www.thezeitgeistmovement.com/ www.thevenusproject.com
A friend recently recommended that I start learning about the Venus Project (of which the Zeitgeist Movement is the activist arm).
And as I've been exploring the concepts, so many things have been coming together in my mind. For instance, I now realize why, no matter how many times I've had it explained to me, I haven't been able to wrap my mind around the meaning of The Defecit. It's because our monetary system isn't connected to any kind of reality!
Jacque Fresco, the founder of this movement/project, started having questions as a young person growing up in the Great Depression. He saw that there was no change in the quantity of food and other resources that our country was producing -- but people were going hungry and living in poverty due to not having the jobs, to generate the cash, to obtain the resources for themselves and their families.
And it's this profit motive, which is inextricably-interwoven into the whole monetary-system, that holds back our technological development from truly becoming beneficial to our Earth and all its inhabitants. We have the technology, for instance, to design and construct buildings that function like trees (photosythesis, cleaning the water supply, the whole works -- I learned this watching "11th Hour") --
Only no one is going to get rich doing this. While there's tremendous BENEFIT in developing sustainable technologies -- there's no PROFIT. So it doesn't get done.
Lately I've been feeling really sad about how instead of getting excited over true progress (i.e. newspapers being online which means less trees being cut down to produce paper) -- many of us are forced, through our dependence on earning a wage, to view such developments with genuine fear.
Instead of feeling more free because of technology, many of us feel increasingly out-of-control, wondering when our current skill-sets are going to become obsolete and render us jobless, possibly homeless, and poor.
One thing I really like about Jacque Fresco, is that he keeps reminding us there is no such thing as utopia, or a perfect society. All of our knowledge is emergent, and therefore our main area of expertise needs to be openmindedness -- a willingness to keep listening, thinking, learning, and changing our minds (I don't have the exact quote in front of me at the moment).
Fresco asserts that we need to move from a profit-based economy to a resource-based economy, where everyone has access to the resources they need regardless of being able to pay, and where we can finally get moving on developing a way of life, and developing technologies, that put us into a symbiotic relationship with this planet, realizing that the health of the planet is also the health of you and me.
I'm coming to this as a believer in Jesus Christ, who also believes religion is largely man-made, and I'm a Universalist which means I believe God has already accomplished the salvation of the whole world, and as a loving Parent, does not require everyone to believe any particular set of doctrines about Him in order to be saved.
So I feel great about working with others of diverse beliefs, without feeling any compulsion to try to convert them. It still feels weird to be joining with a movement that seems to be basically Atheistic in its foundations.
And I'm hoping that others will be interested enough in all of this to join me in a discussion about it here!
A friend recently recommended that I start learning about the Venus Project (of which the Zeitgeist Movement is the activist arm).
And as I've been exploring the concepts, so many things have been coming together in my mind. For instance, I now realize why, no matter how many times I've had it explained to me, I haven't been able to wrap my mind around the meaning of The Defecit. It's because our monetary system isn't connected to any kind of reality!
Jacque Fresco, the founder of this movement/project, started having questions as a young person growing up in the Great Depression. He saw that there was no change in the quantity of food and other resources that our country was producing -- but people were going hungry and living in poverty due to not having the jobs, to generate the cash, to obtain the resources for themselves and their families.
And it's this profit motive, which is inextricably-interwoven into the whole monetary-system, that holds back our technological development from truly becoming beneficial to our Earth and all its inhabitants. We have the technology, for instance, to design and construct buildings that function like trees (photosythesis, cleaning the water supply, the whole works -- I learned this watching "11th Hour") --
Only no one is going to get rich doing this. While there's tremendous BENEFIT in developing sustainable technologies -- there's no PROFIT. So it doesn't get done.
Lately I've been feeling really sad about how instead of getting excited over true progress (i.e. newspapers being online which means less trees being cut down to produce paper) -- many of us are forced, through our dependence on earning a wage, to view such developments with genuine fear.
Instead of feeling more free because of technology, many of us feel increasingly out-of-control, wondering when our current skill-sets are going to become obsolete and render us jobless, possibly homeless, and poor.
One thing I really like about Jacque Fresco, is that he keeps reminding us there is no such thing as utopia, or a perfect society. All of our knowledge is emergent, and therefore our main area of expertise needs to be openmindedness -- a willingness to keep listening, thinking, learning, and changing our minds (I don't have the exact quote in front of me at the moment).
Fresco asserts that we need to move from a profit-based economy to a resource-based economy, where everyone has access to the resources they need regardless of being able to pay, and where we can finally get moving on developing a way of life, and developing technologies, that put us into a symbiotic relationship with this planet, realizing that the health of the planet is also the health of you and me.
I'm coming to this as a believer in Jesus Christ, who also believes religion is largely man-made, and I'm a Universalist which means I believe God has already accomplished the salvation of the whole world, and as a loving Parent, does not require everyone to believe any particular set of doctrines about Him in order to be saved.
So I feel great about working with others of diverse beliefs, without feeling any compulsion to try to convert them. It still feels weird to be joining with a movement that seems to be basically Atheistic in its foundations.
And I'm hoping that others will be interested enough in all of this to join me in a discussion about it here!
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