"Moving forward" seemed to be a sort of trilogy ending. After my doubts about the first Zeitgheist ("The Movie") and after my joy about the "Addendum" I expected a great deal from this 3rd part especially because it has over 150 minutes footage. Unfortunately I have not found the vitality of the "Addendum" anymore although monetary system analysis goes further in some respects. Maybe it was me that was already familiar with all the documentary themes, maybe I was accustomed to a community that accepts its specific ideas and maybe that is why I was not so excited to find fellow ideology elsewhere. Anyway, I agree with more than 90% of ideas presented in the film but I found a small number of new things that I am particularly interested. I will elaborate these affirmations in the following sections and I will begin with positive things of the documentary.
What I liked best in "Zeitgeist 3: Moving Forward"
From the very beginning I emphasize the fact that the technical and artistic achievement of this 3rd part documentary is indeed a step forward towards the other two made before. Peter Joseph knows his job. He knows how to deal with image and when to push different items on display, giving them amplitude. He is a true professional, one can see his experience in the field and the success of the other two documentaries motivated him even more to move forward on this side.
Regarding the ideas presented in the film the most I liked that of the correlation between physiological disease or mental disorder psychological disorder and the very social status in which they appear. I subscribe to this idea from 13 years ago when I wrote “The dynamics of abyssal psychology” . Starting from minute 1.25 Peter Joseph makes a very coherent and profound analysis of this state of facts that turns the classical psychoanalysis and genetics theories of seem a kind of newcartesianism. Insisting on the theory of “libidinal stages evolution” or hormonal and genetic disorders in the explanation of diseases and mental disorders as these theories do at the beginning of the XXI century is no longer a matter of ignorance or scientific failure, but complacency in hypocrisy.
Another thing that is worth noticing in the documentary is the attention to crime and, the fact that the criminal is a victim herself/himself that transmits on the frustrations and abuses received from the society or family. Instead of protecting children from abuses in order not to make them criminals today's society keeps strengthened by military and police forces of order designed to discourage their reflection back into society. Law enforcement develops directly proportional to citizens declining standard of living. As slave worker living costs and quantity of the work are increasing its aggression also increases. The barrier between respectable citizen and criminal becomes very unclear if the worker's life is getting worse. The criminal is that margin of error that goes beyound this border. Luxury and wealth are made by slaves by more or less subtle stealing of their work; as they make that luxury possible for the privileged social classes they also accumulate frustrations and criminal tendencies and their inhibition is done by security forces that keeps accentuate these frustrations. Just like the vicious circle of neurosis contemporary society proves itself a neurosis at the institutional level where Unconscious represented by criminals fight on life and death struggle with the repressing Conscious represented by security forces. Strengthening law enforcement implies addition expenses supported by society and in the very end supported by the same slave worker, which implies increasing of personal frustrations and propensity to crime. The justice system is the most organized of all crimes as others theorists have noted before (Michel Foucault, Friedrich Nietzsche, some ancient sophists etc.) Security forces prevent indeed such abuses that ex slave criminal can make to the society. But they mainly protect powerful people of society thus increasing the possibility for them to fire just over the helpless: children, women, the members of the criminal-victim. Today's society reports toward criminals the same way as the gangs and anti-government tight terrorist organizations reports to officials creating so-called spiral of tight terrorism and beyond such tight terrorism that politicians presents as the only terrorism its contemporary itself that behaves in a terrorist way as I pointed in this article. http://baldovinconcept.blogspot.com/2010/02/terrorism-as-pillar-of-state.html
Instead of investing in psychotherapists to find any abuse in the next criminals families today society invests in the military and police forces that have the main role to threaten the slave and to make it productive inventing various excuses and conflicts between nations in order to justify their existence and to discreetly wash up this dirty image. It's time to see what's wrong with the society itself in relationship with criminals beyond demonizing and perceiving them as the only ones responsible for their hateful acts. Unfortunately at this moment it is more profitable to invest in the army and police forces that protect you from the raging crowd. An open and humanist educated child no longer accepts the slave labor and slavery or contemporary newslavery system collapse in the lack of slaves. Justice is the "necessary evil" or “smaller evil" that frequently people say about. Obviously this formula is designed by the observer's point of view: for the privileged social justice is evident that the justice is the smaller evil because the institutions make their lives easier. They throw the garbage in the yard of the crowd. But for the criminal the lesser evil is crime itself that he or she had no choice but to do it and the greatest evil is the very state that brought the situation to commit the crime. So, as Fresco says at the late of documentary, the one who seeks justice finally comes to be defeated by it.
What I did not like in "Zeitgeist 3: Moving Forward"
There are plenty of real and productive ideas in the film, I do not insist on all of them because the reader can notice herself/ himself by simply seeing it. Right now I would like to focus on things that I did not like. First of all documentary seems to me to be too long and too out of shape. It seems to be a press conference where Peter Joseph responds to all the various themes proposed by the audience. From this point of view Zeitgeist 3 documentary somehow has not a consistent methodology, a melodic line. It passes from one topic to another without drawing a conclusion in the end in order to explain such a zigzag evolution of the speech. I think it would have been better to have three different one-hour or less for each documentaries instead of a big 160 minutes one. There could be one single project concerning the effectiveness of Venus, then another one about crime and its conditioning to the social environment and another one about robotic technology and end of the slavery edge. Peter Joseph did not make a detailed approach in no one of these topics and gave me the impression that he left them hanging in the air.
There are also several inaccuracies that do not belong in such a documentary and have no contribute whatsoever for the dynamics of argumentation. For example at the beginning of the film is said that schizophrenia is not genetically conditioned but suggested as largely being induced by the social environment. I commend and support the film intention to show up the excessive usage of genetics for explaining certain dubious behaviors particularly for protecting and justifying them and not to change them. Indeed the excessive usage of genetics argument is a disguised form of the older argument of "destiny" to exploit and rob common people by the social privileged ones. The theory of "divine right" * which lasted until close to modernity is a good example. Absolute genetics which is looking for gene for one behavior or another source become a contemporary source of myths painted in scientific precision colors. But despite of its vogue for now it is not a science in the sense of observation sciences, but an amalgam of experiments on rats and other animals. Just like neurology genetic too is still kidding, an early childhood science although they both have had remarkable results. Its spectacular shape comes from the fact that it overlaps the contemporary man ambivalence towards religion. On the one hand it confirms that people are genetic descendants from the ancestors so it promises that at one certain point will find out who was Adam. On the other hand genetics allowed the manipulation of the facts that were previously ascribed to God only. Slowly but surely humanity become convinced that children do not come from God, but are expressions of nature which, in this case are... genetics.
Despite its momentousness as a science it is full of assumptions and there is no typical verification tools to confirm or infirm them. Searching particular one gene for each behavior and explaining it through this genetics nebula refusing environment understanding even in parallel with the genetic paradigm looks like another kind of classic dualism painted in misleading colors of contemporary laboratories. Geneticists pipettes and tubes not impress me neither their scientists tired old-fashioned allure! When they would (re)create the first dinosaur then would be able to congratulate themselves for creating a serious science and for creating a consistent theory of genes. Until then, geneticists seem to worth more for capitalist propaganda!
Yet must not fall into the other extreme and believe that everything is pure environment just as it did Pavlov and his followers, the behaviorists, without understanding the predisposition genetic factor. Regarding DSM IV schizophrenia percentage is from 0.5 to 1.5% in the population (p. 308). But the risk of developing schizophrenia is 10 times higher for the first degree descendants of those who have this disease than normal (p. 309). I agree that social factors and education received may influence the shape of schizophrenic symptoms but the predisposition of general schizophrenia development is decisively influenced by genetic factors. Is not very good to put such errors in such a documentary! You lose credibility! Addition to this, such a theme has no meaning to the main interest of the film. There is no good reason for such an extra theme in the evolution of the documentary.
The situation is repeated at minute 1.15 where Max Keiser talks about the difference between those who occupy cynical functions in the economy or general social institutions and the normal people. This difference would consist in so-called “brain damage” after the words of the interviewee. I think one of the theoretical problems of Peter Joseph is just lack of training in psychology and psychopathology. The theme of brain dysfunction in psychopathology has sparked many controversies in recent decades. Even schizophrenia has not a clear verdict regarding such neurophysiologic dysfunctions although it is most likely to have. Even less such a small personality disorder (but unfortunately with very serious consequences on the world) as described by the interviewed one is unlikely to be due to organic dysfunction (hard) but more likely to be due to psychic conformation (soft). That is why DSM has replaced the old term "mental illness" that had in it the concept of organic dysfunction with "mental disorder" that appears closer to the actual soft informational-pulsional mental reality than the hard one of the cerebral organic system. Although the neurophysiology used to be expected to find new therapeutic solutions, however as it developed more in the second half of the twentieth century concluded itself that the physiological substrate is not the decisive element in psychopathology. The brain of the most mental disorders is normally functioning. Nerve impulses, hormonal control of the organs, reflexes, reactions to stimulus etc. works the same for mental disorders people as it works for normal people. The difference consists only in the intensity degree of these reactions.
Naturally when we see such a cyborg we have the tendency to say that there is something wrong with its brain but it is more a curse, a warm response than a precise and profound scientific statement. The human brain is not a barrel. A brain injury or a brain excision may produce extremely different effects depending on the place, time and intensity of its occurrence. The human brain seems like an inert body but everyone knows already that it is an entire universe. Such an organic brain damage can lead also to hiperempathy and hiperafectivity. One can not explain the inhumane behavior of some Wall Street employees as “brain damage”. In this case not only the half 20-th century Western psychiatry switching is not known by Peter Joseph, but he and others seem to go back to the 18th and 19th century views on mental disorder. Such a theoretical approach very much resembles to the untrained people vision who accuses her/his enemies as suffering from "insanity". Even if Peter Joseph did not directly express his opinion, however he tolerated and put it in this documentary which certifies the fact that he missed some studies in this area, lectures that are crucial for the work he begun.
At min. 1.40 is a statement with which I also disagree. It says that if we do not take into account the changes required there is very likely to disappear as a species because we are wasting resources and we pollute the planet by poisoning. I do not think that this is the line to justify the need for these changes. Actually, it was seen how hypocrite intentions of Al Gore and many corporations support environmental protection campaigns. It is very easy to refute such an environment disaster idea. The earth is mostly clean. Global warming is a hoax. Pollutants generally pollute sensitive Gothic civilization of cities. If you stay longer in the wild or out of urban congestion than pollution will no longer seemed a problem and with it they hypocritically want to induce notion that society should not reform because actually we have minor problems with pollution or no problem at all. This is not at stake! We need to change society in order to correct and make it fair. We need to change it to give us the rights promised in constitutions. We need to change it because when we were kids we were told at school to do what we were told in exchange for different promises that the system forgot in meantime. Many of us have forgotten this real contract between us as children and system but some of us have not so now simply ask the system to fulfill its principle obligations under the contract. Unfortunately most of these ideals are just words on paper and civilization is an empty and colorful set of lies. We live in a world of lies, frauds and wars. This is not civilization but smiling jungle. Typeface. Hypocrisy. Unfortunately again, many of us never had better parents or teachers to protect us from abuses east of such an inhumane contract and we fell into wild education trap.
Conclusions, surveys, evaluations
One can see an interesting evolution in the thinking of Peter Joseph that is to find in my own thinking. In the first Zeitgeist (The movie) evil in the world was focused on a kind of secret, elitist, implacable and invincible society that creates religions in different parts of the world in order to control the masses. In the second one (Addendum) this evil moved somehow to monetary system. In this third Zeitgeist spirit fixated on something else like in Hegel's speech :). Peter Joseph reached the point to says that there no politicians, neither banks, nor the military are responsible for the evil in the world but something else, thus introducing a new concept in its theme but somehow old and commonplace in psychology: "psychosocial stress" (1:28 min). I think that the openness to psychotherapy and psychology is the way Peter must follow in order to enhance his speech.
I myself want to do this in my art and my theories speech. After a period of several years of stressful life style that I put aside any possibility of solving current problems in today society now I go back to my old hobby: psychology. But that does not mean giving up the idea of revising social values as there are stressful and toxic information social environment in today's society. Psychotherapy alone can not change things as long as the social environment is more or less a terrorist one. I have friends in both Zeitgeist and psychoanalysts’ communities and I would like to attract the first for understanding their psychological background of a beyond the idealization of the endenic future Venus Project as much as I would like to take the others out of the maternalist exlcusivism understanding of family microsociety causality for human mind. The Lacanian and Freudian abyssal psychologies are both different forms of structuralism and thus they assume all the shortcomings of that thinking.
On the other hand, in terms of psychology, the Zeitgeist community members ignore almost at all the personal interiority and throw everything towards social exteriority. It looks to me as an emotional and factual exclusive investment in the Venus Project and not very much training regarding psychology. Peter Joseph has plenty unreadings even if there are also valuable insights (some of them discovered by others in the past...). After this statement there are a lot of other psychological ins and outs that Peter Joseph had not seen very clearly yet although he guessed them. There are more to say after this "psychosocial stress" but he stopped and ended.
For example, the informational and emotional toxic environment promoted by present civilized society has a very specific purpose which Peter Joseph seems not to notice. Inferiority complexes that sick people minds every second are spread into society on different channels just like radio waves spread into the ether. Their maim role is to and to convince slave soul to "voluntarily" work by buying unnecesary products and false technology (new design objects) which covers and satisfy this inferiority complex. Although this inferiority complexes are satisfied after the very moment of acquisition still, on long-term time this blind shopping traps harder the slave in slavery because she/he must perform additional work to cover the costs of their acquisition. Beyond microfamilial side described by Freud in this moment I am convinced that narcissism has a much more important macrosocial side as well said some 80 years ago the third founder of the psychoanalytic movement, Alfred Adler. Instead of death threat as used in classical age, the contemporary slavery system recruits its slaves by inveigling their narcissism. Firstly the system humiliates them starting since from the early school and then by all the commercials that systematically harass their psychodynamic background. The narcissism is a partial "healing" of this inferiority complex brought by classical culture and careful speculated by contemporary culture.
The result is a man who wants increasingly more and more, a dependent man as it is pointed out in this third documentary. We are talking about a greedy blind by consumption man who is slowly but surely destroying social relationships with others and who risk to destroy even the planet if continue on this way. But as I said above the nature through human nature has the power to regenerate and self-regulate so despite pessimistic I am convinced that things will change in better. But that does not mean we must forget the past and remain passive in the hope of a change that would come without an effort on our part and wait for the nature effort. Things must be very categorically named. Western society has been and remains a huge battlefield marked by a few islands of calm and piece. As being battlefield in sense of war or psychological battle, contemporary civilization proves to be wilder than what it shows in the constitutions of states that is why so many other papers full of propaganda neoscolastic texts are.
I would like Peter Joseph to continue exposing other social institutions also as he did with the monetary system in Addendum and even continued in this third one. But instead of something like this he shows the Venus Project that we have been talking on Team Speak for some time now. Venus, Venus, Venus ... I'm tired of talking about Venus as long as ordinary people do not have that basic political power to get out of the current political system. I did not need a futuristic city as I need the certainty that if I would relocate to live alone in the mountains the police would not come to arrest me for being an anarchist or a terrorist! Who would invest in a project like Venus if in the future comes the next George Bush with the military forces and accuse me of having chemical weapons? Let's give up the naiveties and large steps in the favor of smaller but more certain steps! If I get the minimum that political freedom then I not know if I would need to invest in a new city. I can easily use the old ones.
I think "Moving Forward" is a documentary of the Zeitgeist movement crisis itself beyond being a current society crisis documentary. Zeitgeist Movement had a powerful start. The first Zeitgeist was systematically removed by YouTube without realizing that they actually contribute to its popularization. After Zeitgeist Addendum became famous and after YouTube and realized that if they would continue to delete these videos which would undermine their own image, Zeitgeist has became a really mass phenomenon. Peter Joseph has been invited to hold conferences in different places and even has a radio show. Zeitgeist turned into an international movement and myself have attended meetings on Team-speak (Port: 9987 Password = tzm). After months of talking and plans for the creation of Venus Project people leave disappointed and so again and again. People come, get involved, organize things then get bored and leave. The truth is that there is not much to be done. Social cyborgs have everythin; they weapons, credibility, and media actors to take their defense in front of the crowds. You can not get out of the system no matter how hard you try. That is actually the contemporary newslavey. In the century of "freedom" you can see that if you want leave the present civilization you simply can not take your own goods out of it; you can leave only for a short moment but soon the taxes will steal your property which, paradoxically, the system makes a statue for. That is because the capitalist system actually does not defend your property but their properties. Those big properties... Their properties are as sacred as themselves. If you refuse to remain slave in the system then you will have no property whatsoever no matter how small it looks compared to theirs. Your property is not (any longer) holy (sic!) and has never been! The myth about the defense of property that makes the difference between our democracy and totalitarian systems is empty propaganda. How guts and insensitiveness must have the exponents of (wild) capitalism to accuse Peter Joseph of Marxism as long as Marxist (those that involve the dictatorship) and fascist elements can be seen so clearly in the capitalist system itself which they are lobbying them and hide its crimes!
Future projects
Somewhere in spring of 2010 the Zeitgeist Movement organized a bit pompous Z-Day. I say Pompous because many members of the movement have been tempted to identify this Z-day with the better known Second World War D-day that meant the Allied landings in France and a turning point for the further evolution of the war. Many believed that the same thing was happening in society at that moment and left the conferences disappointed. Many of the important members were disappointed themselves and left the movement. In these circumstances the triumphalist attitude at the end of this documentary looks very bizarre to me considering these issues. Peter Joseph is still culturally dominated by the imperialist attitude of people gather in large numbers and start a postrobotic crusade against tradition. How many of these illusions have been used throughout history! And the big concern is that this spirit Venus Project comes close to the danger of becoming a new capitalism painted in beautiful words such as communism itself regarding the bourgeoisie. Without inner psychological strength to get on our own frustrations and sublimation, without a psychoanalytic insight Venus Project will remain just a dream, just an illusion. If today society suddenly would become humanistic, if the armies and other institutions threats would disappear then and the people still would continue to stress and pain one another in the virtue of a social pattern imprinted for thousands of years in the poisoned soul of the Western mind. It's something inside that must be changed before or simultaneously with the change of our social exterior.
The situations is not pink at all and near future technology that seems to replace the building worker as presented in the film and even a future omnitechnology able to entirely replace the slave labor as Aristotle a dreamed over 2000 years ago still will not solve the humanity slavery problem. The disappearance of manipulation the contemporary (wo)man will see how actually broken (s)he is! Only when no one will lie her or him how beautiful and how successful in love (s)he is, only then (s)he would see how sad (s)he is and how much misery the last two millenniums brought in the soul of humanity. Then one would see an unprecedented explosion of depressions and suicides! I cannot be triumphant about of such a prospect! I wish cultural toxicity disappear, I want the politicians, army and police to go away, but history will not end (neither) after this episode. Mankind will not become a family after these steps in civilization will be made! Taking my hand with others in a kind of yoga spiral that pretend to be the end of history seems unnatural to me. There's nothing to celebrate! Not literally or figuratively.
One might have the chance to be smart enough and get a higher level job in the system after various tests so that more or less gets rid of slavery. However one needs the cynicism to not see others caught in the nets of manipulation and control system. Without this cynicism one can not promote the social ladder. I resigned myself with the situation. You simply cover your eyes and shut up because if protesting otherwise you might get penalties and persecution at job also in capitalism just as used to happen in communism. So please tell me dear comrades capitalists what about Stalinism and freedom of speech!? After such an experience you just have to get used with the idea that the social system is still wild and be careful with the many offers that very probable might be Trojan horses. You can still be glad that you did more than your parents or grandparents and have a better life than theirs. You have to accept the fact that you are not so smart to cross and reach above social barriers and also not so patiently waiting for the "enlightenment" of adulthood.
I think the real solution to the current social crisis is ceasing overvaluation the social metascams. The majority contempt against the false claimed elitist minority can cause either withdrawal in their ivory towers or social acceptance of humanizing measures. No need to think of how it can be done because they will think better. But as long as we tolerate their luxury, wasting and social poluting we are also responsible for their actions. The solution is simple: the boycott of political scams, refusing to give your vote to these heartless cyborgs the rob you with the smile on their faces. Street riots and violence solves nothing. After the experience of the French Revolution and after numerous protests by workers in the twentieth-century these mind killers have learned to counteract with the disinformation and manipulation techniques. Venus project is a spiritual step rather than the achievement of an exterior city. The obsession of materialization before a spiritual abreaction has an obsessional side indeed. Venus Project reminds me of the famous Jung's mandalas in which humanity has historically seen the embodiment of perfection. The way is: Work less - live more! Even if the current system still requires you to kiss somebody’s ass you have few advantages however to defend yourself. Get rid of TV, radio, get a friend or take an animal if you can not find someone worthy your friendship!
One can see rather half full than half empty. Despite all the cultural traps me and anybody else can still defend ourselves; we can choose and to work less and this is already an interiour liberation before any formal inner city act Venus. Their manipulation would be stranguled if I choose to no longer be a slave and no longer work. I also can buy products made automatically and have honor of not contributing to the enslavement of any worker. I have the choice of not buying products made in China or other countries where corporations have recently moved for the same reason. There are many choices that everyone of us can make to free ourselves from the tyranny of the painted in contemporary humanism colors state.
* "Divine Right" was seen in the classical edge as right upper classes to master the lower ones.
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