Nefarious wrote:http://zeitgeistmovie.com/dloads.htm
Just watched this tonight after a friend recommended it. Has anyone else seen it and what did you think?
I had heard some of it before, but not all of it.
It's all rather hopeless. All I can do as an individual is chose to live outside of that system so far as it is possible and be as self-sufficient as possible.
In the first instance, that means avoiding the debt trap and re-evaluating what is really necessary to have in my life and building reciprocation with others outside of the system (i.e. trading goods not cash).
Or, setting up sub-units of currency within a community setting. Yeah, that's better - then you can trade for what you need when you need it. But the currency has no capitalism on it
Nefarious wrote:Yeah - I watched Zeitgesit addendum just this week and I'm kinda feeling like I wish I hadn't to be honest. It made me feel helpless and it was a bit of a hope killer - kinda like 'ignore this Obama guy, he's just part of the problem, we are the answer'. Well Obama has grown up in the world as it is too, just like me. And yeah, a lot of people see the problems with the system - economy for profit, not economy for the people, etc, and would like to see things change away from destructive models.
But how are they the answer? How do you get from a money driven market focused on profit to the absence of money entirely, being able to build new cities, cos it is cheaper than retouching existing ones - so using a whole bunch of new land for those cities when we need land for sustainable living?
They offer a utopia that seems so far out of reach but still a place it would be good to work towards. In the first instance, I would like to see a move from a tunnel visioned GDP focused economy to more of a 'how are our people doing' economy, and investment in building energy independent infrastructure - totally. Yeah, that will mean some of the things people make money off now will become redundant and perhaps eventually there could be a day when money was redundant.
I agree that all this debt, all this created money and paper is a house of cards and it enslaves us - no arguments there.
They do seem to have focused particularly on attacking Christ, Christians beliefs. I'm not really seeing the same attacks on Jewish or Muslim beliefs and all 3 religions are sons of Abraham faiths. Yes, there are a number of things about the story of Jesus Christ that have been recurring motifs in earlier stories of prophetic figures and anyone who has read about the ancient religions know that new religions tend to be influenced by the beliefs of people that come before - because, after all, new ideologies are more likely to gain traction when they contain something of familiarity to the new convert, etc. It is an easier sell. Let us not forget that religious texts are written by men, living in particular locations at the time of writing it, subject to particular social and political influences and sometimes putting some of their own stuff in to support their own agendas. Humans do that today - we haven't changed that much in 2000 years.
The problem is not that people have faith - I think faith is a good thing, people find it comforting. The problem is when faith in essentially the same thing is divided into different groups and then those groups are pitted against each other.
Now they did say something that is correct - we are all one - there is a great oneness, not just with humans - who vibrate on a similar channel - but with everything on this earth and in this universe. It is understandable that people sense that oneness, feel that tingle up their spine when they stop to connect with that sense of it, and it is understandable that over our existence we have personified that oneness in various forms that make sense to us culturally and socially. Such personifications have also enabled us to form collective rules for living together as a society, to minimize harm done to others and to work together.
And you know what? We are all immortal in a sense. We are made up of atoms from the collective whole, atoms suited to forming living creatures and in particular human beings. In this lifetime our atoms have constituted in a particular way. When that particular constitution expires we do not cease to exist, we simply change form. What made us still exists - those atoms still exist. How they reconstitute, who knows. We know that the perishable body is destined to return to the earth, disintegrate, but we are less sure about what happens to the 'energy' that is our consciousness.
Essentially, I think that if people want to believe in Jesus, Buddha, Mohammed, etc, why try and smash it down? Instead, why not just focus on being tolerant of how different people understand their faith but work to remind everyone of our oneness and work to remove from the various religions any incitement to destroy people of a different faith than our own.
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