
I don’t think the ‘Venus Project’ factors in the inherent desire of man to compete for status, to express esteem in order to get more back in return, and to somehow rank himself against others. Unfortunately I think this inevitably lead to power dynamics, which in turn cause damage.