December 13, 2008

The Zeitgeist Movement and its films



I will begin this essay with stating how impressed I was, seeing the two documentaries under that name, posted on the Internet without any restriction of rights or download. It looked like someone out there awoke from the deep sleep to teach us history and tell us the about the road to success, with no interest what so ever, except a good will to saving the world from the claws of the Monetary Giants who rule our world. And all that seemed like a breath of fresh air to those of us who are living from one day to another, truly enslaved by the power of money. Then again we will think that this story should’ve begin with the invention of the monetary system by the Chinese and not by the Americans and why were they invented in a perfect society such as the Chinese’s was at the time, before the western world stepped in, and screws it all up.

Although well documented into matters of religion, economics and politics and very well narrated, I couldn’t help not having a déjà vu of the past times in which I, like not too many others had the opportunity to live, not too long ago, and just as the films are saying, I couldn’t help not thinking that history is repeating itself all over again.

As a man of arts, an occupation which I tried to keep up despite all the ups and downs in my life, because I always believe it as being the nucleus to my own free universe, in which my brain atoms try to exist outside the system that the films are presenting,  a universe which does surround us all, along the years, I made a habit of listening to the “Free World’s” voices who kept talking about freedom, liberty and justice for all.
Although not as old as many would think, I too grew to believe in the words of Goethe: “None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.” ” and I've also grown to understand that he was a human being too, he was a smart man, an intellectual, but he was not an artist, therefore his thoughts of freedom don’t really apply to all human kind, but only to those who control the system we are living in and to those who follow it.  So did Marx, Engels, Lenin and others who shaped the system I was born into, and thought I’ll never live to see it thrown. So did the system they promoted, it came to power and promised a better order of things and failed to provide as all the other before or after did. I grew to understand that it failed because as many say: It was a good system in theory, but not achievable in practice. I got to live and see it thrown by the world’s Economical Powers Giants, with promises of a better existence under their own plan: mostly like the film is presenting the examples for the activities the Democratic World took, over other leaders who tried to go their own way. I got to live to see Ceausescu awarded by the Queen of England and then, a few years later, denied as being one of the cruelest dictators of the world and get him shot with no right to appeal. Back then, we just thought: They just didn’t know better!
I believe anyone sane could understand how shocking it is to look at those films from a different point of view: not from the shoes of those who lived a free life and which now came to an end, but of those who have lived a under oppression and hoped for better days, which actually never came and now they have to keep on living understanding that it will never do, because those who stood as example in the past, failed too. Although my country was not pointed out in the documentary, I felt that every step explained there, as it was taken into the countries mentioned, was taken into mine too: Including the BECHTEL Company that has more activities today than just dealing with water supplies.
Coming back to the essence of the basic idea of the film, or al least the one I like to think it is, I couldn’t help not finding history once again as similar as always with the present events and try to cry out to those who look at this film as an important piece of truth: that history covers not only America and their actual problems but the whole world, from the beginning of time to presence, and I couldn’t shut my eyes not to see the same ignorance the Americans have, as always, when dealing with this problems: they tend to forget to document the history turns in the other side of the world’s order who already failed taking the path they are proposing now and whom, accordingly to their history, have more experience in dealing with systems that didn’t work out. Just because some of them are older nations. My disappointment came once watching the so called “The Venus Project” it reminded me of the times I was a kid and Communism was promising us exactly the same kind of life, based on technology, equality and ecology, with no elitism, welfare, crime, etc. Actually the pictures of the Rocket Train on magnets look exactly like the ones presented in the propaganda booklets of 1970’s in my country, while we, the future generation, were taught to sing a song which said: “We, in the years 2000, are not gonna be kids anymore, we will do things which are thought now to be impossible for the human kind!” The refrain was: “The Party, The Communism and Our Great Leader!” - all with rime. At least 90% of it sounds exactly the same. Well, then again: We are now in the years 2000, and nothing changed except that the world which was meant to have the "Right Order" just came to an end too. Sometimes, watching this film, I wonder if we didn’t actually had it right, all before everybody else, and then threw it away for just an Occidental dream.
We all agree that the Monetary System is enslaving us. We all agree that some people were smart and used that as to make profit and rule the world. We all agree that there are better ways to use our resources in order to preserve the planet. But what we all forget every time we set on to invent a new system is that we as we know it, are not equal. We are all born naked and without a sense of greed or the sense of hatred, but we are not all born in the same mentality, or nor with the same mental capacity. We are all children of the same God, but we do not all have the power of will to guide us to a better existence (which in my opinion comes from the mentality, religion and mental capacity, for that matter). What this new system is presenting, in my opinion, is a perfect world for a civilisation   which would’ve been based on the Spartan Law of selecting the best, the healthiest, the strongest.  The challenge of man as to all animals in a pack, is to aim for the position of the the alpha, by proving one's stronger personality, the alpha is standing out of the crowd and therefore is becoming a leader. How would “The Venus Project” choose its leaders? Who will decide who controls the whole world in order to make sure it does work? Does those who will decide feel as equal as those who will have to follow it? What will someone like Mr. Fresco feel when the world will fall to his feet, once he achieved his dream and once people will treat him as one of the elite of the system? There are a few other leaders in the history of the world who claimed to be equal with their people and never seemed to manage that - as history shows us that once they became leaders and embraced the privileges (most instated for their security) - they took advantage of it and became dictators - or al least this is how humans call them once those leaders are striped off their privileges after their people find out that all those security measures makes one less equal with the rest.
I am one of those who living outside America, did not had the chance of seeing or hearing about those films right at the time they were released and for the first time in my life I am happy I didn’t.  Experiencing the year 2008 and its development until the day I’m writing this article, I finally think I found the answer to the 2008 Economical World Crisis: I find these films as being part responsible for it. As the films themselves end with messages which are meant to manipulate the masses. In fact I find those films as manipulating as the IMF it is to the masses and which perhaps help creating the crisis (as it is portrayed in the film content). I could not help asking myself what happened with the banks which were presented at the end of the 2nd Film after most of the Americans have seen that message: "Step 1 (Expose the Fed Cartel)". I wonder why those banks didn’t take notice and sue the filmmakers and I could not help wondering how all that influenced the existence and the activities of the other banks around the world which were linked with those Banking Giants who control the world. And then again, why are we in an international crisis?
Just as a thought I wonder if that couldn’t been another propaganda movement, just like another one of those wars presented in these films to shake the economical world for a new plan and for new profits. Now, one couldn't help asking himself: What if those films were part of a new plan for the elections that took place in November 2008 in America, and as we all know, the price for power is always laid on us - the people. Thinking Globalisation now, it’s certain it is not only the people of America, but the entire world as well.
I hope I’m all wrong, but up to the time I’m going to be proved to be wrong; sorry: I will keep my mind open and believe what I see. From my experience, existing into these world systems, I know for a fact that although the films are well documented and touch a lot of subjects who interested me along the years, this is not the answer for a better life.
I know for a fact that religions are just myths and people shouldn’t fight for the differences. I also know that when myth becomes art it brings people of all kinds together and everyone despite his religion respects it when is presented as such. I was surprised was that the word “art” was not once mentioned in the whole four hours of film. I know for a fact that the base of technology is art. As an artist myself, I know that art is not just a craft we learn in craft schools as political systems keep considering it, and art is a state of mind which leads to great things. I know that artists along the history were never listened to and that thing always proved to be a mistake. I know that whenever they were listened to, great things had happened. I wonder why there is never an artist among those politicians who lead the world. Not even like a supervisor. I ask myself why people lost their interest in art once with the development of technology in the modern world? I keep asking myself why there isn't anyone considered to be a worldwide great artist anymore, like Picasso, Matisse and Dali were before their departure from this beautiful world? There can be such a world, without art?
Mr. Jacque Fresco talks about many beautiful things, about eliminating greed and elitism, eliminating the need for prisons and welfare and it all sounds good, up to the idea that all those great artists were the true elite of the world, just by being the artists they were, still living in a world full of greed and all those things he wants to eliminate and without those elitists the world would have been blank. He presents himself as a Conceptual Designer, which I believe is his profession, then his perfect world is a world where professions will disappear. He gives a few examples as for those of stockbrokers, bankers and advertising, but those are not the professions that make this world exist. They are just the ones evaluating it. I ask myself what is the artist’s trend if not a profession? His world is once again reminding me of the world I come from, where our great ex-leader who wanted no elitism in none of the professions got to where a simple worker had the same salary as a doctor or as an artist and all lived in the same block building. The next step was to create cantinas at the base floor of those blocks where everyone of us, in the same uniform, would eat the same food. Although he was very close to conclude his plan of making us all equal he crashed all that once meant respect, passion and other spiritual things which makes a man wanting to excel in life. Anyone remember North Korea? He came back with those ideas from his last visit there and that’s when all got wrong.
Mr. Fresno does talk nicely and idealistically up to the point he presents a world shaped as bad as the science fiction films of the 1970’s where art was not existent, only technology. Take the Star Trek series for example, would you want to live in a world as blank as that? How do you feel when you enter an office space where there is not a single painting on the wall? Blank, isn’t it?
Later on, the makers of the film explain that we do not pay for wind and tap water: Reality check! We do pay, as we all pay our water bills and I am sure we will all pay for wind energy once is going to be the main source. And one more thing: The moment that wind energy is going to be the main source we will only increase the profits of some other guys who will sell us nothing else but: “Thin Air”. Remember again? There was once one guy named Tesla who wanted to give free electricity to everyone because he knew electricity comes from the energy of the universe and therefore belongs to everyone.  What happened there?  I already see the day when they will find out that those fans need maintenance, those maintenance companies will get into competition and the government will  impose some taxes so we don't run out of wind. As I said, it all sounds as good as the Communist system’s propaganda back in the 1960’s which our parents believed to be true and therefore they got us suffering for ages to come.

It makes me wonder if this is not the thing that gives away the real intentions and the origin of those films in the first place. If everything is possible, and the Giants managed to make us believe everything they wanted to in order to gain profit: What would stop them now? Couldn’t all this be political propaganda for a change?
As a good student of manipulation through art as towards a positive direction, I know how change could be implemented in people minds, even through presented as denial, but right to the target. I lived the days to see change happened for the same reasons not once, but several times. Always the new ones call the old ones names, show the world how bad those were and promise they will be better: “The King have died. Long live the King!”
Being a technology freak though, and keeping up with everything new that comes on the market, once new gadgets doesn’t work properly I ask myself if this change is not happening already for a long time now and this is not just a way to move the money from one pocket to another. I wonder if there is not more than one power out there and some of them already re-focused on a different source of profit. I ask myself how Al Gore got into the film business and how he won a price from the Academy a few years back with a film that promoted ecology? He ain’t a film director, nor he’s a producer or an actor. Finally I ask myself who financed Zeitgeist? And perhaps they are the ones who won now. Isn’t that a beautiful world of creative talents?

I guess all of us could see it on the faces of those who were yelling out of happiness that change has won. So there they have it. I am happy though that things like these appear on the Internet and I am sure that it will help a lot of people open up to the new ideas. I’m only disappointed that is not completed and, like usually, does not give a real answer to the problem. I’m also disappointed that once again the world in this documentary means just America - like always. I’m not very sorry for them though when I think of how ignorant they are and how they started ruling the world without the basic knowledge of the world’s history. They once again believe the world begins with them. But then again: People like me who lived the whole package of experiences know to wait and that’s what we’ll do. All I can say is that: People, who find freedom in their mind, are the real free people. And they don’t need a system to be guide by, or to follow. All they need is the mental capacity to see the future and dream of it, even with the price of never getting there, cause change will come, wheatear we want it or not, and history will be written. And here, I give an “A” to the un-professional filmmakers who did that little encyclopedia out of scraps from the Internet to remind us how hopeless we are.

I guess we dreamers, no matter how imperfect we are, we will just have to stick to our dream of becoming the elite in our professions and so on change this world the old fashion way.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Wow, what a biased point of view. If I can just point out just two out of a hundred failing arguments of yours I'd pick the two related to your proffession, Art.
You complained there wasn't any notion of Art in the film, yet as narrator imagine themselves having more spare time to use, they'd paint a beautifull painting, not to sell, but to offer to another human being as a gift!... What a powerfull visualisation!, yet even to your artistic eyes, it passed unnoticed...
Or you complained that there weren't any art leaders who shaped the world's history with their achievements, failing to recognize so many of them, even Leonardo da Vinchi himself!..
Believe me, your whole analysis is so biased, you can't even notice you agree at more than 80% to zeitgeist adddendum's argumentation.
Even your very last argument falls quite near to zeitgeist's vision for a better future (besides its styling).
Yet, zeitgeist's vision involves movements of people with internal will and power to make it happened, while yourself would rather dream your life into it, hoping everyone does the same, and maybe, you all wakeup some day and you live in the dreamland!
Sorry, it doesn't work that way. Great changes require people with power and determination. And being in the social media I see all the time how the humans becomes like the cells in a whole organism, that's called humanity.
We might have cancerous cells in our body, but when this body and mind realised some thousand years ago it's existence and unique integration, we've been elevated above all other species, closer to our miracle true nature...
There are millions of people like you, who'd rather not get into the hardship of change, pretending they're free in their minds. It's ok, I respect it. But you'd feel so much better if you would let some more open windows of opportunity in your mind...
Or at least recognize that your own imperfect nature might just be wrong...

Best,
a brother in life, (aka Fotis Bobolas)

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